Current News from the Kansas Authors Club

Congratulations to the Kansas Authors Club Members Published in 105 Meadowlark Reader, the Animal Issue

5/29/2023

The spring 2023 issue of 105 Meadowlark Reader features the following essays by Kansas Authors Club members:

A Cryptid Sighting in Kansas
by Denise Low (D2)

Love Bears All Things
by Amy D. Kliewer (D5)

Nocturnal Nuisance
by Elizabeth R. Schmidt (D5)

The Right Man for the Job
by Brenda L. White (D2)

Little Owl
by Lindsey Bartlett (D2)

My Heron
by Michael D. Graves (D2)

You Dirty Bird
by Jerilynn Jones Henrikson (D2)

Blessed is the Peacemaker
by Cheryl Suzanne Heide (D2)

Introducing the Black Tornado
by Cynthia Schaker (D5)

Buddy the Bookstore Beagle
by Linda Crowder (D6)

Princess With an Attitude
by Thomas N. Holmquist (D4)

Skiing in Kansas
by Boyd Bauman (D2)

Not a Playmate
by Carolyn Hall (D2)

Broken Heart
by Ann Vigola Anderson (D2)

I Did. I Saw a Camel!
by Marilyn Hope Lake (D2)

Invaders Via My Pre-vet Roommate
by Annabelle Corrick (D2)

Somewhere Over the Rainbow
by Pamela Yenser (D7)

This Is Not About Dogs
by Julie Ann Baker Brin (D5)

Congratulations to our members! 105 Meadowlark Reader is currently (through June 30, 2023) taking submissions on the theme of Landmarks.

Submission Guidelines

Subscribe to 105 Meadowlark Reader

June 3 Reading at Round Table Books in Topeka

5/28/2023

Reading Outside the Cultural Box
Award-winning authors K.L. Barron and Tim Bascom
Roundtable Books
Saturday June 3rd, 1:30-2:30pm

Please join us for a reading featuring landscapes and cultures of East and West Africa: the rugged mountains and plateaus of Ethiopia and the edge of the Sahara in Niger. Tim Bascom spent half his childhood in Ethiopia and will share both memoir and fiction detailing Ethiopian culture. K.L. Barron lived among the nomads of Niger for a time and will read from her novel Thirst, which captures the dominating desert landscape and some of the nomads’ endangered traditional culture including the Wodaabé men’s beauty contest where they wear elaborate makeup, shiny objects, feathers, and other adornments showing their charisma, dance moves, and charm.

Tim Bascom is a District 1 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.

How to Enter Kansas Authors Club Contests

5/27/2023

District 5 President, Sandee Taylor, has prepared a recording on how to submit books and writings to our contests, starting with where to find our guidelines and how to submit via submittable. This 26 minute video is very informative. Watch and enter! The deadline for entering our contests is June 15, 2023.

Thank you, Sandee!

May Program Recording Now Available

5/24/2023

Thank you to member Leonard Krishtalka for talking to us about the human condition in novel writing. This program is now available for members to watch via our Member Pages (log-in required).

2023 PROGRAMS take place on 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.

Anyone interested in writing may become a member of Kansas Authors Club. Come write with us today!

Join Kansas Authors Club

You are invited to attend a special book signing celebration for Bill Sampson’s new novel, WHEAT FIELDS:

5/24/2023

Bill Sampson's debut novel...
an alluring story of unexpected love and clashing cultures set in Lawrence, Kansas, home of Kansas University & the championship Jayhawk basketball team.

Visit Bill Sampson's Website

Welcome New Member Robert Cory

5/18/2023

Today, we welcome Robert Cory of Wichita to District 5 and to the Kansas Authors Club.

