Current News from the Kansas Authors Club

Writing Contests Open on April 1!

3/30/2025

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.

Annual Writing Contests - All Ages

Published Book Awards

Q&A: Book Contest vs. Literary Contests

3/14/2025

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.

Book Awards

Annual Literary Contests - All Ages

Important: Book Awards Guidelines for 2025 Updated

1/10/2025

To all members who have published a book June 1, 2023 to December 31, 2024. Please carefully review our updated consolidated Book Award Guidelines before entering a 2025 book contest. Significant changes have taken place.

Beginning in 2025, we will add an announcement of three finalists per contest category prior to the announcement of the winner at our fall gathering in October. Eligible books, for 2025 alone, will include an expanded window of eligibility that will include books that would have been considered eligible per our previous guidelines. Beginning in 2026, the book awards will be for books with a 1st publication date in the previous year only.

Our goal is to elevate the status of the Kansas Authors Club Book Awards, and to recognize as much fine writing from the state of Kansas as possible with these changes.

Read Now: Consolidated Book Awards Guidelines

Published Book Awards
Eight Categories
Cash Awards

For the 2025 Award Year

Submissions Accepted: NOW through

March 1, 2025 (encouraged), June 15 (final)

2024 "It Looks Like a Million" Book Awards

12/11/2024

"This is a book that is not only beautiful, but also uplifting. Even though the author does not consider herself a photographer or poet, she has an eye for capturing the small day-to-day things about life in 2020. This all comes together in a well-designed book."
- Judge Randi Stones, Washburn Rural HS Journalism Teacher

Anne Garrett Spry was selected as the 2024 "It Looks Like a Million" Book Award recipient.

When the world shut down in March 2020, Author Anne Spry shut down emotionally ... until she had the time to really notice and appreciate her surroundings. She began taking photos of sunsets, sunrises, clouds and flowers. Poetry flowed out of her soul when she saw what the camera had captured. Now she is sharing her inspirations in hopes that this perspective on a largely negative era in our history will result in more universal gratitude.

Finally Noticing

Also recognized:

"This is a book for everyone. Young and old alike.

"The illustrations are vivid and bright. I could have looked at the pictures forever. Even my teenage son thought it was a beautiful book and that is high praise."
- Judge Randi Stones, Washburn Rural HS Journalism Teacher

Author Ann Vigola Anderson takes us back in time to her grandparents’ farm where Bottle Calf was born during an early spring blizzard. With illustrations by the talented Sara Long, this gorgeous book will be your go-to for holiday gift giving and beyond. Grab a copy to reminisce or to share the stories and gorgeous art with your kids and grandkids. You are going to love Bottle Calf!

Bottle Calf

Gail Martin Family Contributes to Martin Kansas History Book Award Fund

1/14/2024

Gail Lee Martin
1924 - 2013

Kansas Authors Club
State Archivist, 1995-2005
Member, 1992-2013

Family members of Gail Lee Martin have provided futher funding for the Martin Kansas History Book Award. With the additional funding, this book award is assured (at current rates) to take place for the next 37 years!

Gail's daughter, Cynthia Ross, remains an active member of Kansas Authors Club. Gail's granddaughter, Chhaya Kolavalli, has been instrumental in supporting this book award.

Many thanks to Gail's family. She will long be remembered for documenting and contributing to Kansas history and the Kansas Authors Club.

The Martin Kansas History Book Award was created in 2018 as a tribute to Gail Lee Martin, who was KAC State Archivist from 1995-2005. Gail joined Kansas Authors Club in 1992 and was a member of District 5. She enjoyed writing fiction, nonfiction, stories for children, journalism, history, and poetry. Martin’s work was published in numerous magazines. She also published two books: Clyde Owen Martin Family Memories of His Life and Times, and My Flint Hills Childhood, which was a winner of the Ferguson Kansas History Book Award in 2010. The funding for the Martin Kansas History Book Award comes from the Gail Lee Martin Memorial established in her name. This book award is open exclusively for Kansas history.

Learn More about the Martin KS History Book Award

Martin KS History Book Award Winners

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Kansas Authors Club is tax exempt as a public charity under IRS code 501(c)(3). All donations made to Kansas Authors Club are tax-deductible.

