2023 Programs

 3rd Saturdays of each month
Program Start Time: 1:30pm, expected to take approximately one hour per program (30- to 40-minute presentations followed by 15-20 minutes Q&A and announcements.

  • Districts and city groups/small writing groups are invited to incorporate these programs into their meetings as they see fit. For groups meeting on the 3rd Saturday of the month, the programs can be viewed live via Zoom as they are taking place. Program recordings will be available to district and group leaders for a period of one month for meetings held at other times.

  • All members will receive the link for zoom attendance to make watching from home a possibility. Attendance in person is recommended and encouraged, whenever possible!

  • Most meetings will be hosted by a KAC district on location and available to the rest of the state by tuning in on Zoom. Where applicable, we will list the location of the presenter so that members who would like to attend the presentation in person will be able to do so.
If you would like to attend our presentations with writing friends,
consider coming in person to one of the following locations.
Contact District Leaders for more details. 
June 17, 2023, 1:30 pm
Presenter: Denise Low
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Embellishing Prose and Poetry with Memoir
Presentation location pending.

The presentation will be broadcast via Zoom.
Louise Gluck wrote: “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.” We will learn ways to transform memory into memoir using focus, invention, and deeper explorations. In the workshop, plan to write, edit, share, and discuss (or not—auditors are welcome). Bring a short poem or prose paragraph about any subject for experimentation.
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Denise Low, the 2nd Kansas Poet Laureate, is a founding member of Indigenous Nations Poets. Her memoir Turtle’s Beating Heart: A Lenape Family Story of Survival will be released in a new edition, 2023, and her Jigsaw Puzzling: Essays (Meadowlark, 2022) is part Covid memoir and part lyrical essays—with some poems braided in. She has awards from the Kansas Center for the Book (4), Red Mountain Press, National Endowment for the Humanities, and others. Low teaches for Baker University and now resides in Sonoma County, California. 
July 15, 2023, 1:30 pm
Presenter: Amy Sage Webb-Baza

The Power and Surprise of Flash Fiction
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This presentation will take place in Emporia at Emporia State University, Plumb Hall, Room 406. All members are welcome to attend this presentation in person.

The presentation will also be broadcast via Zoom.
How does a writer achieve impact and surprise in as few as 500 words?

Amy Sage Webb-Baza will introduce you to some of the ways flash fiction works, as well as resources for reading and writing in the form.

​The presentation will also share some growth of the form in nonfiction, or flash-CNF.
Attendees can participate in a short, guided, flash-fiction writing prompt.
Amy Sage Webb-Baza is Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emporia State University, where she was named Roe R. Cross Distinguished Professor and directs the Donald Reichardt Center for Publishing and Literary Arts. She is managing editor for Bluestem Press and Flint Hills Review. She publishes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and is author of Your Own Life: Kansas Stories (Woodley Press, 2012).
August 19, 2023
Presenters: Catherine Hedge and Nancy Julien Kopp

Memoir --The Long and Short of It
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Since the beginning of time, humans have told stories. Whether painted on cave walls, etched on soft clay, or tapped on a cell phone, we try to share our unique lives. For a lasting transcription, it is valuable to go beyond the diary or journal. Crafting our stories by using strategies of good writing and rewriting opens our memoirs and life stories to be accessible for all. Not just for those who love us. A good story told well is a gift to humanity.  It’s time to get started. ​
Join Nancy Kopp, writer and blogger, and Cathy Hedge, writer and editor, to explore the scope of memoir writing. We will share techniques to bring your stories to life and publication strategies. Cathy and Nancy are co-leaders for the Prairie Star Writing Group at Meadowlark Hills in Manhattan. This group was begun by the late Charley Kempthorne, founder of the LifeStory Institute. ​
Born near the redwoods in Arcata, California, Catherine Hedge is a settled Kansan. A retired educator, she has presented workshops at the local, state, and national levels. She is a writer, poet, lyricist, writing mentor, and editor. A B.M.I. member, Catherine is a co-author of the Parent’s Choice award-winning CD, The Toy Box. She wrote as a travel writer and food editor for Epicurean Traveler. She has edited 15 books, including Freedom, Love, Gold; A Carpathian Folk Song and the Hungarian Version in 2016. She is currently marketing two novel manuscripts. Learn more at https://catherinehedge.com/
Nancy Julien Kopp is originally from Chicago, but she has lived in the Flint Hills of Kansas for many years. She writes fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, inspirational, award winning children’s fiction, poetry and articles on the writing craft. She’s published in twenty-four Chicken Soup for the Soul books, other anthologies, newspapers, magazines, ezines and internet radio. Her blog about her writing world with tips and encouragement for writers is at www.writergrannysworld.blogspot.com Nancy lives with her retired husband in Manhattan, KS. They enjoy traveling and watching Kansas State football and basketball.
September 16, 2023 - No Kansas Authors Club Program
Invitation to attend the Kansas Book Festival in Topeka.
October 6-8 - Kansas Authors Club Writing Retreat
October 21, 2023, 1:30 pm
Presenter: Craig Lancaster

​Publishing Pathways
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The presentation will be broadcast via Zoom.
Craig Lancaster, the author of 10 novels and a two-time High Plains Book Award winner, began his career with self-publishing, transitioned to a regional small press, attracted a top New York agent and got picked up by Amazon imprints while the online giant was building its publishing empire, moved back to self-publishing, and now has returned to a small but rising publisher. He reflects on the twists and turns involved in pushing 10 novels out there, competing with bigger house books for prizes, and why he's come to view his current path as the one best-suited to his temperament and his values.
November 18, 2023
Presentation: Scam or Opportunity?

