Member Skyler Lovelace reviews poetry volumes by Tyler Robert Sheldon, Olive L. Sullivan, and Laura Lee Washburn from the back catalog of Meadowlark Press at The Shout.

"Meadowlark Press' roster of memoir, poetry, short stories, and novels has expanded the Midwest’s literary scene, emphasizing books and writers who possess a distinctly Kansas vibe. It’s the best place to find poets who follow in the footsteps of well-known, Kansas-connected writers like William Stafford, Steven Hind, and Kevin Young — all poets whose work connects nature and landscape while addressing personal identity. ​"

What are you reading? Help us lift and share the good news about Kansas literature. Tag your book loves and reviews on social media with #ReadLocalKS and submit here to be posted on the Kansas Authors Club website. ​

​EMPORIA, KANSAS. Dodge City native Robert Rebein’s debut novel, The Last Rancher, a family saga set in southwest Kansas, will be published by Emporia’s Meadowlark Press on June 7, 2024.
 
Giving voice to the contemporary American West, The Last Rancher follows one family’s quest to survive on the demanding and starkly beautiful High Plains. Doing so will require the Wagners of Sawlog Creek to come together as never before to face stark challenges in the present as well as the long and lingering shadows of a tragic past.
 
When a near-fatal accident befalls rancher Leroy Wagner on the eve of the annual wheat harvest, his daughter, Annie, a Ph.D. student in western New York, and her older brother, Michael, a Kansas City attorney, are summoned home to Dodge City and the Bar W Ranch. Their city-born mother, Caroline, and rebellious younger brother, Jimmy, join the effort to save the ranch and what remains of their family ties. Never far from any of their minds is the looming specter of Wade, first-born son and brother who died too young.
 
What happens next will determine the future of the Wagner family and the land that has defined them for nearly a century. Will Leroy recover from his injuries? Will Annie take over the ranch or return to New York? Will Michael quit his corporate job and finally strike out on his own? Will Jimmy realize his dream of escape, or will a run-in with the police land him in the Ford County Jail?
 
Early readers have praised the novel’s authentic Kansas setting and characters, its understated humor—a trademark of Rebein’s previous books—and its graceful rendering of land and animals, especially horses:
 
“Love and horses, whiskey and weed, land and money: The Last Rancher has it all.” — Kyle Minor, author of Praying Drunk
 
“Rebein’s characters are so real that I would swear I know them. I was hooked from the first page to the last.” ­— Cheryl Unruh, author of Gravedigger’s Daughter: Vignettes from a Small Kansas Town
 
“I loved this book. A family drama with humor and heart, The Last Rancher gives you the prized shotgun seat and guns the gas. You’d be wise to buckle up.”— Sarah Layden, author of Imagine Your Life Like This
 
“Dodge City, Kansas, has found its bard. His name is Robert Rebein, and his debut novel, The Last Rancher, showcases an assured new voice of the contemporary American West.” — Will Allison, author of What You Have Left
 
About Robert Rebein
Born and raised in Dodge City, where his family has farmed and ranched since the late 1920s, Robert Rebein is the author of two previous books set in Kansas: Dragging Wyatt Earp: A Personal History of Dodge City (Swallow Press, 2013) and Headlights on the Prairie: Essays on Home (University Press of Kansas, 2017). Both books were named Kansas Notable Books by the State Library of Kansas, and Headlights on the Prairie was a finalist for the High Plains Book Award. A professor of English at Indiana University Indianapolis, Rebein lives in the historic Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis with his family and two ornery beagles.
 
About Meadowlark Press
Meadowlark Press, LLC is an independent publisher specializing in books by authors from the heartland. Tracy Million Simmons, owner and publisher, founded Meadowlark in 2014. In its first 10 years, the press has published dozens of books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, including five Kansas Notable Book winners, a winner of the High Plains Book Award and a winner of the Midwest Book Award.

Bull in the Ring
by Al Ortolani
​Meadowlark Press, October 2023
Retail: $19.99

ISBN: 978-1-956578-42-3
EBOOK: 978-1-956578-43-0

FICTION / Small Town & Rural
FICTION / Coming of Age
FICTION / Historical / General

Armed with only poetry and wit, Danny wears his dead father’s army jacket and copes with the string of losers and abusers brought home by his mother. Will he find direction before he reaches the end of this dead-end road life has handed to him?