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2022 "It Looks Like a Million" Book Design Award

11/10/2022

“It Looks Like a Million” Book Award
Janey Olsen, Famous Artist of the Beach
by H.C. Friesen

Note from the Judges:
Janey Olsen, Famous Artist of the Beach is our choice for the “It Looks Like a Million” Book Award. The book has a fresh, cohesive look. Title, cover (including the notes on the back cover), chapter headings, illustrations, and lessons on how to use watercolor pencils all present a story of the growth of a young artist. The illustrations of author/illustrator H.C. Friesen flow with the plot and highlight the setting, i.e., a beach (with yellow beach house) and surrounding points of interest in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The original paintings of the 9 to 10-year old Grace Baity track the artistic growth of 9 to 10-year old Janey Olsen. The layout integrates text and illustrations smoothly. The typeface is easy to read. The watery blue endpapers reflect the setting. A simple family tree of the main characters, a map of the Outer Banks, a pronunciation guide, and “How to” advice from Janey herself provide appropriate resources for young readers. Overall, the book has the feel of a children’s book that takes children’s talents seriously.

Jenny Russell and the Team at JenRus Freelance
2022 “It Looks Like a Million” Book Judges

Jenny Russell grew up in Glen Elder, Kansas, and graduated with a degree in Business, Communications and Marketing, from Bethany College. Russell has now worked in Economic Development, marketing, advertising, and websites for almost fifteen years. The company also provides graphic design services through their 314 Graphic Design division. This time included five years with Brush Art Corporation, a marketing and advertising agency out of Downs, Kansas, and now nine years in Economic Development. An emphasis in working with and structuring websites led Russell to Internet Marketing and the establishment of JenRus Freelance Marketing in 2008.

"It Looks Like A Million" Award Winners

2022 Nelson Poetry Book Award Winner

11/10/2022

Nelson Poetry Book Award
Gravedigger’s Daughter
by Cheryl Unruh

Note from the Judge:
Cheryl Unruh’s Gravedigger’s Daughter stands as a testament to how great writing uses particulars to capture the universal. While few readers may have helped to prepare graves as a child or know what the summer sky looks like from their depths, Unruh’s beautifully crafted reflections unearth the relatable joys and confusions of youth, love, and loss. While each poem preserves a carefully honed memory, the collection as a whole carries the reader through a lifetime with touching humor and heartbreaking grace. It is an intimate look into a specific family, but it stirs familiar emotions that have the magic to conjure readers’ own pasts.

Dr. Julia Galm
2022 Nelson Poetry Book Judge

Dr. Julia Galm is a Communications instructor at Cloud County Community College, where she works with budding writers to help them hone their skills and voices. She has helped to revitalize CCCC’s creative and artistic journal, The Silver Lining, and she is a board member of the Brown Grand Opera House. Though a recent transplant to Kansas, she has fallen in love with the rolling grasslands of her new home.

Nelson Poetry Book Award Winners

Kristine Polansky, 2022 Vice President of Kansas Authors Club, presents Cheryl Unruh with the Nelson Poetry Award and the Martin Kansas History Book Award for Gravedigger's Daughter.

2022 Coffin Memorial Fiction Book Award Winner

11/10/2022

J. Donald & Bertha Coffin Memorial
Fiction Book Award

Opulence Kansas
by Julie Stielstra

Note from Judge Varnadore:
I have been very impressed with the exceptionally high quality of the work represented by this year’s authors across such different genres as crime fiction, historical fiction, and young adult fiction. This has made the job of judging this year’s winner quite a task but also a genuine pleasure. As the novels represented so many different genres, my approach was to evaluate each work according to the conventions of those genres as well as execution of craft and finally, readability. Based on these criteria, I am pleased to select Opulence Kansas by Julie Stielstra as my choice for the J. Donald & Bertha Coffin Memorial Award for Fiction.

Stielstra’s 15-year-old protagonist Kate, reeling from the suicide of her father and the subsequent investigation into his shady financial dealings, leaves her high-rise Chicago condo for rural Kansas, to stay with her father’s estranged older brother and his wife. This relocation seems to be the respite Kate needs from the chaos back in Chicago and she settles in well, observing her new surrounds through the lens of her burgeoning talent for photography. As her relationship with her newfound family blossoms and she becomes more deeply embedded in the small-town community, she begins to appreciate a slower pace and living close to the land. Katie also meets Travis, a young man with a troubled past, who seems initially stagnate and destined to see life pass him by; however, Kate and Travis, with the help of her family and the local community, begin to heal their personal traumas and find redemption from the sins of their fathers.

