Current News from the Kansas Authors Club

Retreat Registration News

7/27/2025

This is your reminder to register for the 2025 Writing Retreat! The Leadership Lodge Loft rooms are going quickly, followed by the private rooms at Hansen.

Just picture it -- Friday evening through Sunday noon -- time to take care of your muse! Write. Write. Write. Talk a walk on the beautiful Rock Springs campus. Nap. Write some more. We'll have some rooms full of prompts and inspiration if you need a nudge.

#ReadLocalKS: Kansas Poems, by Brian Daldorph

7/27/2025

Member Janice Northerns shares her reviews on Goodreads and has given us permission to share them here! Thank you, Janice, for making the time to share the books you love.

In KANSAS POEMS, Brian Daldorph evokes the moods, the places, and the seasons of his adopted home state. This strong collection was named a finalist for The Birdy Poetry Prize by Meadowlark Books, and reading it is like taking a guided tour through Kansas, both its present and its past. Daldorph often pinpoints a location with a title, such as “Pulpit Rock,” or “Cooper City,” and then paints a portrait of the place, and sometimes its inhabitants. In “Cooper City” we see one of the many small towns in Kansas that has seen better days: “Main Street’s a few hand-me-down stores.” Daldorph’s deft characterizations in poem after poem are sharp in detail but can also be read as types, such as this one in the last stanza of “Cooper City”:
Zeke Haskins, Undertaker,
with old Zeke in the window wondering
days on end if he or Cooper City
will go first.

The many characters that people his narratives remind me of the wonderful SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY by Edgar Lee Masters. Daldorf is even able to do this by writing about what we don’t know, as in “Kansas City Vietnam War Memorial, April 2000.” Here he asks poignant questions about the dead that help us imagine their lives: “What was Felix Pacheco’s agony, / Jack Renfro’s last word [?]” “What happened to / the five Moores?”

Daldorf also tackles his own life in this collection, writing of both love and loss. In one of my favorite poems in the book, “Drought,” he depicts in beautiful but brief description the beginning of rain on drought-stricken country and then surprises us by turning the poem into a metaphor for loss with the last two lines.

I also love the dark, moody “Around Midnight,” where the “Last man walking/ in the sleeping world” describes his longing:
I want it to be jazz
but it’s cicada.
I want it to be poetry
but there are scant words.
I want it to be love
but know I’ll sleep alone.

I am a fan of poetry that evokes longing and loss and several other excellent pieces in this vein are “Mason City, Kansas,” “Empties,” and the book’s closing poem, “Estate Sale” with its lovely, sad last lines:
Outside her house, by 13th Street,
the leftovers of her life:
brass floor lamp, split cushions,
old books and pictures,
we through from last night’s rain.

But KANSAS POEMS is not filled with doom and gloom. Daldorph writes of happier moments and moods in many of the poems, such as “First Date: Oak Hill Cemetery,” “Laurel Avenue,” and “the miracle.” He also gives us a lively series of historical pieces about the paleontologist Handel T. Martin, ending with another of my favorite poems, “Kansas Rhinoceros,” which is packed with vivid descriptions such as these: “you’d been tucked up since the Miocene” …. “Kansas Rhinoceros, broad as wide, / jaw big as a man’s shoulder.” …. “Wooden-hoop ribs stapled / round your empty hogshead belly.” …. and “I stare at your brick-toothed grin.”

Daldorph’s tour through Kansas via his poetry will delight those who live in Kansas, as well as those who’ve never visited the Sunflower state, but this collection is much more than a regional book. At his best, Daldorph writes about what it means to be human, no matter what state we call home.

Kansas Poems

A local donor has offered the following challenge to Kansas Authors Club members. Every #ReadLocalKS submission to our website from now through December 1 will be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift certificate to Bookshop.org.

#ReadLocalKS: Walking on Water, by Cheryl Unruh

7/27/2025

Member Julie Ann Baker Brin shares her reviews on Goodreads and has given us permission to share them here! Thank you, Julie, for making the time to share the book you love.