Robert Cory is a poet, playwright, and novelist who lives in Kansas. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Kansas State University. German language studies at the Benedict Institüt in Düsseldorf, Germany, and study/travel in Germany and Austria through the auspices of the Kansas University Summer Language Institute. Post-graduate work (playwriting) at Wichita State University. He wrote a full-length screenplay, A Hole in the Ocean, for DK Productions in Kansas City, Missouri, and was a contract beta reader of unsolicited manuscripts for Sheed & Ward in KC, MO. His work has appeared in the I-70 Review, Kansas Poems & Poets, Kansas Time + Place, An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Little Balkans Press 2017), The Eunoia Review, vox poetica, Poets Against War, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and The Catalonian Review. In 2013, his poem Exodus: revisited was awarded first place in the Kansas Writers Association free verse competition. His play ‘The Truth About Chance’ was performed at The Purple Masque Theatre at Kansas State University and Marymount College in Salina. He’s authored two full-length plays, Char in a Barrel and Confessions of a Las Vegas Cocktail Waitress, that are available at Stageplays.com, and three one-acts. Most recently, he has published three works: Small Worlds - a chapbook of poems, prose, and creative non-fiction / From the Land of Too Little or Too Much - a novel / and They Say the Storm Will Pass - selected Kansas prose, poetry, creative non-fiction, and memoirs. He retired from a 39-year commercial real estate career in 2012.

SMALL WORLDS - a chapbook of poetry, prose, and creative non-fiction. Eclectic free verse.

FROM THE LAND OF TOO LITTLE OR TOO MUCH - This debut novel is an engaging, uplifting meld of three genres. Coming-of-age: literally, a novel of education and formation. Historical: set in the past, it combines a blend of research and creativity. Literary: character-driven with social commentary and reflections on humanity.From the Land is about small-town America. Except for wind turbine farms and cell towers, rural Kansas is much the same today as it was in 1970, the year protagonist Jacob (Jake) Book comes of age. His hometown, the fictitious Waltsburg, Kansas, Ormestrong County, lies nestled in the Flint Hills surrounded by a boundless prairie landscape. Shy, naïve, twenty-three-year-old Jake is a jack-of-all-trades, hardworking but without apparent direction or ambition until he encounters a young woman in a peach orchard in Nowata County, Oklahoma. A Korean War orphan adopted and raised by a well-to-do family; Kim becomes the catalyst for Jake’s maturation. The novel chronicles a period in the life of a young man as he transitions from post-adolescent plodding through life to young adult with a sense of direction and purpose.

I took eight years off from retirement to write this novel. I am a grinder. I write like I eat, in my own good time. My wife would tell you that had I been invited to The Last Supper; I would just now be spooning my first bites of dessert. (Good luck trying to find Waltsburg and Ormestrong County on a Kansas road map.)

THEY SAY THE STORM WILL PASS - selected prose, poems, creative non-fiction, and memoirs that are all Kansas related.

Kansas Authors Club Awards of Merit Nominations are due July 1.

5/15/2023

Awards for achievement in writing, service to Kansas Authors Club, or a special accomplishment are presented to deserving Kansas Authors Club members at the Annual Conference. Nominations should be sent no later than July 1st of the year to be considered. Forms may be sent either by e-mail or by regular postal mail. Award winners will be selected by ballot by a committee of Kansas Authors Club members chosen by the Awards Chair. The Awards Chair will present the names of those members nominated to a selection committee before reporting final results to the KAC board as soon as possible after the deadline for nomination.

Please give careful consideration to your reasons why the nominee is worthy of an award. If this person is to be considered for the achievement in writing award, then please list publications of the person’s writing, either published and/or self-published. For the service award, list what services were done both on the district and state level, how long the person held an office, etc. For the special accomplishment award, list when, where, and what this was, and describe the accomplishment. Contact the Awards Chair, Anne Shiever, if you have questions. Nominations may be made by any individual member of the Kansas Authors Club, by a group or a district.

May 20 State Program: Leonard Krishtalka

5/14/2023

May 20, 2023, 1:30 pm
Presenter: Leonard Krishtalka

Novel Writing: Excavating Layers of the Human Condition

This presentation will take place at the
Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vermont, lower level.

All members are welcome to attend this presentation in person.

The presentation will also be broadcast via Zoom.

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.

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.

Visit Leonard's Website

Member News: Marie Asner

5/9/2023

Marie Asner. District 2 KAC Member, opened the April 2023 Recital of the Kansas City Musical Club, with a poetry reading to celebrate April Poetry Month. This is the third year of this April recital as a fund raiser for music scholarships. Participating in previous years has been The Landlocked Opera Company (Kansas), and members The University of Missouri-Kansas City Music Conservatory and Park International School of Music. The Recitals are held at Asbury Church, Prairie Village, Kansas.

