Current News from the Kansas Authors Club

Matt Spezia will be Words in the Wind's featured poet next Wednesday, April 22 at Round Table Bookstore

4/18/2026

Matt Spezia is a community-driven, team-effort artist, combining an eight individual and six group national award-winning poetry style, along with 17 other nominations I Kansas City hip hop and thespian teachings. Matt has published three albums and book and has appeared in an anthology CD and book. He also has been in the 2020 award-winning national poetic album of the year, “Babylon.”

Matt uses his platform to promote self-confidence and personal betterment, social awareness, and cultural change. He has worked to directly influence schoolchildren in 43 different school districts across Kansas, Illinois and Missouri.

Matt will begin at 6:15 p.m.

April is poetry month.
Sign-up for open mic
begins 6 p.m.

Words in the Wind is sponsored by
Kansas Authors Club Topeka Chapter
& Round Table Bookstore

0 Comments

Topeka: Words in the Wind, open mic at Round Table Bookstore

11/24/2025

Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Begins at 6:15
Round Table Bookstore
826 N. Kansas Ave., Topeka

Words In the Wind to Feature Dennis Etzel, Wednesday, August 27

8/26/2025

June 25 Topeka Words in the Wind Featuring Lisa Hase-Jackson

6/23/2025

Lisa Hase-Jackson is author of Flint & Fire (The Word Works, 2019), winner of the Hilary Tham Capital Collection prize, and Insomnia in Another Town (Clemson University Press, 2024), which won the Converse MFA Alumni Prize for Poetry, received honorable mention for the 2025 Hefner Heitz Kansa Book Award in Poetry, and was awarded the Nelson Poetry Book Award (KAC 2025). She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lisa’s poetry explores the complexities of interpersonal relationships and the opaque nature of family history tenderness and clarity while investigating place and displacement; animal life and strange weathers; the exigencies of race, class, and gender as childhood memories emit a dark radiance by which to navigate the present. Born in Portland, Oregon and raised in the Midwest and Southwest, Lisa currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her husband, poet Gary Jackson, and two adorable cats.

Words in the Wind Open Mic (Topeka) featuring Duane L. Herrmann

4/21/2025

Wednesday, April 23
at Round Table Bookstore
826 N. Kansas Ave., Topeka

Duane will begin at 6:15 p.m.

Duane Herrmann, a fifth-generation Kansan, has a sci fi novel, a local history book, a compilation on fasting, two collections of short stories and nine books of poetry to his credit. His work has been published in the United States, Australia, Canada, England, Germany, India, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland and Wales, in English, German, French and Dutch. Last year, one of his poems was nominated for a Pushcart and a short story for best of the Net. The publisher of that story was the 50th place he had sent it to in 10 years of trying. Duane is regarded as the leading authority on the history of the Baha’i Faith in Kansas.

April is poetry month.
Sign-up for open mic
begins 6 p.m.

Words in the Wind is sponsored by
Kansas Authors Club - Topeka Chapter
& Round Table Bookstore

Topeka Words in the Wind Open Mic Features Eric McHenry

11/22/2024

Words in the Wind open mic in November will feature past Kansas poet laureate Eric McHenry.

Eric McHenry, poet laureate from 2015 -2017, lives in Lawrence and teaches English at Washburn University. His books of poetry include Odd Evening, a finalist for the Poets’ Prize, and Potscrubber Lullabies, which received the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, The Yale Review, and Poetry Northwest, from whom he received the Theodore Roethke Prize.

Words in the Wind, sponsored by Kansas Authors Club District 1 and Round Table Bookstore, will be at Round Table Bookstore beginning at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 27.

Words in the Wind (Topeka) Featuring Lindsey Bartlett

10/16/2024

Words in the Wind open mic, presented by Kansas Authors Club, District 1, will feature Emporia writer Lindsey Bartlett during its October open mic, Wednesday, Oct. 23 at Round Table Bookstore.

Located in: NOTO Arts Center
Address: 826 N Kansas Ave, Topeka, KS 66608

Words in the Wind rotates monthly between prose/storytelling and poetry. This month, bring some prose or a story to present.

Lindsey teaches composition and literature at Emporia State University. An Emporian by choice, she lives in the Flint Hills region of Kansas, where she spends her days writing in various coffee shops, holed up at home with a good book, or driving the countryside for good photo opportunities.Bartlett has published one poetry collection, Vacant Childhood. Her writing and photography have appeared in The Milk House: A Rural Writing Collective, The Write Bridge, Flint Hills Review, and 105 Meadowlark Reader. Her essay, “Reframing My Rural Past” was recently nominated for “Best of the Net.”