I was completely sold from the Table of Contents! And I wasn’t disappointed. But I could have maybe used a warning: for example, if you share the couch with someone while reading this, prepare to disturb them by shaking the furniture while attempting to mute your laughter throughout the entire second section. And then perhaps prepare to explain why your eyes are a bit weepy in the fourth. Ms. Unruh aptly represents many life stages and experiences throughout these hundred pages; even her childhood memories perfectly capture that particular logic, longing, and wisdom. Her imagination spans broad territory: from poodle skirts to Picasso, from Venus to Van Morrison, from coyotes to confessions—though her loyalty is to the Flint Hills. If no part of you knows the prairie, this has the magic to take you there; if any part of you can claim it, this has the magic to assure you that you are finally home. #ReadLocalKS

Walking on Water

Submit Here

New Member Leon Unruh Publishes 2nd Book in Spy Thriller-Set-in-Kansas Series

7/24/2025

Series Title: Dog of the Afterworld
Book 1 – Dog of the Afterworld (Birchbark Press, 2017)
Book 2 – Saltwood (Meadowlark, 2025)

A former Russian assassin using the alias Nick Deveraux has become a mysterious American hero but is kept under wraps following his spectacular capture. The FBI releases him after two years, right into the hands of the Russian mob. He is coerced to complete his former assignment — kill the Senate’s last moderate conservative, Harriet Gayfeather of Kansas. He finds himself caught between the twin grindstones of oil money and religious power and becomes oddly aligned with both the senator’s deputy and a woman who has made herself regionally famous by promising to kill an unidentified person in Kansas.

Praise for Saltwood

"I love Leon Unruh's SALTWOOD for the same reason I love his previous, related novel DOG OF THE AFTERWORLD: In terms of craft, he delivers everything you want from a thriller. I dare you not to be fully invested from the very first page in who these people are and where things are headed. But then Unruh, a longtime journalist, brings art and a sophisticated understanding of the world to the proceedings. There's nothing cookie-cutter about this novel. It's a deep, absorbing, kinetic read, featuring a main character—a former Russian assassin now named Nick Devereaux—trying to navigate American culture. It's hard for Nick. It's hard for all of us. And yet, this journey satisfies."
—Craig Lancaster, two-time High Plains Book Award winner

"Nick Deveraux, aka Nikolai Fyodorov, is a dichotomy, a Russian/American assassin with scruples. His target is a United States senator from Kansas, and his orders are: kill or be killed. He becomes the senator’s bodyguard instead. But an explosion at an oil rig leads Nick to question the morals and motives of a cast of characters, including the senator and himself. Unruh’s tale of suspense keeps the reader guessing. Who’s the villain? Who’s the victim?"
—Michael D. Graves, author of Human Shadow, a Pete Stone mystery

Saltwood, by Leon Unruh

Native Kansan Leon Unruh is the author of the Dog of the Afterworld series. He wrote for several small newspapers in Kansas and went on to work as an editor at dailies in Austin and Dallas, Texas; Wichita, Kansas; and Anchorage, Alaska. He was later the editor at the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

New Poetry book by Kerry Moyer

7/22/2025

Salt is Moyer’s fourth full-length poetry collection. Kerry works as a mental health professional to guide struggling youth. Kerry is a gravel cycling enthusiast who has completed 1,000 miles of 100-mile cycling race events. He holds a fifth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and a first-degree black belt in Hapkido and has studied various other martial arts. He enjoys leatherwork, woodwork, tinkering, and playing guitar. He lives with his family in Emporia, Kansas.

Kerry is an active member of Emporia Writers Group and he has served Kansas Authors Club on the state level as the 2020-2021 prose contest manager.

Salt, by Kerry Moyer

Poetry Collection by Iris Craver

7/19/2025

Member Iris Craver from Lawrence shares the following book news:

My first poetry collection was released last week.

Learn More at Anamcara Press

Discover the heart of North Lawrence in Iris Craver’s soulful poems, where everyday moments, nature, and resilience weave a rich tapestry of home.

The collection reflects on belonging, resilience, and finding magic in everyday life. Craver’s vivid storytelling captures the beauty of connection and the strength found in embracing where you call home.

Enjoy the rich details of Iris’s “herbal apothecary” tales of Kansas. Each poem speaks of the small details that make a life, for a poet who loves where she lives and declares, “I choose to stay and wear an apron/as my shield for the battle, pile up books to build my fortress/and use my love as a weapon of mass instruction.” Like her backyard garden, this collection is carefully tended.
Linda Barnes, Past President of the International Federation of Biblio-Poetry Therapy

“Craver’s poetry is a collection of ponderings, reminiscences, and humor about life in Kansas, her beloved place. “The sky is the color of cinnamon toast.” Tree branches look like chicken bones.” Her descriptions set the tone in this brilliant poetry collection, and she makes it easy to taste the music within her soul.”
Ronda Miller was the former State President of the Kansas Authors Club. Unfortunately, before this book went to press, she passed into the next life in December 2024. She was my cheerleader (the author).