Stielstra writes with humor and compassion, and her characters are subtle and layered. The tone of the work manages to be uplifting but never sentimental or saccharine. The prose is witty and energetic, and the world she creates is beautifully observed. In Stielstra’s capable hands, rural Kansas itself takes on a vivid character of its own.

Heather Varnadore
2022 J. Donald & Bertha Coffin Memorial
Fiction Book Co-Judge

Heather Varnadore was born and raised in Atlanta but currently lives in the Flint Hills of Kansas with her family. She received her M.A. in English from Kansas State University in 2008 and her M.F.A. in fiction writing from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 2012. She has previously taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and currently teaches at Kansas State University. She is the recipient of the Seaton Fellowship for Creative Writing, the Umass MFA Fellowship for Poets and Writers, the Cara Parravani Memorial Award in Fiction, the Delaney Fellowship for Fiction and multiple teaching awards. She is currently finishing work on a novel.

Coffin Memorial Book Award Winners

Note from Contest Manager:
Due to the number and heft of this year’s fiction entries, I divided them between two co-judges. Judge Varnadore and Judge Strnad both identified contenders for the award from the books they read. Tie-breaker judge Linda Knupp made the final decision. After 20 years of service, Knupp retired a year ago as director of the Manhattan Public Library and the North Central Kansas Library System. She remains active with the state-wide Friends of Kansas Libraries (FOKL) and urges all of you to join your local library’s Friends group as well as groups like the Kansas Authors Club. Judge Knupp was impressed with the clear narrative structure of Opulence Kansas, which takes the main character through a summer of changes and revelations after the tragic death of her father. “Thoughtful and resilient characters deal with a number of challenges during this time without losing their compassion for others, hope for the future, and their appreciation for the small rural community of Opulence.” According to Judge Knupp, author Julie Stielstra “certainly has a future in the wide field of YA literature.”

2022 Coffin Memorial Nonfiction Book Award

11/3/2022

Note from the Judge:
Arguably, nonfiction books are more divergent than any other type of writing. The following questions provide a practical approach for judging such books: (1) Would a person interested in the subject pull the book off the shelf? (2) Would they want to look inside? (3) Would they be tempted to explore the book further? (4) If they read the book, would they find accurate, up-to-date facts and would their expectations otherwise be met? (5) Does the book provide a bonus—something unexpectedly satisfying?

If you are a cat-lover, you likely would pull A Cat Named Fatima by James Kenyon DVM from a shelf. Being a sensitive and intelligent person (as are most cat-lovers), you would be attracted to the cover art of the book—the soft, warm colors in the picture of a young girl watching a cat; the playfulness of the cat paws worked into the title; the subtitle, “Tales of 23 Cats & the People Who Loved Them;” and, on the back cover, proof the book is, indeed, written by a “DVM”—a veterinarian who obviously loves cats. Open the book, skim a few pages and be prepared to want to explore the book further. As you read, your initial impressions will be confirmed.

However, James Kenyon has not written an ordinary cute cat book. Each cat is introduced with an ode containing hints of what will follow. Kenyon slips in facts about cats and gives his readers insight into how veterinarians approach medical issues. Throughout the book he shows compassion for pets and pet owners and respect for his readers’ intelligence and their ability to handle technical terms and concepts. The cartoon-like illustrations of artist Thomas Marple add to the book’s charm. This, indeed, is a book filled with unexpectedly satisfying bonuses.

Cecilia Harris
2022 J. Donald & Bertha Coffin Memorial
Nonfiction Book Judge

Cecilia Harris resides in the historic town of Abilene where she has been a professional freelance writer for over 30 years, specializing in travel writing for the Kansas Tourism Division and other travel industry entities. In KANSAS! magazine alone, she has written over 250 articles featuring over 700 locations in the state. She also has written both state and area visitors guides, blogs about Kansas cuisine, arts, culture and heritage and Abilene attractions and events, online articles, and two books, Historic Homes of Abilene and Abilene’s Carousel. Also using her services have been the President Dwight D. Eisenhower Foundation, Meredith Corporation, Madden Media, the Kansas I-70 Association, the Kansas Society of Association Executives, and 10 regional magazines.