Mark G. Wentling Published

5/5/2023

Mark G. Wentling’s article “Coming to Grips with Poverty in Africa” has just been published in American Diplomacy. Topics covered in this article include African poverty as a relative concept, types of poverty, wealth distribution and values, and his suggestion on what must be done to reduce African poverty.

Mark G. Wentling worked in the Senior Foreign Service and was USAID’s principle officer in six African countries. During his time in Africa, he worked in the Peace Corps and in nongovernmental organizations. He has nine published books. His latest, Kansas Kaleidoscope, was published in 2022. He plans to publish Jackleg Boys this year. Mark is a member of D5 and is currently living in Lubbock, Texas. Mark states he was born and raised in Kansas, but made in Africa.

Coming to Grips with Poverty in Africa

Zoom Open Mic: Featured Reader Timothy Keane

5/5/2023

Districts 3 & 4 welcome you--all KAC members (and guests)--to a 7:00 p.m. Zoom on Tuesday, May 9th—an Open Mic Read-Around which will feature Dr. Timothy Keane, a three-time champion in the Kansas Cowboy Poetry Contest. Dr. Keane has won multiple events at the National Cowboy Poetry Rodeo, where he was overall reserve champion in 2016 and 2018. He describes himself as a green broke cowboy poet, although he has “slipped past various judges a few times.” (Green broke: has had a saddle on, been ridden a few times, has lots of vices, needs tons of work; is liable to spook, bolt, kick, rear, crow-hop, and refuse simple situations; basically unpredictable.)

Dr. Keane is Professor Emeritus (a term possibly comparable green broke) of Landscape Architecture and Distinguished Graduate Faculty, in the College of Architecture, Planning, and Design at Kansas State University, where he served starting in 1984. He lives with his wife, Sharon, and a couple of bird dogs in northwest Wabaunsee County.

He will read poems that show a side of him both in tune with and distinct from the persona of a cowboy poet—poems that show a deep appreciation of the Flint Hills; poems that have the power to entrance with gentle rhythms and subtle rhymes; poems that will touch your heart.

How does Open Mic work?
7:00-7:10pm – we check in, sign up to read, greet each other and celebrate victories.
7:10-7:30pm – our Featured Reader presents.
7:30-7:55 – Readers share in order of sign-up. Plan on 3 minutes. If there is plenty of time, attendees will get a 2nd opportunity to read.
Time: Tuesday, May 9, 2023, 07:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Fellowship Opportunities for Nonfiction Writers

5/5/2023

The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow is a non-profit organization in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, that offers writing residencies and hosts literary workshops, retreats, and events. We currently have a fellowship opportunity specifically for writers whose work engages with living with a mental illness.

The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow is offering a fellowship to a writer working on a short or long work of non-fiction focusing on how they (the writer or another) have managed, and continue to manage, their mental illness. This personal story should offer not just insight and awareness, but most importantly, hope. The writer should share their dreams, and how they adjust and fine-tune them. Stories focused on relationships, family life, travel, employment, civic contributions, passions, along with the barriers, fears, and stigmas faced, are encouraged. For the purposes of this fellowship, the writing should be non-fiction, and can take the form of memoir, essay, profile, or biography. The successful application will demonstrate insight, honesty, literary merit, and the likelihood of publication.

The fellowship winner will receive a two-week residency to allow the recipient to focus completely on their work. Each writer’s suite has a bedroom, private bathroom, separate writing space, and wireless internet. We provide uninterrupted writing time, a European-style gourmet dinner prepared five nights a week and served in our community dining room, the camaraderie of other professional writers when you want it, and a community kitchen stocked with the basics for other meals. We work with fellows on their community outreach project to make sure it matches their unique strengths and skillsets.
Fellowship applications must be accompanied by a writing sample and a non-refundable $35 application fee. Writers proposing more than one project must submit a separate application and fee for each one. The submission period opens on Monday, April 17, 2023. Deadline is midnight CST on Monday, July 17, 2023. The winner will be announced no later than August 21, 2023. Residency must be completed by December 31, 2024.