“My attention span is about an inch long, and this book kept my interest. These poems capture what it is like to live in North Lawrence. Iris’s poems have changed how I view my neighborhood, and I’ve lived here 60+ years!”
Ted Boyle, President of the North Lawrence Neighborhood Improvement Association.

Iris is also the author of:

I call it "hysterical fiction"! My book titled, Do Lizards Have Lips? And Other Tall Tales From Toronto, Kansas was published in 2023 by Ice Cube Press.

https://icecubepress.com/2023/01/04/do-lizards-have-lips-2/

New Book by Member Robert Cory

7/19/2025

Kansas author Robert Cory offers a collection of his latest experiments in prose and poetry. A few are in the traditional haiku form, but the entire collection is a haiku-style contemplation of his environment, both natural and human. In the tradition of wordsmiths like e. e. cummings, Cory plays with syntax and vocabulary but is always true to his underlying emotion.

Robert is a member from Wichita.

Join us for Saturday's Program: Audiobook Panel July 19 @ 1:30 p.m.

7/15/2025

Member Monthly Program Access

Sign-in required. Members also received a link to the monthly program in their monthly email newsletter.

Welcome, Catherine and Anthony Menefee of Wichita!

7/14/2025

Catherine Menefee has a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Wichita State University. She specializes in poetry, but also loves to write fiction and creative non-fiction. Catherine believes in the power of literature to positively change the world, and she's spent more than a decade sharing her love of writing with students in high school, college, and homeschool co-op classrooms. She lives in Wichita with her husband and two children. Her debut poetry book, "Witness: One American Year," is releasing on July 29, 2025.

Catherine adds: "It's an exciting time for me to join KAC; thanks to the newsletter several days ago, I was able to register for a table at the Wichita Public Library Local Author event. I'm so excited to be there with my newly released book! I can be found on Instagram and TikTok @arspoeticat, and I would love to get connected with other Kansas authors on social media."

Welcome, Jamie Bosse of Manhattan, KS

7/14/2025

Jamie Bosse, CFP®, RFC, CCFC, is a Financial Planner, author, and mother of four with a passion for helping families build strong financial foundations. She writes to educate and empower both children and adults, making financial topics approachable, engaging, and fun.

Jamie is the author of Money Boss Mom: Helping Young Parents Be the “Boss” of Their Financial Future and the Milton the Money Savvy Pup children’s book series, which introduces young readers to important money concepts in a kid-friendly way. Her goal is to help families develop lifelong financial skills—starting at an early age.

In her role at CGN Advisors, Jamie helps clients navigate life’s transitions, organize their finances, and move confidently toward their goals. In 2020, she was named to the national InvestmentNews 40 Under 40 list and is a graduate of Leadership Manhattan’s Class of 2020.

Her writing and financial expertise have been featured in The Kansas City Star, KC Parent, The Journal of Financial Planning, Investment Advisor Magazine, and on Kansas City PBS. Jamie is also a proud graduate of Kansas State University’s Personal Financial Planning program.

The Magic Eye Book Launch, July 17, 7 p.m., Raven Bookstore

7/14/2025

The Magic Eye
A Story of Saving a Life and
a Place in the Age of Anxiety

A Memoir to be released July 15, 2025
by Mammoth Publications
ISBN: 9781939301574

“No endorsement can do justice to this vivid, lyric, wise, wry, compassionate, profoundly spiritual memoir of passage through some severe life trials.The Magic Eyeis a microcosmic epic of unvaunting human triumph. Bursting with life in its myriad forms, this is a book to love and to share.”
~ Stephanie Mills, author of In Service of the Wild and Epicurean Simplicity

“Nothing could have prepared me for being diagnosed with a rare and deadly eye cancer in the middle of trying to save the Kansas land where my husband and I live,” Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg writes of her new memoir, The Magic Eye: A Story of Saving a Life and a Place in the Age of Anxiety. 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 Goldberg contraption of the body.

The Magic Eye investigates what it means to reinhabit our bodies and ecosystems.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009–13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of over two dozen books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam’s Well, a novel; The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body. Her poetry and prose have been widely published in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies over the years.

