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The recording of the January program is now available for viewing by members at this link. (Member sign-on required.) This video will also remain publicly available on our YouTube channel. Our next program will be on Saturday, February 15, starting at 1:30 p.m. The presenter will be Mary-Lane Kamberg talking about Grand Openings.
January 18, 2025 - 1:30 p.m. Program Location: Zoom  Current members receive an link to the monthly program on Zoom via the monthly e-newsletter. The link is also available using the button above which takes you to our members-only pages. Sign-on is required. Join us in conversation with Kansas Authors Club 2024 book award winners Jim Gilkeson (Coffin Nonfiction), Marilyn Hope Lake (Coffin Fiction), Jerilynn Henrikson (Martin KS History), Lisa Hase-Jackson (Nelson Poetry), and Ann Vigola Anderson (Design). We will discuss writing, entering contests, and best practices for producing an award winning book. Panel moderated by Anne Spry (Design Award Winner & State President).  From the opening poem of Lisa Hase-Jackson's impactful collection, Insomnia in Another Town, we learn that "There is no small grief...all are interconnected." These poems, cloaked in memory and the unmaking and re-making of family, travel us through the harvest of a poet's life. Like the farms she made grow, this book tills the soil of a human soul and all the many experiences that make it. In pantoums, free verse, and prose poems, Hase-Jackson demonstrates the way that every lived experience weaves into a root system that bears unique fruit, singular as our heartbeats, our winding fingerprints. -Ashley M. Jones, poet laureate of Alabama Winner of the 2024 Nelson Poetry Book Award  Jim Gilkeson takes you on a storyteller's journey into three tiny, experimental subcultures in the U.S. and Europe. Told in a series of short interlocking vignettes spanning the years from 1949 to 2015, Gilkeson traces his unlikely path from his conventional upbringing in the Midwest, down the psychedelic rabbit hole of the late 1960s, to his years as a brother in an order of modern mystics and a practitioner and teacher of energy healing at a clothing-optional retreat center. Three Lost Worlds: A Memoir of a life Among Mystics, Healers, and Life-Artists is an insider's account of life in the Holy Order of MANS, an esoteric spiritual order founded in San Francisco in the 1960s; an apprenticeship in energy healing with an Irish clairvoyant, the late Bob Moore; and a fourteen-year stint as a healer at Harbin Hot Springs in Northern California, which comes to an abrupt and devastating end in the wildfires of 2015. Three Lost Worlds is set in part against the backdrop of cults and the paranoia surrounding them in the wake of the Jonestown mass suicides in the late 1970s, but it tells a different kind of story, one of spiritual and personal growth through the eyes of an insider. In the process, Three Lost Worlds offers the reader a reflection on an era in American spiritual history, the heartfelt journey of a modern spiritual seeker. Winner of the 2024 J. Donald & Bertha Coffin Memorial Book Award for Nonfiction.  Our Mothers' Ghosts, by Marilyn Hope Lake: Forced to extremes in order to escape women’s accepted societal roles, the protagonists in this short story collection—the women of one midwestern river town family—overcome hardship and heartbreak, pain and pressure, in order to burst the bonds that hold them and bring forth a better future for their daughters and sons. Their struggles comprise a panorama of women’s issues that span the twentieth century: social injustice, sexism, discrimination, and racism. These ordinary women experienced it all, and the unique ways in which they dealt with these issues illustrate a past we should all hope to leave behind. Winner of the 2024 J. Donald & Bertha Coffin Memorial Book Award for Fiction.  Remembering Martha turns family history and lore into story. Martha grew up in the small town of Neosho Rapids, Kansas, at the turn of the 20th century. This book is an invitation to explore prairie life, its glories and its tragedies, through one woman whose indomitable spirit lives on through generations of grandchildren, including and especially, the author, Jerilynn Henrikson. This novella is a work of fiction inspired by an interview with the author's grandmother. Winner of the 2024 Martin Kansas History Book Award.  When the world shut down in March 2020, Author Anne Spry shut down emotionally ... until she had the time to really notice and appreciate her surroundings. She began taking photos of sunsets, sunrises, clouds and flowers. Poetry flowed out of her soul when she saw what the camera had captured. Now she is sharing her inspirations in hopes that this perspective on a largely negative era in our history will result in more universal gratitude. Winner of the 2024 "It Looks Like a Million" Design Award.  In the Adventures of Bottle Calf, author Ann Vigola Anderson takes us back in time to her grandparents’ farm where Bottle Calf was born during an early spring blizzard. With illustrations by the talented Sara Long, this gorgeous book will be your go-to for holiday gift giving and beyond. Grab a copy to reminisce or to share the stories and gorgeous art with your kids and grandkids. You are going to love Bottle Calf! Reconized - 2024 "It Looks Like a Million" Design Award We are working on an amazing lineup of state programs in 2025! Click here to check on our progress and SAVE THE DATES on your calendar!
