Greetings, dear readers: There is a quiet reverence that emanates from our new Meadowlark release, Papa’s Pills.  Cheryl Unruh here. I’m part of the Meadowlark team, and I’d like to share a few thoughts with you about Papa’s Pills by Rosemary McCombs Maxey.  The book is set in 1996 on the Creek Reservation near Okmulgee, Oklahoma. I felt a strong pull, a deep connection to the book because of the main characters—an elderly Muscogee couple, Selo and Tefe (Mother and Papa).  As I turned the pages, it felt as if I were sitting at the kitchen table watching Selo cook pork chops, the meat sizzling in the pan.  I was fascinated by the authenticity of these characters, by their conversations, by the everyday moments of their lives, as they navigate aging and dementia. The work is fiction, but this book is not a light and breezy novel. I kept reading. For Selo and Tefe, every single day on their farm is a day of survival. Tefe is blind and nearly deaf. They are poor, rely on rides from others, and they often need medical attention. These fictional characters felt touchable-real to me in their conversations and their actions.  Author Rosemary McCombs Maxey is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and is a Master Language teacher with the College of the Muscogee Nation.  Maxey’s choice to incorporate words and phrases from their language deepens the immersion for the reader.  Papa’s Pills is an invitation to explore the Muscogee (Creek) language and culture. This is a powerful book. Because of the vividness of Selo and Tefe and their lasting relationship, I will carry them with me for a long time. Cheryl Buy Papa’s Pills here Play video The video above (with music) is from Papa’s Pills book launch, February 24, at the College of the Muscogee Nation, Okmulgee, OK. [1 min.] Author Rosemary McCombs Maxey Back: Linzi Garcia, Tracy Million Simmons (publisher), Lisa Kindsvater (editor). Front:: Author Rosemary McCombs Maxey Buy Papa’s Pills here

You're Invited! May 22 Book Launch Event: Huascar Medina's Protest as Love Poem

Meadowlark Press releases Protest as Love Poem by Huascar Medina

We are honored to announce the release of Protest as Love Poem, Huascar Medina’s third poetry collection and a finalist of the 2025 Meadowlark Press Birdy Poetry Prize!

 

Book Launch Details:

7:00-8:30 p.m., May 22, 2026

ArtsConnect Topeka

909 N Kansas Ave.

Topeka, KS 66608

Preorder your copy here!

A portion of this book's proceeds will be donated to El Centro de Topeka.

 

Book Description:

A finalist for the 2025 Birdy Poetry Prize, Huascar Medina’s highly anticipated third book of poetry, Protest as Love Poem, is a four-part expression of love through defiant truths and collective survival. An urgent rebuttal to apathy, Protest as Love Poem is a plea for intimate authority and a call for a revolution. It is both political and personal, endearing and indignant—a direct request to feel more, not less, in this present moment.

About the Author:

Huascar Medina is a father, poet, and editor living artfully in Topeka, Kansas. He’s the author of three books of poetry, How to Hang the Moon (Spartan Press, 2017), Un Mango Grows in Kansas (Spartan Press, 2020), and Protest as Love Poem (Meadowlark Press, 2026). He served as Poet Laureate of Kansas from 2019-2022. His work has appeared in Flint Hills Review, Gasconade Review, Green Mountains Review, KANSAS! Magazine, Latino Book Review, The New York Times, and elsewhere.

What Readers Are Saying:

In Protest as Love Poem, Huascar Medina breaks us with his lines. Sometimes short and urgent, warning us, “The red hats / are coming.” Other times, long and flowing as if in prayer . . . a haunting invocation longing for mother tongue to offer us “a place of refuge and safety.” These poems, however, are anything but safe. They are a punch to the gut. There is a discomfort in these poems. An uneasiness like one might feel living in a place that goes out of its way to make a Brown man feel like an immigrant in his own land. Devastatingly acute erasures share space with palliative prayers in Protest as Love Poem. After reading it, I found myself trying to think of one word that could best capture how I feel about this book . . . necessary. These poems are necessary, needed, essential, maybe now more than ever. These poems need no tulips to walk through. Huascar tells us as only a poet can, honestly and openly to our faces, “Right now, Brown people are disappearing, / in broad daylight, in America.” In Protest as Love Poem, Huascar exposes himself to us in an aching way, “speaking in a way / only a wound could heal.” People need to read these poems. Profs need to teach these poems. I don’t curse lightly, but damn . . . these poems must be spread far and wide.

