Kids and grown up of all ages enjoyed the story and the art!
Ann Vigola Anderson, D2 member, and artist, Sara Long, had a wonderful event for The Adventures of Bottle Calf at Volland-the place for art and music, in the Flint Hills, Sunday, March 3. Kids and grown up of all ages enjoyed the story and the art! Billings, MT– Two Kansas books made it to the top of the list in the High Plains Book Awards in 2023. The awards, begun in 2007, “recognize regional literary works which examine and reflect life on the High Plains, including the states of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado and Kansas, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.”
Julie A. Sellers (Atchison), author of Ann of Sunflower Lane and Ruth Maus (Topeka) author of Puzzled: Poems, will make the trip to Billings, Montana, to attend the book award festivities where the winners will be announced on October 7, 2023. Both will be participating in panels: Sellers taking about “Fiction: Better for the Brain?” and Maus participating in a poetry reading and discussion. Ann of Sunflower Lane is one of three finalists in the young adult category. The novel is about the way books and reading impact readers. “The title character, Ann Alwyn, is an avid reader, and when she comes to live with the grandparents she never knew at Sunflower Lane farm, she discovers a kindred spirit in an old edition of Anne of Green Gables. Her reading of that and other texts frames her experiences as she integrates herself into life on the farm and in the small-town community of Storey, Kansas,” says Sellers. Puzzled is a finalist in the poetry category. Maus wrote most of the poems in Puzzled during the pandemic, and the 110-page book is filled will her German cousin’s full-color paintings. The poetry and art in Puzzled (Meadowlark Press, 2022) has connections dating back to 1882, when the great-grandfather of Ruth Maus came to the US as a young boy with his parents and siblings. They were Germans who eventually settled on a farm in Holton, Kansas, where a descendent still lives and farms to this day. The ancestral village, which Ruth Maus was able to visit in 1997, is now a part of Poland. Cousins met, including descendent of a brother to Ruth’s great-grandfather who stayed behind. Gertrud Knuth and Ruth have maintained contact since that trip, and Gertrud’s daughter, Katja Weiss, an artist living near Hamburg, Germany, has taken over those communications in this digital age. Both books are available at meadowlarkbookstore.com and can be ordered wherever books are sold. ### Accepting Entries: September 1 - December 1, 2022
Entry Fee: $25 Prize: $1,000 cash, publication by Meadowlark Press, including 50 copies of the completed book All entries will be considered for standard Meadowlark Press publishing contract offers, as well. Full-length poetry manuscripts (55 page minimum, 90+ pages preferred) will be considered. Poems may be previously published in journals and/or anthologies, but not in full-length, single-author volumes. Poets are eligible to enter, regardless of publishing history. You are invited to celebrate the launch of Ann of Sunflower Lane with Julie A. Sellers and Meadowlark Press. When: Oct 7, 2022 06:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada) Register in advance for this meeting: https://tinyurl.com/SunflowerLane For Immediate Release New L.M. Montgomery-Inspired Novel Takes Place in the Flint Hills of Kansas Emporia, KS – Meadowlark Press announces the publication of Ann of Sunflower Lane by award-winning author Julie A. Sellers. This novel is a tribute to the Kansas Flint Hills, booklovers and reading, and Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. Sellers explains that the novel is not an adaptation of Montgomery’s classic novel, but a story of the way books and reading impact readers. “The title character, Ann Alwyn, is an avid reader, and when she comes to live with the grandparents she never knew at Sunflower Lane farm, she discovers a kindred spirit in an old edition of Anne of Green Gables. Her reading of that and other texts frames her experiences as she integrates herself into life on the farm and in the small-town community of Storey, Kansas.” “Ann of Sunflower Lane is a love-letter to books and reading, and especially to the power of Anne of Green Gables to reflect and to shape life,” says Elizabeth Rollins Epperly, Professor Emerita and founder of the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island. Marah Gubar, Associate Professor of Literature at MIT and author of Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children’s Literature (2009), said, “I love how vividly this book conjures up contemporary rural life in a small town, chronicling how the transplanted Ann comes to terms with her troubled family history by putting down new roots and reinvigorating old ones.” “I love this character, this book. Readers of all ages will fall in love with Ann of Sunflower Lane,” said Kansas writer Cheryl Unruh, author of Gravedigger’s Daughter: Vignettes from a Small Kansas Town. Sellers was the Kansas Authors Club 2020 Prose Writer of the Year and the Overall Poetry (2022) and Prose (2017, 2019) winner of the Kansas Voices Writing Contest sponsored by the Winfield Arts and Humanities Council. She is the author of Kindred Verse: Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables (Blue Cedar Press, 2021). The book can be purchased at meadowalarkbookstore.com and ordered wherever books are sold. Puzzled, poems by Ruth Maus, Art by Katja