Insomnia in Another Townby Lisa M. Hase-Jackson  "The cover of this book attracted me right away, and that was only the beginning. Hase-Jackson does a beautiful job of turning memory into poetry. She uses a variety of forms including pantoum, free-verse, and even prose poetry to give insight into family, farming, and the human soul. A beautiful collection." Judge Kat Fox, English Faculty at Emporia State University
Created by Raymond and Margaret Nelson – Dr. Raymond Nelson and Margaret Nelson joined KAC in 1979. Both served in various offices, including state president, Raymond from 1984-1986, and Margaret Nelson from 1994-1995. The couple began awarding the Nelson Poetry Book Award in 2002.
 Prize Announcement: The Converse Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing and Clemson University Press are pleased to announce the winner of the 2023 Converse MFA Alumni Book Prize as selected by this year’s judge, Claire Bateman. For 2023, Bateman has selected Insomnia in Another Town, by Lisa Hase Jackson. In selecting this year’s winner, Claire Bateman stated that all the manuscripts distinguished themselves and that each writer possessed a “wonderfully distinct voice.” As for the winner, Bateman shared the following comment: Insomnia in Another Town is a peripatetic exploration of place and displacement; animal life and strange weathers; the exigencies of race, class, and gender as childhood memories emit a dark radiance by which to navigate the present. These poems are quietly perceptive, unflinching: There is no small grief…/for all are/interconnected. One touch/sends tremors through our core/like the fly in the web/that wakes the spider at its center. Nevertheless, there’s significant courage here with grace notes of buoyancy as readers are reawakened to joy in bird song along the power lines/and between the tunes/on the radio,/the interstices/of thoughts/no one thinks about. The full list of finalists is below: Lisa Hase Jackson, winner, Insomnia in Another Town (Poetry) Zorina Frey, Runner-up, Redline U.S. A Story (Poetry) Hannah Marshall, The Shape Good Can Take (Poetry) The Converse MFA Alumni Book Prize is awarded every two years to a Converse MFA alumna who has entered an original book-length manuscript to its contest. All submitted manuscripts are judged anonymously by a writer of national distinction, and the author of the winning manuscript(s) is awarded a standard royalty book contract, publication by Clemson University Press who will edit, publish, and distribute each prize-winning book, plus the winner is invited (expenses paid) to give a public reading from the winning manuscript at the Converse MFA program’s residency session. The Converse MFA Alumni Book Prize is part of a publishing partnership between the low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Converse and Clemson University Press. The Clemson-Converse Literature Series publishes a diverse and distinguished body of contemporary poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction essay collections. While the series will occasionally feature an outstanding anthology, the majority of the books will be selected through two competitions, each of which will run biennially: a national poetry prize for a full-length book, an award open to all poets publishing in English, and the Converse MFA Alumni Book Award Series, open to alumni of the Converse Low Residency MFA. About the winner: Lisa Hase-Jackson is author of the poetry collection Flint & Fire (The Word Works, 2019), which was selected for the 2019 Hilary Tham Capital Collection Series. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including Cimarron Review, South Carolina Review, and Mom Egg Review. Awarded residencies at the Kimmel Harding-Nelson Center for the Arts and Vermont Studio Center, her work can also be found in Ice on a Hot Stove (Clemson University Press) and The Crafty Poet (Terrapin Press) anthologies. She has taught at universities and writing workshops across the U.S. Lisa Hase-Jackson is a District 3 member of Kansas Authors Club. 
If you have news of writing events that would be of interest to all Kansas Authors Club members, or if you are a member (dues current) who would like to announce an achievement, please submit your news via this form. June 1 to August 15: Submissions are now open for the Julia Peterkin Literary Awards in Flash Fiction and Poetry. Established in 1998 by the Creative Writing program at Converse College, the Julia Peterkin Award is a national contest honoring both emerging and established writers. The award is named for Converse graduate Julia Mood Peterkin, whose 1929 novel, Scarlet Sister Mary, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in literature. South 85 Journal seeks submissions of unpublished flash fiction of 850 words or fewer and previously unpublished poems of 50 lines or fewer. We are especially interested in stories and poems that demonstrate a strong voice and/or a sense of place, but consider all quality writing. The winning selection in each category will be awarded $500 and publication in the December issue of South 85 Journal. Contest finalists will also be selected and published alongside the winning selections. Submissions are read blind by an outside judge. Judges for this year’s contest are Cary Holladay for flash fiction and Ashley M. Jones for poetry. Submit Here Lisa Hase-Jackson, District 3 member, is the editor of South 85 Journal.  |
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If you have news of writing events that would be of interest to all Kansas Authors Club members, or if you are a member (dues current) who would like to announce an achievement, please submit your news via this form. Categories
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