What Readers are Saying:

Al Ortolani’s Bull in the Ring manages to conjure other great coming-of-age stories—think The Catcher in the Rye, think The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian—while being “in a football conference all its own.” Danny Prego is an instantly iconic protagonist, masking deep hurt and insecurity with careful bravado and one-liners, with his dad’s boots that make him taller and the dream of a letter jacket that will make him feel like someone. Bull in the Ring is a time capsule of a book that made me nostalgic for an era before I was even born.

   —Melissa Fite Johnson, author of Green (Riot in Your Throat, 2021)


Al Ortolani’s crisp prose, peppered with poetry, grabs the reader and doesn’t let go. Will Danny find an exit on that dead-end road? Bull in the Ring is fiction, but its story is true. It takes place in my town. It takes place in yours. Don’t take my word for it. Read it for yourself.

   —Michael D. Graves, author of Human Shadow, Pete Stone Private Investigator series


Life to teen Danny Prego is one long series of hard knocks, from an alcoholic single mother and her dangerous boyfriend to finding trouble at school. Danny reads his reality like a football team and game, always getting back up and out of the mud and muck, regardless of how hard the tackles are. Just as he thinks he’s found secure footing in the circle of senior football players, life comes at Danny from all angles, then deals him a blow that will either take him to his knees or show him the way forward. Despite his tough-guy exterior, Danny Prego is a character who is all heart. Readers of all ages will be firmly on Danny’s team and cheering for him as he faces his most difficult decision to try to escape being the Bull in the Ring.
 
   --Julie A. Sellers, author of Ann of Sunflower Lane and Kansas Authors Club Prose Writer of the Year (2020, 2022)
 

Al Ortolani nailed small town Kansas life in this thoughtful, well-crafted teenage odyssey. It had me eager to see what would happen next . . . right up to the evocative ending. Indeed, I was so captivated by protagonist, Danny Prego, and his hard-scrabble life that I was left yearning for a sequel.
 
   —J.T. Knoll, The Morning Sun (Pittsburg, Kansas)

 
Al Ortolani knows how to tell a tale so it’s like we’re in Danny’s shoes, trying to keep a few steps ahead of troubles that take it in turn to smash into that bull in the ring who we’re soon-enough rooting for.
 
   —Brian Daldorph, Kansas Poems
​

Marilyn Hope Lake writes short fiction, poetry, plays, and children’s picture books. She has many awards, including Kansas Authors Club contest wins. Dr. Lake’s first place story, “Harry’s Stone,” was published in Words Out of the Flatlands; Kansas Writers Association. Lake is published in Rock Springs Review, STIR, Well-Versed: Literary Works, the Gasconade Review, the Mizzou Alumni Magazine, and 105 Meadowlark Reader.

Marilyn lived in Hutchinson, Kansas, from 2002-2017, is a long time active member of the Kansas Authors Club. She helped facilitate the 2014 annual conference. She misses her Kansas friends, but is happy to live with her canine companion, Hugo, near family in Columbia, Missouri.
 

​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. 

​About the Author:

Arlice W. Davenport is the author three collections of poems, Setting the Waves on Fire, Everlasting: Poems, and now, Kind of Blue published respectively by Meadowlark Press (2020) and Meadowlark Poetry Press (2021 & 2022). He is the retired Books editor and Travel editor for The Wichita Eagle newspaper. He and his wife, Laura, continue their travels, which include more than 30 stays in Europe.

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 [email protected].

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.

# # #​

Kansas 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

Emporia, KS – Meadowlark Press and Michael D. Graves announce the publication of the fourth book in the award-winning Pete Stone Private Investigator series. Shadows and Sorrows is available for pre-release order through meadowlarkbookstore.com and a launch event is planned for Thursday, April 14, from 4-6 pm at Twin Rivers Winery, 627 Commercial Street, Emporia. Attendees will enjoy readings by the author and themed cocktails will be featured. 1930s cocktail attire is encouraged; party fedoras will be on hand for guests.
 
Shadows and Sorrows opens in Wichita, Kansas, on April 18, 1938. Cocky Wright has been Pete Stone’s friend since they first met on a baseball field, a couple of kids with skinned knees, lots of moxie, and not much else. Now Cocky is dead, Cocky’s wife and daughter are in danger, and shady characters are after something Cocky was hiding. Was Pete’s friend dealing secrets to the German American Bund? Was his friend really out to threaten the safety of the country?
 