This program will address the variety of services being marketed to authors and help writers make informed decisions when seeking help to publish, promote, and otherwise market books.
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December 16, 2023
Celebration of Kansas Authors

This month we will gather and celebrate some of the special achievements of our members in 2023. We will invite selected award-winners to share readings, reflect on our year as an organization, and utilize breakout rooms for some writing games and challenges. ​
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PAST PRESENTATIONS

January 21, 2023, 1:30 pm
Presenter: Paul Epp
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Marketing for Authors
​This workshop will break down the sometimes-daunting task of marketing into a series of focused steps that will enable an author to create and execute a marketing plan that is tailored to the author’s needs and abilities. Core pieces of the presentation include finding an audience, creating content about your content, and setting up your process. The presentation will include tips and tricks for marketing, including information about digital and social media marketing.
February 18, 2023, 1:30 pm
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Presenter: Cheryl Unruh
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MEMOIR WRITING

Cheryl Unruh grew up in the tiny town of Pawnee Rock in central Kansas. There, she developed a fierce love of the open land and the Kansas sky. Much of her writing is about Kansas, about a sense of place. 

For 11 years, Cheryl wrote a weekly column called Flyover People for The Emporia Gazette. She has twice received the Kansas Notable Book Award for her collections of Kansas essays, Flyover People: Life on the Ground in a Rectangular State (2010), and Waiting on the Sky: More Flyover People Essays (2014), both published by Quincy Press. Meadowlark Press published her collection of poetry, Walking on Water (2017), as well as her latest book, Gravedigger’s Daughter: Vignettes from a Small Kansas Town (2021), a memoir, which won the 2022 Nelson Poetry Book Award and the 2022 Martin Kansas History Book Award from the Kansas Authors Club.

Cheryl is the editor of 105 Meadowlark Reader, a Kansas journal of creative nonfiction. She lives in Emporia, Kansas, with her husband and three cats.  
March 18, 2023, 1:30 pm
Presenter: Traci Brimhall, Kansas Poet Laureate
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Why Can't the Heart Stop Asking?
​Poetry is an art of attention, but sometimes the more attention we pay to the world, the more astonishing and confusing it can be. The medical researcher Jonas Salk said "what people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question," which I believe also holds true for poetry. What images do we see each day that excites our minds? What sounds do we hear that awaken our hearts? What poems ask for our attention and reward us with discovery? This presentation will use poetry to create surprises, explore our curiosities, and find new questions. 
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Traci Brimhall is the author of four poetry collections: Come the Slumberless from the Land of Nod (Copper Canyon); Saudade (Copper Canyon); Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Believer, The New Republic, Orion, New York Times Magazine, and Best American Poetry.  She’s received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Brimhall lives in Manhattan, KS and serves as the Poet Laureate of Kansas.
April 15, 2023, 1:30pm
Presenters: Julie A. Sellers and Duane Johnson

In Conversation with the KAC 2022 Poet and Prose Writers of the Year

Join the Kansas Authors Club's 2022 Poet of the Year, Duane Johnson, and Prose Writer of the Year, Julie A. Sellers, as they converse and share their thoughts about their creative approaches with examples from their own writing.
Julie A. Sellers was raised in the Flint Hills near the small town of Florence, Kansas. Those great expanses of tallgrass prairie and reading fueled her imagination, and Julie began writing at an early age. After living in several states and countries, Julie resides in Atchison, Kansas. Julie has published three academic books and a variety of articles. Her creative prose and poetry have appeared in publications such as Cagibi, Wanderlust, Unlost, The Write Launch, 105 Meadowlark Reader, and Kansas Time + Place. Julie was the 2020  and 2022 Kansas Authors Club Prose Writer of the Year. In the Kansas Voices Contest (Winfield), she was the Overall Poetry Winner (2022) and Overall Prose Winner (2017, 2019). Julie’s first book of poetry, Kindred Verse: Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables, was published by Blue Cedar Press in 2021. Her first novel, Ann of Sunflower Lane, was published by Meadowlark Press in 2022.
Duane Johnson is a retired journalist, who now primarily writes poetry. He has published one volume of poetry, Evolution's Promise. With the artist Lila Bartel, he has published a collection of poetry and watercolors entitled Living Expressions: As the Spirit Moves. He also has published a novel, Herald of the Resurrection. Johnson lives in Topeka and is married to a retired social worker. They have two grown children. He lives in a modest house with gray siding on a dead-end street with a chain saw, fishing gear and kayak in the garage. The near-by four hundred-acre lake is his laboratory.

Duane served as the president of District 1 in 2017-2018, state Vice President and book awards chair in 2019, and he took the helm as state President 2020-21. 
May 20, 2023, 1:30 pm
Presenter: Leonard Krishtalka
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Novel Writing: Excavating Layers of the Human Condition
Novels, no matter the genre, should tell a story that excavates the layers of the human condition. Many of those layers are conflicting and controversial. Many might prefer them to remain hidden. I write murder mysteries to excavate those layers. Three of my novels, in the Harry Przewalski series, feature a private detective who unearths the dirty underbelly of people’s lives, revealing love, loss, betrayal, treachery, fraud and murder buried beneath the art and science of petrified shards, skin and bones. My most recent novel, The Body on the Bed, is a historical fiction about a diabolical murder and sensational trial in 1871 that occurred amid the social upheaval of post-Civil War Lawrence, Kansas and the struggle for women’s independence and rights.
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Leonard Krishtalka is the author of award-winning essays, the acclaimed book, Dinosaur Plots, and The Harry Przewalski Series. As a paleontologist, he has worked throughout the fossil-rich badlands of the American west, Canada, Patagonia, China, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Coming soon: “The Body on the Bed,” an historical murder mystery.