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 Our contest for young writers, grades 3-12, includes categories in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and—new in 2025—visual art. There are no fees for youth entries. The awards ceremony for young writers will take place this year at the Kansas Book Festival in Topeka on September 20, 2025.
Kansas Authors Club Announces Annual Writing Contests Opening April 1 through June 15
All residents of the state of Kansas are invited to enter the annual literary contests of the Kansas Authors Club. Entries in 18 categories of prose and poetry are accepted April 1 to June 15 with cash prizes presented at the Kansas Authors Club Writing Retreat on October 5, 2025. Winners who cannot attend the awards ceremony will receive awards by mail after the event. All residents of the state of Kansas are welcome to enter, and those who are members get discounted entry fees. Members of the club may reside anywhere in Kansas and beyond. The contest for young writers, grades 3-12, includes categories in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and—new in 2025—visual art. There are no fees for youth entries. The awards ceremony for young writers will take place this year at the Kansas Book Festival in Topeka on September 20, 2025. “More Than a Manuscript: Words Take Root” is the fall event theme for 2025. In prose, theme entries can be fiction or nonfiction, with a limit of 1,500 words, any genre. In poetry, the theme entries can be of any poetic form. Full guidelines and all category descriptions for adult and youth contests can be found at www.kansasauthorsclub.org (menu – Writing Contests – All Ages). As well as short form writing contests, the Club hosts seven categories for books published by its members, including awards for fiction / nonfiction / poetry, books on Kansas history, books for children, and a book design award. The chapbook contest, for books of poetry 49 pages or less, is open to any resident of the state of Kansas, regardless of membership. Anyone with an interest in writing is invited to become a member of Kansas Authors Club. Organizations such as libraries and businesses that have services for authors may also be interested membership and monthly programs, which are available via Zoom with accessible recordings for those who are not available to attend during the live program. Learn more at www.kansasauthorsclub.org.  Writing from the Center The official literary magazine of Kansas Authors Club Prose - Poetry - Visual Art Free for members and students (Kansas secondary & post secondary) Open for Submissions: March 1 - April 30, 2025
2025 Theme: Balance  From Member Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg:
Do you write book reviews for publications, blogs, podcasts, or other sources? Or do you host writers with new books on blogs or podcasts? I have a hard-won new book coming out July 17 from Mammoth Publications – The Magic Eye: A Story of Saving a Life and a Place in the Age of Anxiety – and I would love to connect with you about the possibilities (I can also send you a PDF of the book and its cover pronto). Here’s a little about the book: Harriet Lerner calls The Magic Eye "....a luminous, poetic meditation on survival, community, and resilience. With tenderness and humor, her memoir speaks to the fierce beauty of holding on to life, to land, and to hope when the odds seem insurmountable. A deeply human story, this book is a testament to courage and the power of place that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.” The Magic Eye encompasses a mythic, quirky, and timely journey with a cast of unforgettable friends that make surviving the odds—both the danger of invasive cancer in a body and invasive development vying for tallgrass prairie—possible. Crossing through the pandemic, this memoir is guided by tenderness, curiosity, and more than a dash of magic as Mirriam-Goldberg writes of giving endangered turtles names such as Gandalf and Harrison Ford, undergoing surgery to insert a radioactive disk in her eye, outsmarting a tornado, and the Rube Goldbeg contraption of the body. The Magic Eye investigates what it means to reinhabit our bodies and ecosystems. You can also see the press release here. Here is a photo of the poem, "Specks of Purpose," by member Duane L Herrmann, as part of the Detroit Lakes Polarity Poetry Walk: 2025. This poem was written during the KAC Annual Convention in 2024 at Rock Springs 4-H Ranch. The poem is about the convention and its attendees. Detroit Lakes, MN was just named by Time Magazine as one of the top 100 places to visit in 2025. Last year the Danish recycling (trash) sculptor, Thomas Dambo, installed five giant trolls, a giant golden rabbit, and three magic mirror portals around the town and in the area. The tallest, Long Lief, towers 36 feet tall. All installations were built from recycled materials. It is his largest project to date. Some of the trolls are inter-mixed with the poetry walk.  You are cordially invited to the Book Launch Party on Wednesday, March 26th at 4:00 p.m., at the Vogel Room (Rm. 223), second floor, Student Union at Washburn University. Remarks by Topeka Mayor Michael Padilla. Books will be available for purchase for $20, tax included. DIRECTIONS: Memorial Union is directly south of White Concert Hall on the Washburn campus. Enter through the door under the archway (under the large tower). There is an elevator right there on your right. Take the elevator to the Upper Level. Go down the long atrium hallway until it dead-ends. The Vogel Room is on your right.  LUNACY AND ACTS OF GOD is a coming of age story set against 1950s real life events in Topeka, Kansas. With plenty of quirky, humorous characters and a compelling murder mystery, the book reflects the impact of family and community on prejudice passed through generations, marginalized peoples, our differences, similarities, and choices.