Writing News From Member Duane L. Herrmann

5/4/2023

a note from Duane L. Herrmann

Adirondack Center for Writing and Carrot Ranch both posted three of my responses to their weekly prompts, with ACW also including one of my poems in their Poem Village: 2023. Poetry Super Highway included a poem in their Holocaust rememberance collection for this year. Literary Yard posted five poems and Five Flease posted two. Tiny Seed Literary Journal released their anthology: Plant Your Words with one of my poems in it.

Writers in Community: Gretchen Eick

5/4/2023

a note from D5 member, Gretchen Eick:

In March I worked with ArtsPartners Wichita to help five authors develop books for 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders that would help reluctant readers enter the story and keep reading. Each book was related to one or more of the indicators of a healthy community. The authors were exceptional and the process quite a delight. Now their books are being worked on by local artists who are doing the illustrations in collaboration with the authors. What a delight it was to do this work of writing in the community!

District 7 Invites Adult and Youth Writers to enter District Writing Contest

5/1/2023

Note: This is a district-sponsored contest, not to be confused with the state contest. Entering one contest does not preclude a member from entering the other.

ADULT CONTEST

District 7 of the Kansas Authors Club is sponsoring a writing contest for all writers, 18 and older, living in Kansas or members of KAC living in another state. The contest runs from May 1 to August 15, 2023. You do not need to be a member of District 7 to enter the contest.

Writers should follow the Literary Contest rules on the website www.kansasauthorsclub.org and click on contests. The theme of the contest is “A Moment to Write.” Writers of prose or poetry are encouraged to follow the theme but do not have to adhere to it. There are only 4 categories for this contest: Prose Theme and Non-Theme, Poetry Story-form and Non-Story-form. Writers may not enter more than two entries in any one category.

The fee for each entry is $5.00 and only typed copies will be accepted; do not send e-mail. Prizes in the amount of $25, $15 and $10 will be awarded to first, second, and third place winners in each of the 4 categories. Honorable Mention in each category will receive certificates.

Mail entries to:
Sheryl Brenn, 892 Country Road O, Levant, KS 67743.

YOUTH CONTEST

District 7 of the Kansas Authors Club is sponsoring a writing contest for all children from Grades 5 through high school. The age categories are grades 5-6, 7-8, 9-12. The contest runs from May 1st through August 15th. Writers should follow the requirements for the Youth Literary Contest on the website www.kansasauthorsclub.org and click on contests.

The theme of the contest is “A Moment to Write.” Entries should be separated into these categories in each age group: Poetry, Fiction and Non-Fiction. Any youth should have no more than 3 entries.

There is no charge for entering but prizes in these amounts will be awarded $25, $15 and $10 will be awarded to the first, second and third place and Honorable Mention winners in each category. Only typed copies will be accepted. Do not send entries by e-mail.

Mail entries to:
Sheryl Brenn, 892 Country Road O, Levant, KS 67743.

Congratulations to the Kansas Authors Club Members Published in 105 Meadowlark Reader, the Animal Issue

June 3 Reading at Round Table Books in Topeka

How to Enter Kansas Authors Club Contests

May Program Recording Now Available

You are invited to attend a special book signing celebration for Bill Sampson’s new novel, WHEAT FIELDS:

Welcome New Member Robert Cory

Kansas Authors Club Awards of Merit Nominations are due July 1.

Submit a Nomination

May 20 State Program: Leonard Krishtalka

all members who have opted to receive "Monthly news" should receive a link to attend this program. If you did not receive a link, please fill out the form below

Member News: Marie Asner

Mark G. Wentling Published

Zoom Open Mic: Featured Reader Timothy Keane

request zoom link

Fellowship Opportunities for Nonfiction Writers

Writing News From Member Duane L. Herrmann

Writers in Community: Gretchen Eick

District 7 Invites Adult and Youth Writers to enter District Writing Contest

ADULT CONTEST

YOUTH CONTEST

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Submit a Nomination

all members who have opted to receive "Monthly news" should receive a link to attend this program. If you did not receive a link, please fill out the form below

request zoom link

ADULT CONTEST

YOUTH CONTEST

Categories

Archives