—Joaquín Zihuatanejo, author of Occupy Whiteness and IMMIGRANT

In an era of ubiquitous anti-Latinx scapegoating, surveillance, and ridicule, Medina’s poems serve as brave protest poems, vulnerable truth-telling documents, and affirmations of empowerment and force. The stripped-down, accessible language effectively pulls the reader into a powerful narrative of resilience and survival, a candid account of a Latino in middle America. A must-read collection of fortitude and charm.

—Jose Hernandez Diaz, author of Bad Mexican, Bad American

Huascar Medina’s third book of poetry, Protest as Love Poem, beats the drum of revolution with tender power and calls us to action with his earnest interrogation of the multifaceted human experience. With one foot in the Heartland and the other rooted in his Motherland, Huascar weaves a passionate immigrant citizen song heavy with the body politic and a molotov mother tongue— “rooted in rebellion; / harvesting more than survival . . . / a higher yield of Joaquins, Huertas, and Guevaras.” Medina summons the celestial and stars to the frontline of this love song for his people. “On Earth, / humans don’t treat us / human enough—call us / aliens. To cope, I became celestial, brilliant- / bodied, full of gravity, pulled down, heavier— / wishing to warp time and safer spaces.” Within these pages, there is still safe space, a reprieve from the apathy and disillusion turned toward spiritual striving and finding what we all search for: Libertad and Love.

—Kai Coggin, Hot Springs Poet Laureate and author of Mother of Other Kingdoms

Please Join Us 4/28 and 5/5 for the 2026 Diverse Voices Book Launch Events!

 Please Join Us for the 2026 Diverse Voices Book Launch Events!

House of Morrow Celebrates Third Diverse Voices/Voces Diversas
Literacy Program Book Launch Event

Emporia, KS – Meadowlark Press and House of Morrow, a local fund under the Emporia Community Foundation nonprofit, are thrilled to announce the launch of the third annual Diverse Voices/Voces Diversas anthology. The book, written this spring by 80 local fifth grade students and published by Meadowlark Press, will be celebrated with two book launch events.

House of Morrow’s Diverse Voices Literacy Program has become one of the organization’s cornerstone initiatives, providing young students with opportunities to explore their own creativity, improve literacy skills, and express their unique voices.

For the past two years, the program took place solely at Walnut Elementary School, and this year, in addition to Walnut’s continued participation, Logan Avenue Elementary School adopted the program, too.

Each school will celebrate with its own book launch event, both of which are free and open to the public. The event will include readings by the authors, refreshments, and an opportunity to purchase signed copies of the book. The books are available for pre-order at www.meadowlarkbookstore.com.

Walnut Elementary School’s book launch event will take place at 6 p.m. April 28 at the Clint Bowyer Community Building.

Logan Avenue Elementary School’s book launch event will take place at 6 p.m. May 5 at the Clint Bowyer Community Building.

This year’s program is entirely funded by grants and donations, including support from United Way of the Flint Hills, Emporia Community Foundation, and Rotary Club of Emporia.

House of Morrow invites its fellow Kansans to explore its programs, volunteer opportunities, and donation information at houseofmorrow.org.

CLICK HERE TO PREORDER YOUR COPIES TODAY!

Congratulations to 2026 Birdy Poetry Prize Winner David Ebenbach!

 

We are thrilled to announce the winner of the 
2026 Birdy Poetry Prize
These Blessings Are All We Have 
by David Ebenbach!

Congratulations, David!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

David Ebenbach is the author of twelve books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, winners of such awards as the Juniper Prize, the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and the Birdy Poetry Prize, among others. He has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. David lives with his family in Washington, DC, where he teaches creative writing and literature at Georgetown University's Center for Jewish Civilization and works with faculty and graduate students to support their teaching at Georgetown's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship. You can find out more at davidebenbach.com.

We would also like to extend a hearty congratulations to our Birdy finalists and semi-finalists!

Meadowlark would like to thank Poet Laureate of Kansas
Traci Brimhall for serving as this year's judge!

Here, you can watch the recording of the announcement event, including readings from David Ebenbach and our 2021, 2022, 2024, and 2025 winners, Alison Hicks (Knowing Is a Branching Trail), Jonathan Greenhause (Cupping Our Palms), Alicia Rebecca Myers (Warble), and Catherine Anderson (Afloat)! Thank you to all who attended the event and made it a special, celebratory evening!