James Kenyon accepts the Coffin Memorial Nonfiction Book Award from Kristine Polansky

Coffin Memorial Book Award Winners

2022 Children's Book Award Winner

11/3/2022

Note from the Judge:
The recipient of the Kansas Authors Club Children’s Book Award is Janey Olsen, Famous Artist of the Beach, written and illustrated by H.C. Friesen with original paintings by Grace Baity. Janey Olsen shares with its readers what it means to be an artist. The protagonist, who turns ten during this formative summer vacation, is inspired by her innate desire to create art, and she is supported in her efforts by other artists in her family, including a mother who makes and sells jewelry and a cousin who is an emerging photographer. These are people who understand, take seriously, support, and value this child’s artistic impulses. Janey experiments with different media while aspiring to be recognized at the upcoming Festival of the Arts, and we are privy to her development as we turn the pages of the volume and see the charming and engaging pictures that she is making. Almost every page has some visual enhancement, nurturing and perpetuating the theme of the novel. In the process of honing her craft, Janey learns how to see others more clearly, becoming a kinder and more generous person and learning to value collaboration and community rather than competition. Friesen offers a strong sense of her novel’s setting, North Carolina’s Outer Banks, including visual attributes such as a map, photographs, and evocative illustrations throughout the volume. Moreover, her volume offers wonderful resources in its back matter, including Janey’s own list of tips for “How to Be a Famous Artist of the Beach” as well as Friesen’s rich resource unit for drawing and coloring a lighthouse, among other materials. Beautiful endpapers enhance the total design of her volume. Altogether, this is a well-unified and beautiful book, and its form astutely enhances its themes.

Professor Anne K. Phillips
2022 Kansas Authors Club Children’s Book Judge

Anne K. Phillips is Professor of English at Kansas State University. A specialist in children’s and adolescent literature, she has published and edited numerous works on authors such as Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Louise Erdrich, Andrew Clements, and others. She teaches courses such as illustration in children’s literature, film adaptations of children’s classics, American history through family sagas in children’s literature, and more. A Past President of the international Children’s Literature Association, the Modern Language Association’s division on children’s literature, and the Louisa May Alcott Society, Phillips has served on the Kansas Notable Books Committee and the William Allen White (Kansas children’s choice award) Selection Committee.

H.C. and Rob Friesen: Holly is the author of Janey Olsen Famous Artist of the Beach, winner of the 2022 Kansas Authors Club Children's Book Award.

Kansas Authors Club Children's Book Award Winners

2022 Kansas Martin History Book Award

11/3/2022

Note from the Judge:
Cheryl Unruh’s Gravedigger’s Daughter is an insightful, generous-spirited book that creates a vivid sense of both place and time by telling the story of growing up in Pawnee Rock, a small town in Barton County during the 1960s and ‘70s. Unruh’s relationship with her father, an unassuming yet extraordinary man, is affectionately and unsentimentally rendered. The author’s understanding of the character of her father and hometown is delineated by an original writing style that is lean, colloquial, and understated while at the same time detailed, colorful, and intense; the language is both plain-spoken and elegant. The natural and cultural history of the place are woven into the narrative in fresh and surprising ways that enable the reader to experience multiple dimensions of Kansas history while following the ups and downs of the lives of the people featured in the story.

Ron Parks
2022 Martin Kansas History Judge

A fifth-generation Kansan, Ron Parks grew up in Minneapolis, Kansas, where he graduated from high school in 1967. Ron was executive director of the Kansas Eisenhower Centennial Commission from 1988 through October 1990. He also served for eight years as director of the Kaw Mission State Historic Site. Published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2014, his book, The Darkest Period: The Kanza Indians and Their Last Homeland, 1846-1873, won both the 2014 Prairie Heritage Book Award and the Santa Fe Trail Association’s Louis Barry Writing Award. The Darkest Period was selected as a 2015 Kansas Notable Book. Ron has also written numerous historical articles about Hays, Council Grove, and Minneapolis.

Kristine Polansky, 2022 Vice President of Kansas Authors Club, presents Cheryl Unruh with the Nelson Poetry Award for Gravedigger's Daughter.

Martin Kansas History Book Award Winners

2020 Children’s Book Award

10/3/2020

I Love the Child, by Ronda Miller

We have made our selection for the Kansas Authors Club Book of the Year. We were impressed with the quality of the books submitted for review.

After careful deliberation we have chosen I Love the Child, by Ronda Miller. First, the size and feel of the book would make it easy to read to a small group of children. The illustrations beautifully matched the poem on the page. There was diversity of ethnicity, physical condition, and gender. The Spanish co-text should make it appealing to a wide range of children. We could identify characteristics of children we have raised and known, and think that older children could see themselves in some of these characters. We think the book could be used with a wide age range. The cooking section expands the number of activities that could be used with the book. This is a book that we would like to give to important young people in our lives.