Available at Amazon, Bookshop.org, and wherever books are sold. What reviewers say about LUNACY AND ACTS OF GOD:
Farieh . . . a brilliant Iranian student begins her sophomore year in college. The academic success so dazzling her first year proves uneven in the second, while violence and betrayal stalk her most intimate relationships. Gifted with enormous personal power, she must summon all of it to make the hard choices facing her, choices familiar to young people everywhere. Salina Public Library is offering several writing workshops in April as part of our Big Read event series. Registration is open to all writers. A Creative Guide to Writing Your Family’s Stories
Tuesday, April 1 | 6:15 p.m. REGISTRATION We all love discovering a fantastic tale of our family’s past — whether it be the distant relative who journeyed on the Mayflower or the grandmother who riveted airplanes at a World War II factory. But how do we share these stories in engaging ways? This workshop provides the tools to enrich genealogical research with story and memory so that readers will feel what it was like to be in that moment. Exercises include developing characters, describing places and events of importance, and finding the heart of a story with the goal of creating an irresistible read. Writing & Sense of Place Saturday, April 5 | 10 a.m.-2 p.m. FACEBOOK POST REGISTRATION (Lunch Provided) Join author, poet, and cowboy Amy M. Hale for a four-hour writing workshop to explore how sense of place informs our identity and voice when we come to the page. Participants can write for their own personal interest and are also welcome to use the workshop to begin a piece focused on the Salina Reads theme “Where We Live.” (Some pieces may be selected for reading at the Salina Reads Finale on April 26.) Writers’ Coaching Sessions Sunday, April 6 | Noon-4 p.m. FACEBOOK POST REGISTRATION INFO Amy Hale will meet with individual writers to review their pieces and provide feedback. Sessions will be approximately 20-30 minutes each and require pre-registration. Preference will be given to attendees of the April 5 workshop Writing & Sense of Place. REGISTRATION REQUIRED Please contact Stefanie at [email protected] or 785-833-9213 to register. The following question came up during our 2nd Tuesday Social. It is an important distinction and we wanted to clarify for new members.
Q: I was waiting to submit my published book to the contest on April 1, and now I see that the "preferred deadline" for submission was March 1. Am I too late to enter? A: Good question! This is an important change to the 2025 contest guidelines. First, members need to be aware that there are two sets of contests that Kansas Authors Club sponsors annually. The first is our Book Awards. We have eight awards for PUBLISHED books. In 2025, eligible books were published between June 1, 2023 and December 31, 2024. We are honoring the June 15 deadline, but as we are introducing the announcement of finalists for this contest, we would prefer to receive your entries ASAP. Click here for Book Awards guidelines. Read the whole thing before entering! ONLY Kansas Authors Club members are eligible for the Book Awards contests. It is OKAY to join today and submit your book for the competition. The second set of contests are our Annual Literary Contests with categories for youth and adult writers. These contests are open to all Kansas Authors Club members (regardless of where you live) and to ANY Kansas resident. If you live in the state of Kansas, you do not need to be a member, but adults will have to pay a little more to enter the contest. There is no charge for youth to enter the contests. Eligible entries for this contest are short, never-before-published pieces of prose and poetry (there are several categories, review the guidelines for specifics). Submissions for the Literary Contest are always open from April 1 to June 15. Start on this page and take the time to read the guidelines before you submit. Check out the video at the bottom of the page that walks you through the submission process.  The March program of the Kansas Authors Club will take place on the 5th Saturday of the month, March 29, rather than our usual 3rd Saturday. Finding the Heart of Your Story: Writing Stronger Stories and Making Smarter Revisions Presented by Lori Martin This program on the craft of writing is a good fit for a diverse group of writers and offers valuable insight into the craft of storytelling. Lori Martin is an Associate Professor of English at Pittsburg State University, where she teaches creative writing courses. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including The Cincinnati Review, The MacGuffin, The Maine Review, Midwest Quarterly, Prick of the Spindle, Room Magazine, Tampa Review, and others. Martin's writing has been recognized with awards from The Cincinnati Review and Kansas Voices. A graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop, she was named a Truman Capote Fellow and received the Clark Fischer Ansley Award for Excellence in Fiction. In addition to her teaching and writing, Martin serves as the poetry editor for The Midwest Quarterly and editor in chief of River Styx magazine. Current members receive an link to the monthly program on Zoom via the monthly e-newsletter. The link is also available using the button below which takes you to our members-only pages. Sign-on is required.