Weiss Published by: Meadowlark Press, Emporia, KS, September 2022 ISBN: 978-1-956578-25-6 For Immediate Release New Poetry Collection by Ruth Maus Includes Paintings by Her German Cousin Topeka, KS – The poetry and art in Puzzled (Meadowlark Press, 2022) has connections dating back to 1882, when the great-grandfather of Ruth Maus came to the US as a young boy with his parents and siblings. They were Germans who eventually settled on a farm in Holton, Kansas, where a descendent still lives and farms to this day. The ancestral village, which Ruth Maus was able to visit in 1997, is now a part of Poland. Cousins met, including descendent of a brother to Ruth’s great-grandfather who stayed behind. Gertrud Knuth and Ruth have maintained contact since that trip, and Gertrud’s daughter, Katja Weiss, an artist living near Hamburg, Germany, has taken over those communications in this digital age. “I sent them a copy of my first poetry book, Valentine, in 2019. Periodically, I would email Katja one of my new poems, and she would email me one of her new paintings,” Maus writes. Then the German cousin suggested that Maus could use her paintings in a future poetry book. Maus wrote most of the poems in Puzzled during the pandemic, and the 110-page book is filled will her German cousin’s full-color paintings. “I continue to be amazed that despite 140 years, thousands of miles, different languages, two world wars, and multiple generations, we unacquainted cousins have collaborated on this project!” writes Maus. “Throughout Puzzled, Ruth Maus’s skillfully-wrought poems abound in delight and wonder, her curiosity and playfulness on full display. These are fun and memorable gems . . .” writes Jonathan Greenhause, author of Cupping Our Palms, winner of the Birdy Poetry Prize (Meadowlark Press, 2022). “Katja Weiss’s art provides counterpoints of quiet, restful, yet mysterious places to contemplate the poems. Puzzled is synergy in its purest form,” from Barbara Waterman-Peters, artist, author, and illustrator. Puzzled is available at meadowlarkbookstore.com and can be ordered wherever books are sold. Ruth Maus, a native of Topeka, Kansas, has followed a love of learning around the world to places large and small, to pyramids and hedgerows, presidential balls and Kansas hayfields. She represented Smith College at the annual Glasscock Intercollegiate Poetry Contest where past contestants have included James Merrill, Sylvia Plath, Katha Pollit, Mary Jo Salter, James Agee, Frederick Buechner, Kenneth Koch, Donald Hall, William Manchester, Muriel Rukeyser, and Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary publications. Her first book of poetry, Valentine, published by Meadowlark Press, was a finalist in the 2019 Birdy Contest. Ruth is a member of Kansas Authors Club, District 1. 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. TOPEKA – This year’s list of Kansas Notable Books continues the tradition of celebrating the rich stories and culture of Kansas. “The 2022 Kansas Notable Books list recognizes 15 books written by Kansans or about Kansas,” said Ray Walling, Acting State Librarian. “Through their work, the authors take readers on a journey through the wetlands of the Cheyenne Bottoms to the baseball fields of the Kansas City Monarchs. Readers can be transported back in time to the 1887 election in Argonia or to the epic battle of twin sisters enabled with superpowers facing a sinister force. This year’s titles include something for everyone. I hope all Kansans will visit their local public library to check out these wonderful titles.” Each year, the Kansas Notable Books list features 15 books, published during the previous calendar year, which are about or set in Kansas, or written by a Kansas author. This year’s selection committee includes representatives of public, university, and school libraries, teachers, academics, and writers. Kansas Notable Books authors will be awarded their medals at the Kansas Book Festival on September 24 at Washburn University. The public is invited. Kansas Notable Books is a project of the Kansas Center for the Book, a program at the State Library of Kansas which is the state affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book. The mission of the Kansas Center for the Book is to highlight the state’s literary heritage and foster an interest in books, reading, and libraries. For more information or questions about Kansas Notable Books program, visit kslib.info/notablebooks or contact the State Library of Kansas at 785-296-3296 or email infodesk@ks.gov. 2022 Kansas Notable Books Ava: A Year of Adventure in the Life of an American Avocet by Mandy Kern (Great Bend), illustrated by Onalee Nicklin (Emporia), Meadowlark Press Blue Collar Saint: Poems by Brenda Leigh White (Emporia), Meadowlark Press Field Journal: Volume XIII, 2021, The Santa Fe Trail by Symphony in the Flint Hills (Cottonwood Falls) From This Moment: A Novel by Kim Vogel Sawyer (Hutchinson), Waterbrook The Greatest Thing: A Story About Buck O'Neil by Kristy Nerstheimer (Overland Park), illustrated by Christian Paniagua, (Queens, NY) The Little Fig Haven’s Secret (The Powers Book 1) by Melissa Benoist, Jessica Benoist (Council Grove), Mariko Tamaki, Abrams Books How to Resist Amazon and Why by Danny Caine (Lawrence), Microcosm Publishing Killing Dragons: Order of the Dolphin by Kristie Clark (Jetmore), Delphi Imprint Mad Prairie: Stories and a Novella by Kate McIntyre (Worcester MA), University of Georgia Press Policing Sex in the Sunflower State: The Story of the Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women by Nicole Perry (Lawrence), University Press of Kansas Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains by Lucas Bessire (Norman OK), Princeton University Press Stormbreak: A Seafire Novel by Natalie C. Parker (Lawrence), Razorbill A Vote for Susanna: The First Woman Mayor by Karen M. Greenwald (Rockville MD), illustrated by Sian James (Cambridge UK), Albert Whitman & Co. White Hot Hate: A True Story of Domestic Terrorism in America's Heartland by Dick Lehr (Belmont MA), Mariner Books Words Is a Powerful Thing: Twenty Years of Teaching Creative Writing at Douglas County Jail by Brian Daldorph (Lawrence), University Press of Kansas For more information about the State Library of Kansas, please visit https://kslib.info. # # # CongratulationsKansas Authors Club members on the 2022 Notable list: Brenda Leigh White - District 2 Brian Daldorph - District 2 Kristie Clark - District 7 Meadowlark Press - Member at Large “I have a lot of marbles. I confess to you that I have 18,734 of them, more or less,” writes Cathy Callen in the opening essay of Marble Shorts. Marble Shorts contains eight essays, filled with sparkles of color that rival the marble images that adorn these pages. This book is a gift to the collector, the curious soul, the seeker of color in this bleary-eyed world, and the rest. Meet the Marble Lady of Kansas City. Meet the Girl Scout who uses marbles to earn her “think like an engineer” badge. Meet Bruce of the Moon Marble Company. You just never know what might happen if you plant a marble. It may grow! “What spectators view as art in homes, businesses, and museums is the culmination of a creative process that starts with an idea. The work that goes into transforming a creative idea into something that can be displayed is not always obvious. If you are a patron of the arts, I would think your interest would lie primarily in the finished product—what you can see, what you can admire, what you might purchase, what you would then display. If you are an artist, the journey toward that destination belongs to you.” –CC What Readers are saying: A sense of nostalgia pervades this charming work which introduces readers to extraordinary collectors—people who collect off-beat adventures, lasting friendships, and fascinating skills, as well as marvelous marbles. This is a summery, sunny book that can warm a winter’s day. It is a book to slow down with, to savor and enjoy, and perhaps coax up a memory or two. –Kathy Koplik Marble Shorts is a collection of gems. Profiles, pictures, and personal observations about passion, all inspired by those perfectly round glass objects that generate smiles throughout the world. Cathy Callen introduces us to connoisseurs, history, manufacturing, and, most importantly, the sheer enchantment of those magical pieces. In this case, one can judge a book by its cover; the photo of a blue marble between the toes of a baby's foot promises the delightful read to be delivered. –Romalyn Tilghman, author, To the Stars Through Difficulty, 2018 Kansas Notable Book Cathy Callen checks all of the boxes with this delightful book. You can’t imagine how many times I interrupted what my wife, Nancy, was doing to relate or read aloud what I’d just read. –Jack Kline, author of Rhapsody Both Cathy Svacina and Bruce Breslow are at the top of their game when it comes to marbles . . . excellent biographical material on them, as well as the other individuals mentioned in this book. The variety of stories relating to collecting marbles and collecting in general is widespread. Well done! –R. Merwin Kirkwood I enjoyed learning about the people in the stories—all of whom began their marble journeys at different stages of their lives and for somewhat different reasons, although as I read through the book, it seemed clear that love of color, focus on art and science, and personal memories created their individual journeys toward creating their various collections. –Gayle Stuber Ms. Callen has a great appreciation of enthusiastic people who take pleasure in simple joys. It is a perfect release for these anxious times. –Jim and Lene Brooke When I was a child, play was mostly physical. I loved to roller-skate, swim, ride my bike, walk along rock walls, and even climb a few trees. Reading was play, for me, too, and a main way I spent my time when I wasn’t outside. Family leisure time involved working puzzles and board games together, or playing cards—especially on summer vacations to Minnesota when we’d play Canasta and Hearts while slapping at mosquitoes. I had my first near-death experience at age eight, when my Dad sent me to a strip mall near our house in Salina to purchase the game of Monopoly. After making my purchase, I decided to cut through an alley behind the store. Proud of my accomplishment and hugging the bag with the Monopoly game close to me, I started to sprint home and was nearly struck by a speeding car in the alley. I did live to tell about it, and we played a lot of Monopoly. Play is different now. Any time there is a camera in my hand, or a yellow legal pad and a pen nearby, I am happy. Throw in a few thousand brightly colored marbles that need tending, and I can be ecstatic. Emporia, KS--Flyover People essayist Cheryl Unruh, takes the stage for a literary celebration, complete with reading and book signing as Meadowlark Press releases Unruh’s new memoir, Gravedigger’s Daughter: Vignettes from a Small Kansas Town, at Lyon County History Center on Saturday, November 13 at 1:00pm.