Thank you for asking us to be a review panel. We enjoyed the process and for the opportunity to read these books.

Allison and Gary Haworth

Judges Allison and Gary Haworth have two adult daughters: Mary Kate and Becky. Allison is a graduate of the University of Kansas and taught early elementary school in the Lawrence school district prior to having children. Raising her own children instilled a passion for young children. Allison has been a preschool teacher for the Lawrence Arts Center for the past 20 years. Gary Haworth is an elementary curriculum PhD graduate of the University of Iowa. He has taught at the elementary school level and was a central office and elementary school administrator. He is now retired.

2020 “It Looks Like a Million” Book Design Award

10/3/2020

Birds, Bones, and Beetles: The Improbable Career and Remarkable Legacy of University of Kansas Naturalist Charles D. Bunker,
by Chuck Warner

The design of Birds, Bones and Beetles by Chuck Warner, effectively evoked the era of Kansas naturalist Charles D. Bunker, subtly suggested the subject matter through its use of front cover photographs and historical typeface. I appreciated the use of black and white photographs throughout the text and the straight-forward layout. To me, a good book design does two things simultaneously; it draws attention to the book while not distracting from the essential character of its narrative.

Judge Rick Mitchell has been a professional artist/photographer since 1974. He was professor of photography at Rutgers University for eighteen years and has taught at other institutions including Baker University and the University of Kansas. He is a former Director of the Exhibition Program at the Lawrence Arts Center where he was, for five years, the publisher of Cottonwood Literary Magazine in cooperation with the University of Kansas Department of English, and a founder of the Committee on Imagination & Place and the I&P Press.

2020 Martin Kansas History Book Award

10/3/2020

Birds, Bones, and Beetles: The Improbable Career and Remarkable Legacy of University of Kansas Naturalist Charles D. Bunker,
by Chuck Warner

The Martin Kansas History Book Award goes to Chuck Warner for his book, Birds, Bones, and Beetles: The Improbable Career and Remarkable Legacy of University of Kansas Naturalist Charles D. Bunker.

“While reading Chuck Warner’s book, I felt myself being transported back in time and seeing life through the eyes of Charles Bunker. Birds, Bones, and Beetles tells the story of naturalist Charles Bunker's life from his early years in Illinois in the late 1800s through his long career at the University of Kansas. Much like Charles Bunker, the book itself is unassuming and down to earth. Warner takes care to not only reveal Bunker's strengths but also his flaws. Yet, the book is more than a biography. Warner ties Bunker into a larger world that include his relationships with his colleagues and family, developments within the University of Kansas, and the natural history of the state. This well written and well researched book is not only a treat to read but is a valuable contribution to the history of Kansas.”

Though born in Canada, Thomas C. Percy has lived in Kansas since 1990. He received his B.A. in History and a B.Ed. from Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. Inspired by several outstanding history professors, he continued with higher education acquiring his M.A. in history from Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

During a seminar at the University of Kansas, Percy researched and wrote a paper on the origins of the Kansas State Fair. The topic proved fertile ground and Percy expanded the paper into his dissertation, “A History of the Kansas State Fair, 1863-2006.” As chance would have it, Percy found a position teaching history at Hutchinson Community College, the permanent home of the Kansas State Fair.

While Percy has enjoyed teaching at Hutchinson Community College since 1994, he has also published Images of America: Kansas State Fair in 2014 and has reviewed books in the Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire, Teaching History: A Journal of Methods and Kansas History.

2020 Nelson Poetry Book Award

10/3/2020

The News as Usual, by Jon Kelly Yenser

Jon Kelly Yenser's, The News as Usual, published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2019.

Of all our poets, he seemed most attentive to the wonders of language in his evocation of Kansas. My inadequate commentary on his superlative and complex book of poems follows.

The title for Jon Kelly Yenser’s 2019 collection of poems, The News as Usual, accurately and profoundly describes his poetry although the “usual” here is shown to be startling and wondrous and occasionally wry and subtly humorous. Yenser writes from the ground up in choosing both his words and the subjects for his poems, reflecting his recognition that the "news," that is, ordinary life during all seasons in Kansas—in fields, in the backyards of its small towns, and in friendships—can be astonishing.