 Dear Festival Friend, We are inviting you to a special Sneak-Peek event on Thursday, April 10. If you join us, you will enjoy live jazz, drinks, and hors d'oeuvres, and you'll get to hear from acclaimed Kansas City author Candice Millard, whose rousing history books have climbed into the NYTimes Bestseller list repeatedly. You will also get to hear from five authors slated to speak at the 2025 Festival (September 20), who will share tantalizing snippets from their writing. Festival authors will be conversation partners, and you can bid on rare books, such as a signed copy of Robert Frost's poetry. A set of signed books by Candice will be raffled too, and books will be available for purchase from Kansas presses. Please help us grow our Friends of the Festival by joining us from 7-8:30 pm on April 10 at the Parish Hall of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in Topeka (701 SW 8th Ave.). Individual tickets cost $35, or you can donate further by bringing a table of friends (i.e., six guests joined by a Sneak-Peek author for $500). Click here to buy tickets, and we hope to see you for an evening of entertainment and meaningful, book-loving conversation. Thanks on behalf of the Board of the Kansas Book Festival, Tim Bascom (Executive Director) and Kathleen O’Leary Morgan (Chair of the Board) Save the Date:
Saturday, September 20, 2025 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Washburn University Library Saturday, March 15, 2025 1:30 p.m. *note that our regularly scheduled Saturday program has been moved to Saturday, March 29, so that members may attend Ronda's Celebration of Life in person or via the streamed event.   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.
 A Novel by Susan Kander and Warren Ashworth Paperback: 204 pages Publisher: Blue Cedar Press, Wichita (2021) This novel challenges any reader who picks it up, and I invite you to do so. Using an unlikely narrative device, authors Warren Ashworth and Susan Kander tell the century-long story of a house through a dialog between the house itself and a portrait hanging on the wall in the dining room. It took me a couple of chapters (they’re short) to get comfortable with this storytelling ploy, but once I was, I raced through the novel. The house, called Ambleside, actually exists in Newton, Kansas. The portrait subject, Mrs. S. Peale, is fictitious, though the artist who painted her was not. Through a healthy dose of willing suspension of disbelief, we listen to a conversation begun between the house and the woman in the portrait. The house can see the world outside (through its windows) but has only limited awareness of its insides. Mrs. Peale, mistakenly called Mrs. Speale by the generations of family who live there, can only see what is before her, which is almost exclusively the dining room. Yet all of the 20th Century (and parts of the centuries before and after) pass through the house as world events affect the residents and visitors, and the world arrives in many ways in tiny Newton, which grows as well during the novel. At the beginning of their dialog, Ambleside is almost childlike and asks Mrs. Peale to explain what is happening in the small part of the world outside it can see and about the people who live within it. Mrs. Peale is a bit of a scold, but she brings her understanding of the conversations she overhears and what she had experienced of the world before her death to answer Ambleside’s questions. (Just go with it.) In a way, it is very much a conversation for our age of instantaneous communication with people we will never meet. Yet as the novel progresses, both characters show growth. Both change through their interactions and in their understanding. They are true, round characters in a story. Like many long friendships, there comes a parting. But there is a happy gift for the reader in the last two pages. Paul Lamb lives and writes in Overland Park, Kansas. As a member of the Kansas Authors Club, he gotten to me many interesting and talented people. His novels, One-Match Fire and Parent Imperfect, are available at Blue Cedar Press. 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.
 Debra A. Cole is a playwright from Lawrence, Kansas. Her plays have been seen by audiences around the world. Debra was a selected playwright for the William Inge Theatre Festival - New Play Lab 2023 and 2025. Debra’s 20-play collection titled "The Wrinkle Ranch and Other Short Plays About Growing Old" is available through Next Stage Press, as well as additional plays with Drama Notebook, Off The Walls Plays, and Heuer Publishing. Debra is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, a member of Honor Roll!, an advocacy group of women+ playwrights over 40, and 2023-24 and 2024-25 Kansas City Public Theatre's Playwright’s Roundtable cohort.
Visit her at https://debraacolescripts.com |
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