Accident or murder? Pete Stone is searching for the truth, once again, and he must solve the puzzle before his pal’s reputation is tarnished forever.
 
Books 1 and 3 of the series were recognized as Kansas Notable titles. The first book of the series, To Leave a Shadow, received the designation in 2015, and the third, All Hallows’ Shadows, was named to the list in 2021. All Hallows’ Shadows was also the recipient of the 2020 J. Donald Coffin Memorial Book Award by the Kansas Authors Club, and it was a Midwest Book Award Finalist. The series is set in 1930s Wichita, the character of Pete Stone a memorial to the author’s grandfather. 

Book 4 in the Pete Stone Private Investigator Series
Published by: Meadowlark Press, Emporia, KS
April 2022
ISBN paperback: 978-1-956578-03-4
ISBN Kindle Edition: 978-1-956578-09-6

The book launch for Brenda Leigh White’s collection of poetry, Blue Collar Saint, will be held at Twin Rivers Winery, 627 Commercial, Emporia, Saturday, December 4, 4:00-6:00pm. The author, along with friends and supporters, will share work from Brenda’s collection followed by a short open mic opportunity for attendees.
 
White is a native of Emporia, Kansas, but her heart resides on the family farm in Morris County. Her most favorite place in Kansas is the woods and creek on the farm. There she has seen snakes fishing in a puddle and found a baby western box turtle at the natural spring feeding into the creek. She has had poetry published in Quivira and The Flint Hills Review. What she loves most about living in Kansas is the beauty of the flint hills and the state motto, ad astra per aspera, “to the stars through difficulties.” 

Cheryl Unruh, Kansas Notable author, says, “With unapologetic honesty and a masterful use of language, Brenda Leigh White, in Blue Collar Saint, cycles through whimsy, curiosity, and harsh reality. Always questioning the world around her, White writes with sharpness, clarity, and wit, leaving the reader alternately gutted and longing for more.” 

Emporia poet Kerry Moyer says, “The verses in Blue Collar Saint were born on the assembly line, in the working-class spaces and places of this poetic traveler’s journey. White shares her scars and lays bare a resilience rooted in wit, intelligence, and strength. This is a fine collection, from an authentic new voice in Kansas poetry.”


Blue Collar Saint is available for order through meadowlark-books.square.site and may be ordered through any bookseller. Learn more at www.meadowlark-books.com.

​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.
 
###

Three Kansas Authors Club members were named finalists in the 31st annual Midwest Book Awards. The awards program, which is organized by the Midwest Independent Publishers Association (MiPA), recognizes quality independent publishing in the Midwest.

Michael D. Graves, District 2, made the Fiction: Mystery/Thriller list with All Hallows' Shadows, the 3rd book of the Pete Stone, Private Investigator series.

Jerilynn Jones Henrikson, District 2, made the Fiction: Young Adult list with A Time for Tears.

Julie Stielstra, District 6, made the Fiction: Young Adult list with Opulence, Kansas.

All three titles are published by Meadowlark Press of Emporia, Kansas, owned by Tracy Million Simmons (D2). 

The 31st annual Midwest Book Awards was open to books published and copyrighted in 2020 in MiPA’s 12-state Midwestern region: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

This year’s competition garnered 241 entries in 35 categories, submitted by 74 independent publishers and judged by a panel of nearly one hundred librarians and booksellers from throughout the Midwest.

Historically, an awards gala is held in Minneapolis to announce the winners, but this year, as in 2020, winners will be announced and celebrated online, first in a Zoom webinar open to MiPA members and finalists, and shortly thereafter in a social media premiere that can be shared with friends and family. A period of book giveaways and winner highlights will accompany the social media premiere.

“This shift to celebrating online has enabled us to engage with a larger publishing community throughout the Midwest,” said Jennifer Baum, executive director of MiPA. “The number of entries received in 2020 grew by about 25% compared to the prior year, which can be attributed to our greater online presence.”

Following the conclusion of the gala celebrations, winners will be encouraged to participate in MiPA’s second season of the Virtual Reading Series, a limited series launched last year on MiPA’s YouTube channel.