 

Meadowlark Press Announces New Kansas-Themed Essay Collection by Jenna Brack

Pass-Through Place: Essays on Home, Hope, and Following the Horizon
Jenna Brack
Paperback: 978-1-956578-91-1
Ebook: 978-1-956578-92-8
Audio: 978-1-956578-93-5
152 pages
Retail: $20.00

Also available as an ebook and on audio.

Literary Collection/ Essays
Biography & Autobiography/ Women
TRAVEL / United States / Midwest / West North Central

 

EMPORIA, KS: Meadowlark Press announces the April release of Pass-Through Place: Essays on Home,Hope, and Following the Horizon by Hutchinson native Jenna Brack.

Unfolding as a coming-of-age memoir, twenty essays reveal Kansas as a formative landscape of resilience and hope. In one essay, Brack’s brother gets her safely back home to Manhattan from Topeka during an ice storm. In another, she journeys to the small Kansas town of Chapman to help with tornado clean-up. A common theme in many of her essays is the Kansas landscape from journeys through the rolling Flint Hills to the countryside of her family’s farm to the vast Kansas skies.

From reader, Callie R. Feyen, “Jenna’s writing is evocative and full of hope as she takes us on a tour of her Kansas—a state that, after reading Pass-Through Place, readers will want to do more than just pass through. In each chapter, Jenna takes us on a quest to find what it means to inhabit a place, and what it means for a place to inhabit you.”

Eighth Day Books in Wichita will host Brack for a reading and craft talk on Tuesday, April 21 at 6:30 p.m. Brack will also be a featured artist for Poetry and Prose Night with Meadowlark Press at Middle Ground Books in Emporia, April 23 at 7:00 p.m.

Meadowlark Press, established in Emporia, Kansas, in 2014, publishes novels, memoirs, and children’s books with a focus on Midwest settings and authors, as well as poetry from coast to coast. The press encourages readers to order books through area independent bookstores, direct from authors, and meadowlarkbookstore.com.

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Jenna Brack grew up in central Kansas and lived in the Midwest for over thirty-five years before moving abroad. Her essays and poetry have been featured in publications such as Every Day Poems, The Sunlight Press, Coffee + Crumbs, 105 Meadowlark Reader, and others. A former educator and college instructor, Jenna now encourages other writers through editing and coaching. She holds an MA in English from Kansas State University and enjoys exploring the goodness of every place alongside her husband and two children. Pass-Through Place is her first book.

Buy Pass-Through Place

 

Help us welcome Meadowlark Intern, Leon Enabnit

Meadowlark is proud to have Leon Enabnit, student intern from Emporia State University, working with us this semester.

Leon Enabnit: Junior, Emporia State University

Leon Enabnit (pronouns, he/him) is 21 years old and an aspiring fiction writer and poet. Leon enjoys writing love poems and working on a semi-autobiographical book with zombies. He's always been fascinated by the zombie trope, "which is probably why I ended up choosing a name from my favorite zombie video game series." He enjoys video games, crocheting, writing, editing, and reading.

 

Master Mvskoke Language Teacher Debuts First Novel

The book launch for Papa’s Pills by Rosemary McCombs Maxey will be held at the College of the Muscogee Nation in the STEM building on February 24, 2026, at 1:00 p.m., Okmulgee, Oklahoma.

Rosemary McComby Maxey weaves a beautiful portrait of love and endurance in Papa’s Pills where she tells the story of Selo and Tefe, an elderly couple navigating the end-of-life stages on the southeastern fringe of the Muscogee (Creek) Reservation in Oklahoma. The novel takes place in the mid-1990s, a time of significant cultural and governmental change for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and its tribal town communities.

Maxey was born and raised in Dustin, Oklahoma, near the setting of this story. Her lifetime of experience as an ordained clergy and educator gives depth and life to her narrative and readers are easily drawn into this cast of strong, resilient characters.

Sterlin Harjo writes, “. . . a delicate, funny, and loving story set against the backdrop of rural Oklahoma in the Mvskoke Nation. It feels like a roadmap to aging gracefully in love—through all of love’s ups and downs, specifically as a life and love nears its sunset hour.”

Lisa Kindsvater, Meadowlark Editor, says, “This book is a must read! Maxey creates a deeply moving story where the simple tasks of everyday life are so expertly detailed readers become immersed in the narrative. Papa’s Pills speaks to readers at every stage of life’s journey.”

 Papa’s Pills is available for order through the Meadowlark website: https://www.meadowlarkbookstore.com/s/stories/papas-pills and wherever readers buy books.