An array of regional books will be available for purchase, including other titles by Unruh, as well as books published by Meadowlark Press. Unruh’s memoir details a small-town childhood as the daughter of a carpenter-father, who also happens to be the town cemetery caretaker. As Cheryl grows, so does her comprehension of her father’s particular maladies, a skin-condition that is not discussed by the family, as well as his struggles with depression. Presented in short vignettes, Gravedigger’s Daughter introduces Unruh’s father from a child’s eye view, and then via observations and interactions that take us through Unruh’s adolescence to adulthood. Divided into three parts, the book covers Unruh’s childhood in Pawnee Rock, her father’s middle-age years when she lived away, and his later years. Unruh grew up in the town of Pawnee Rock in central Kansas, population 400, in the 1960s and 70s. “The stories, or vignettes, are poem-shaped, but each captures a moment in time. I see each one as a snapshot,” Unruh says. “While I will never be able to relate the entirety and complexity of a life, I hope that some of my dad’s weird and wonderful personality shines through.” From Laura Moriarty, author of The Chaperone: “With Gravedigger’s Daughter, Cheryl Unruh has created something so fresh and inviting—a memoir in lean vignettes. Each is moving on its own, and also part of a compelling portrait of a childhood in an isolated town with a dwindling population. Unruh’s details are too specific for sentimentalism, but places and people are observed with a loving gaze that also feels wise and honest. Her father, especially, emerges as both haunted and quietly heroic. What a beautiful book.” Fans of Cheryl’s two previous collections of vivid Kansas essays, Flyover People (2011 KS Notable Book) and Waiting on the Sky (2015 KS Notable Book), and Walking on Water, her collection of poetry, will delight in this memoir. Unruh hopes that the book will inspire readers to write their own stories “whether they write for their own pleasure or choose to share their stories with family and friends or perhaps even go on to publish their writing.” Unruh will be scheduling a series of memoir writing workshops starting in the spring of 2022. Gravedigger’s Daughter is available for order through meadowlark-books.square.site and may be ordered through any bookseller. Learn more at www.meadowlark-books.com. ### You are invited to a Zoom meeting. When: Feb 13, 2021 01:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada) Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqc-yopjwoHN2ioy00kkxQgCeOpVsOReY9 After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Indie Publisher Meadowlark Press Presents Lessons Learned for Independent Authors
Tracy Million Simmons will introduce Meadowlark Press and share an overview of Meadowlark's model of publishing, including a review of today's tools of the trade. Tracy will share tips and tricks for navigating the quickly changing world of print-on-demand, including time for Q&A. Tracy is an amazingly productive publisher and gives generously of her time to Kansas Authors Club. Her presentation will be invaluable for anyone writing and seeking to see their writing in print! Bring paper or computers to do some writing if there is time after Tracy’s presentation. Join us for the regular monthly meeting of D5 on Zoom, Saturday, February 13 at 1:30. Contact D5 president, Connie White, if you have questions. An extra special shout-out to the following members for providing a bit of extra support to the convention team via program advertising. Please take a moment to visit these member websites and check out their books! Welcome Lisa D. Stewart, D2, to Kansas Authors Club. Lisa's book, The Big Quiet: One Woman's Horseback Ride Home (Meadowlark Books) is now available wherever you buy books. At 54, Lisa Stewart set out to regain the fearless girl she once had been, riding her horse, Chief, 500 miles home. Hot, homeless, and horseback, she snapped back into every original cell. On an extraordinary homegoing from Kansas City to Bates and Vernon Counties in Missouri, Lisa exhausted herself, faced her past, trusted strangers, and stayed in the middle of her frightened horse to document modern rural America, the people, animals, and land. Lisa D. Stewart is a commercial writer in Prairie Village, Kansas, who specializes in feasibility and marketing studies, business plans, grant proposals, magazine articles, and marketing content. Between 1984 and 1999, she and her former husband created and grew Ortho-Flex Saddle Company, after a 3,000-mile horseback trip that taught them about the relationship between saddles and the biomechanics of the horse. The couple produced and sold patented saddles and tack in more than 30 countries. She has published more than 100 articles on that topic of saddle fit. Lisa lives with her husband, Robert Stewart, editor emeritus of New Letters Magazine at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, and their dog, Paddy.