Finalist books will also be for sale in MiPA’s affiliate shop on Bookshop.org, a website that shares proceeds with independent booksellers. Buyers can opt to select which independent store will receive the commission, or to leave it in a general pool to be distributed among independent booksellers.

​For a complete list of finalists, visit www.mipa.org/midwest-book-awards. Follow @MIPAMidwestBookAwards on Facebook for updates on the gala’s social media premiere and book giveaways.

At 7 p.m. on March 27, Meadowlark Press will be hosting a virtual book launch event, and you're invited! Kevin will read from the collection and will be answering your questions and chatting it up with you. Register for the event at tinyurl.com/MTWbooklaunch
​

District 1 member, Ruth Maus, and District 2 member, Brian Daldorph, will be featured poets at the Birdy Poetry Prize Virtual Readings and 2021 Winner & Finalist Announcement. Meadowlark Press invites all Kansas Authors Club members to attend.

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.
​

Emporia, KS – Kansas Poems “is a poetry of place and microhistory, which nonetheless transcends the people and events it tells about . . . And while I’ve never been to Kansas, I now feel that I might have—or at least that there is a Kansas of my mind, a place of lakes and fireflies and small lives.” –Laura Chalar, author of Unlearning and Midnight at the Law Firm

Brian Daldorph’s eighth full-length collection of poetry is a tribute to his adopted state, Kansas, where he has lived through the four seasons year by year, in Lawrence.
 
Daldorph is originally from England and had made a home for himself here through his teaching at the University of Kansas and at the Douglas County Jail. He is also the editor of Coal City Review.

Kansas poetry blooms in these pages, not only poems set in Lawrence, Linwood, Garden City, and Coffeyville, but also in the more mythological locations of Stony Creek Cemetery, Brook Creek Park, Oak Hill Cemetery and Stull, which, legend has it, is one of the gates of Hell.

These are poems about Kansas people: a Vietnam vet still angry at the government who betrayed him; undertaker Zeke Haskins, looking out of his office window at his dying small town. The football coach’s wife who fears that her husband will recruit their sons for the sport he loves.

There are ghost stories here, jail visits, love stories and break ups, a Kansas story about Brown Recluse spiders and Black Widows “waiting in outhouses and dreams with that one bite/ to freeze your limbs and jam your lungs . . .”
 
Kansas Poems was chosen as the finalist for the 2020 Birdy Poetry Prize contest. To celebrate, Daldorph and Meadowlark Press will be hosting a free, public virtual book launch via Zoom at 6 p.m. on February 5. The event is particularly meaningful, as it specially recognizes the 100th birthday of Daldorph’s mother, who passed in 2015. Please register for the event at: tinyurl.com/kspoemsregistration.
 
Daldorph will do a second, shorter reading of Kansas Poems with the winner of the 2020 Birdy Poetry Prize, JC Mehta, on March 13, along with the winner and finalist of last year’s contest, Carol Kapaun Ratchenski (A Certain Kind of Forgiveness) and Ruth Maus (Valentine).
 
Kansas Poems is available for order at: meadowlark-books.square.site/ and wherever you buy books.

Press Release
Virtual Launch Scheduled for Wichita Author’s Debut Book of Poetry
Emporia, KS - Setting the Waves on Fire, by Arlice W. Davenport, is the newest book of poetry released by Meadowlark Press. The book retails for $15 and is now available to order. The launch event will take place via Zoom on October 14 at 7:00pm. Attendees are invited to sign up at www.meadowlark-books.com.


Of Davenport’s poetry collection, Roy Beckemeyer, Kansas Authors Club multi-year Poet of the Year, writes, “This is poetry of intellectual breadth built on a foundation of honest emotional depth. I encourage you to take up this book and read, to follow Davenport’s best advice: “Your heart is bruised, bleeding / drops of unrequited love. / The viscera of your body / tighten like a noose. You could slide // your head into it, if you choose, / . . . Love flees / like a deer bounding in a forest. / You are too broken to give chase . . . /. . . Let poems be your new heart. // It will not bleed.”

Davenport, a lifelong Wichitan, is the retired Travel editor and Books Page editor for The Wichita Eagle. 
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​Setting the Waves on Fire (ISBN 978-1734247770) is available to order from the Meadowlark Books web-store at www.meadowlark-books.com, and for order through all online and traditional book outlets. 
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