Neither idealizing nor prettifying his Kansas, Yenser chooses language precisely and astonishingly. He creates metaphors that make the familiar spring wondrously into new life, thereby making the usual news become unusual. Thus, in one poem he may refer to “the burnt umber of milo” and in another to “rusty milo.” Attuned to the seasonal, he refers to summer’s “frenzied raspberries” and to spring’s forsythia as “ornate as art deco, . . . offering us gild antennae.” Literary allusions intersect with astonishing, commonplace words such as “kerflooey” or newly generated words such as “zitty,” playful and humorous.

The “news” which Yenser’s poetry focuses on most frequently is seasonal and temporal in addition to his friendships with dogs and his dying and stalwart neighbor Fred. He keeps his eye peeled for owls. A journey to Guatamala, however, proves largely distracting. Throughout this collection, Yenser is most consistently aware of seasonal changes close to home, to the simultaneous wonder and tenuousness of life close by. His news is expressed in language nuanced, multi-faceted, often punning, playful, and surprising. Through his stunning choice of words, his “usual” becomes imbued with the unusual and memorable, the ordinary with the extraordinary and surprising. Thus, in a brief poem, he contemplates Fall: “What’s done is done / almost now almost /all the dun leaves / have come undone.” In the conclusion of a long poem, titled “Cleaning Up in October,” Yenser’s description of an owl—“quiet as a moth/ over the soccer fields, listening/for the click/ of the smallest teeth/ all over town, from love, habit,/ and the coming cold”—evokes all beings as they persist in ongoing life. Yenser’s poetry--his incisive choice or words, his incise wit--makes me aware of how the usual becomes wondrous, the ordinary memorable and amazing. In his poetry, the usual news in Kansas becomes astonishing and memorable.”

About the Judge: During her 34 years of teaching English at the University of Kansas, Beth was known as a scholar of African American literature and of Herman Melville. She also wrote two collections of essays, one focused on Kansas and the other on her summer community in northern Michigan. From 1958-1961, she taught English at the high school and junior college levels in Osaka, Japan. She taught as an American Literature Fulbright-Hays lecturer from 1970 - 1974 and as a Fall 1992 American Literature and Culture lecturer at 7 universities, Africa at the Universities of Ibadan, Makerere, Dar es Salaam during the summer of 1972, Russia, where she taught a New York University summer session at the University of St. Petersburg, and China. In 2007, she traveled to the Beijing Foreign Studies University in China as a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer. There she offered courses on American Women Writers and the very first Ecocriticism course to be offered at a Chinese university. Other awards she has been honored with include the John Masefield Prize for Fiction, Wellesley College 1958; the Major Hopwood Award for Fiction, University of Michigan 1962; the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for Graduate Study, University of Michigan 1967; and the National Endowment for Humanities Fellowship in Historical, Social, and Cultural Studies of US Ethnic Minorities, 1974-1975.

Following her retirement in 2001, she turned to writing poetry, and in the last twenty years has published numerous chapbooks as well as five collections of poetry (Conversations, Her Voice, Mrs. Noah Takes the Helm, The Sauntering Eye, and Water-Gazers).

2020 J. Donald Coffin Memorial Book Award

10/3/2020

Michael D Graves, All Hallows’ Shadows

In All Hallows’ Shadows, Michael D. Graves serves up both homage and an original take on the hard-boiled detective genre. The mean streets of the novel are historic Wichita, Kansas, which Mr. Graves renders impeccably, edging in a history lesson with his mystery. Graves, an evident baseball fan, hits through the cycle of the genre’s tropes but does so in a manner entirely his own, realizing a style entirely his own. Out of a field of strong competition, my choice for the J. Donald Coffin Book Award is Michael D. Graves’s All Hallows’ Shadows.

Judge William Sheldon lives with his family in Hutchinson, Kansas where he teaches and writes. He took his BS and MA in English from Emporia State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University. His poetry and prose have been published widely in such journals as Blue Mesa Review, Columbia, Flint Hills Review, New Letters, and Prairie Schooner. He is the author of two books of poetry, Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley, 2002) and Rain Comes Riding (Mammoth, 2011), as well as a chapbook, Into Distant Grass (Oil Hill, 2009). Retrieving Old Bones was a Kansas City Star Noteworthy Book for 2002 and is listed as one of the Great Plains Alliance’s Great Books of the Great Plains. He plays bass for the band The Excuses.

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