Advance Praise: “Lisa Stewart’s The Big Quiet charts a path for all women. It’s a path at once dangerous and thrilling and a path she had started down and backed out of since childhood. The resulting narrative recounts a journey not only to a point on the map but to a whole and liberated self. Stewart is finally free to trust herself and others, to survive by her wits and with the help of kind strangers of which there are still many. This is a delicious fantasy of a journey most of us deny ourselves and one taken on the back of a horse whose simultaneously terrified and fiercely loyal personality unfurls before us as the richest of characters’ personalities do—on the way from Point A to Point B.” -Kelly Barth, author of My Almost Certainly Real Imaginary Jesus “This is a book of gratitude of the highest order. Stewart, a 54-year-old woman riding alone on a high-strung, sure-footed horse across the gravel grid of rural America, is grateful each night for a place to pitch a tent and pasture her horse. But her journey, past and present, is as much about the people she meets, many of whom know how to study a horse and to trust its rider—these strangers are glad to offer water and their own stories, which, like Stewarts’, churn with old wounds, hard work, family, and an abiding trust in open land. This compelling meditation reminds us that every step, fall, and missed road leads the rider home.” -Gary Dop, author of Father, Child, Water, MFA Program Director at Randolph College “This book is more than a log of an unusual (for this day and age) solitary horseback journey; it is also a perceptive examination of the author’s own life—a well-written introspective journey of self-discovery.” -James F. Hoy, author of Flint Hills Cowboys: Tales of the Tallgrass Prairie, Chair of Emporia State University’s English Department and professor, past president of the Kansas Historical Society “After riding more than 3,000 miles across the United States in the early 1980s, Stewart helped launch one of that country’s most successful saddle companies. Yet Lisa Stewart is no salesman, eager to sell a saddle to gain a commission. She is a long rider who made mistakes and learned by them. She faced obstacles and overcame them. She was presented with ancient riddles and discovered solutions.” -CuChullaine O’Reilly, FRGS, Founding Member of The Long Riders’ Guild Congratulations to D2 Member, Edna Bell-Pearson, and to Meadowlark Books, with for making the 2020 Kansas Notable Award list! Travel from Liberal to Marysville, Kansas, with the author in this post-World War II memoir. July 15, 2020, Topeka, Kansas: State Librarian Eric Norris announced today the 15th annual selection of Kansas Notable Books. The fifteen books feature quality titles with wide public appeal, written either by a Kansan, set in Kansas, or about a Kansas related topic. “I am proud to present the 2020 Kansas Notable Book list. This year’s list covers a wide swath of our cultural and natural history,” said Eric Norris, State Librarian. “The rich array of works on this year’s list examine petroglyphs across the prairie and go on fantastical high seas adventures with pirates; explore the careers of academics, athletes, and aviators; and consider the importance of family from the viewpoint of a young Exoduster in the 1880s and as a world traveler in a present day small western Kansas town. This year’s list will both educate and entertain. I encourage every Kansan to contact their local public library and celebrate the artists and artistry of Kansas.” A committee of librarians, academics, and historians nominated titles from a list of eligible books, and state librarian Eric Norris selected the final list. In 2006, the first Kansas Notable Books list was announced. Since then more than 200 books have been recognized for their contribution to Kansas literary heritage. Kansas Notable Books is a project of the Kansas Center for the Book. The Kansas Center for the Book is a program at the State Library of Kansas and the state affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book. The Kansas Center for the Book exists to highlight the state’s literary heritage and foster an interest in books, reading, and libraries. |
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