Founder of Transformative Language Arts (writing, music, storytelling, and other word arts for social and personal transformation), Caryn is a beloved writing workshop facilitator and writing coach with over thirty years of experience. She regularly teaches for Lighthouse Writers, Writers.com, the Transformative Language Arts Network as well as offering private classes, all focused on how writing can bring us greater meaning, vitality, connection, and joy. She loves life-giving collaborations: she offers Your Right Livelihood with Kathryn Lorenzen, Brave Voice with Kelley Hunt, and The Art of Facilitation with Joy Roulier Sawyer.

Caryn offers weekly “Write Where You Are: A Writer’s Companion” through her Patreon and her long-running blog, “Everyday Magic.”

As elaborated upon in this memoir, she makes her home with eco- logical writer Ken Lassman south of Lawrence, Kansas where the deer and the wild turkeys roam, a dog and cat keep house, and their adult children frequently visit.

#ReadLocalKS: A Challenge to Members

7/11/2025

Submit Here

#ReadLocalKS : THE WRITE BRIDGE JOURNAL: SUMMER 2025 – IDEALS AND ILLUSIONS

7/10/2025

The following Kansas Authors Club members have pieces in the Summer 2025 issue of The Write Bridge: Amber Fraley, Annette Hope Billings, Barbara Waterman-Peters, Beth Gulley, Boyd Bauman, Brian Daldorph, Chuck Warner, Connlyn Sinclair, Iris Craver, Julie Ann Baker Brin, Keri Ault, Kerry Moyer, Kevin Rabas, Maureen Carroll, Marilyn Hope Lake, Peg Nichols, Ralvell Rogers, T.A. Dugan.

Order copies from Anamcara Press.

#ReadLocalKS : Coal City Review, 46:2025

7/10/2025

Member Peg Nichols tells us to check out the latest issue of Coal City Review. Kansas Authors Club members published in this issue include Boyd Bauman, Perry Shepard, Peg Nichols, and Brian Daldorph. The issue also includes a review of The Set Up: 1984: Britain's Biggest Drug Bust, by Gretchen Cassel Eick

Coal City Review $10.00

Welcomes submisisons of poetry and short fiction.

Send poetry and fiction to:
Brian Daldorph, Poetry Editor
University of Kansas
English Department
Lawrence, KS 66045

Please include SASE for reply.

Member News from Connlyn Sinclair

7/8/2025

Connlyn Sinclair, member from Lawrence shares book news:

My new short story collection Odysseys Into The Weird is now out exclusively on Apple Books. Odysseys Into The Weird is a collection of my YA fantasy writing and is guaranteed to delight any young fantasy reader or fantasy reader who is young at heart. Stories include a young witch’s strange encounter with the Easter Bunny, an LGBT reworking of Romeo and Juliet, and a daring World War II mission undertaken by a teen spy and her pet monkey.

(http://books.apple.com/us/book/id6748092819)

July 19 Program: Audiobook Panel

7/8/2025

Audio Book Panel
President Anne Spry will be moderating a panel on the various ways members have been publishing audiobooks.

Panelists:

Grant Overstake is author and producer of The Real Education of TJ Crowley. The novel was adapted into a full-cast audio drama featuring performances by a national cast and the ARISE Ensemble. The production earned an Earphones Award from AudioFile Magazine and won the 2025 Audie Award for Best Young Adult Audiobook.

Robert Rebein is an essayist and novelist with a special insterest in the American West. As author and narrator of The Last Rancher and Headlights on the Prairie: Essays on Home, Rebein has recorded his own audiobooks

Ben Stanton is an audiobook narrator and producer based in Topeka, Kansas.

Lisa D. Stewart is the author of The Big Quiet: One Woman's Horseback Ride Home. Lisa recorded her own audiobook with the assistance of an audiobook production studio.

Member Monthly Program Access

Sign-in required.
Members also received a link to the monthly program in their monthly email newsletter.

#ReadLocalKS: Pete Stone Series by Michael D. Graves

7/1/2025

Dear Kansas Authors,

If you know anyone who appreciates mystery, baseball, or a walk down historical Wichita's memory lane, I recommend Pete Stone detective stories from Meadowlark Press, Watermark Books, and your local library.

If you desire an author visit, Kansan Mike Graves will engage your audience to suit your event.

My All Hallows' Shadows review is available on GoodReads.

You are welcome to read and share my review of Shadows & Sorrows on GoodReads.

"Who dun it?" What is the motive, means, or opportunity?

Carmaine Ternes, Kansas Authors Club Member
Librarian, Author, Editor, Presenter
"A child who reads will be an adult who thinks!"
StoryCorps One Small Step