The Last Rancher Selected to Represent Kansas in the 2026 Great Reads from Great Places program.

The Kansas Center for the Book and the State Library of Kansas have selected two books to represent the state in the 2026 Great Reads from Great Places program. The adult selection is The Last Rancher by Robert Rebein. The novel follows Leroy and Caroline Wagner, who run the Bar W Ranch near Dodge City. After Leroy is seriously injured, he can no longer work the land. Their three children return home to help save the ranch and rebuild family relationships.

The youth selection is “Outdoor Farm, Indoor Farm” by Lindsay H. Metcalf. The book follows two young pen pals as they learn how food is grown on both traditional outdoor farms and indoor farms. It also introduces readers to modern farming technology, including tractors and drones.

Both books were previously named Kansas Notable Books. The Great Reads from Great Places program highlights one adult and one youth title from each state to celebrate local authors and encourage reading. Visit library.ks.gov/KSGreatReads for more information. 

Meadowlark Welcomes Kaylan McCann, Summer Intern!

We are thrilled to welcome Kaylan McCann as our summer intern! Here's a little bit about her!

Kaylan McCann

Kaylan McCann graduated from Frostburg State University with a bachelor's in English and minors in Spanish and creative writing. She writes poetry and fiction. Her hobbies include reading, writing, drawing, crocheting, and playing video games. She has an orange cat named Link who is as adventurous as his namesake, and trying every AriZona iced tea flavor is on her bucket list. She's previously edited for FSU's Bittersweet and #Sustain, and has pieces in both.

 Now Available From Meadowlark Press:

On the Other Side of the Ashes by Dmitry Blizniuk translated by Sergey Gerasimov

Ukrainian poet Dmitry Blizniuk faces war every day. These are the defining moments of war–trembling walls, the “silence between / two artillery shells,” dirty faces of kids, an understanding that any moment could be the last, whole cities in despair. This book and all of its gruesome, sad, and sentimental realities offer an understanding of the present-day lives of the Ukrainian people. Dmitry Blizniuk, who resides in Kharkov, is a messenger and an ambassador and, amid the destruction, beholds small beauties, such as “sunlight . . . growing through an apple tree.” Using both the original Ukrainian and the English translation, this book serves as a bridge between those who are on the inside and those who are not.

sample poems by Dmitry Blizniuk Don’t Ask Me for Whom Don’t ask me for whom this bell tolls, don’t ask me. This bell tolls for itself. The bell, like a baby giraffe, has gotten lost in the terrible concrete forest of destroyed homes, schools, and hospitals. Of wrecked tanks and burned down cars. Sirens wail, pulsing like an aching tooth. It’s a new morning in the earth paradise. Another morning. Good morning to everyone. My Wife Hangs Winter Clothing in the Closet my wife hangs winter clothing in the closet I ask myself if I am ever going to put them on again or should I say goodbye to the seasons of the year, to the parka, to the woolen sweater forever? those clothes remember the war, they’ve absorbed its horror like hair absorbs the smell of cigarettes. they’ll never forget. the destroyed world is irreversible.

Dmitry Blizniuk

Sergey Gerasimov, translator

Pre-order: On the Other Side of the Ashes

Saltwood, by Leon Unruh, is awarded Finalist in the Midwest Book Awards

 

In the news: On June 13, Saltwood, a thriller by Leon Unruh, received the Finalist Award at the Midwest Book Awards in St. Paul, MN. Congratulations, Leon!

Meadowlark Press Releases Memoir by Wichita Educator

Educator’s Dedication to Cultural Awareness and Innovative Teaching Brings Rewards to Kansas Students and Beyond

In Uncharted Paths: A Memoir of Teaching and Learning, Wichita teacher Lakshmi Kambampati shares the most important lessons of her career: not the ones she taught, but the ones she learned from students and communities around the world.

“Uncharted Paths invites us to share a teacher’s colorful and endearing journey among students she met and the teaching problems she encountered in classrooms across the world. The adventures of this teacher-ambassador are sometimes ironic and often thrilling. As years pass, she learns how education happens beyond the seas and in cultures little known to us. Go with her—you’ll be glad you did,” writes William F Woods, PhD, Professor Emeritus of English, Wichita State University.

Originally from India, Kambampati has called Wichita, Kansas, her home for the past four decades. This memoir, a collection of recollections, chronicles her journey as an immigrant, an educator, and a traveler. Through moments of cultural misunderstandings, personal triumphs, and professional growth, she offers insights that inspire readers to embrace diversity, navigate challenges, and find purpose in service.

With a Master of Science in Geography and a Master of Education in School Administration, she taught mathematics at Butler Com­mun­ity College and Wichita Technical College, history at Friends University, and mathematics for Wichita Public Schools.

Her passion for education has taken her across the world. Highlights of her career include receiving a Fulbright Professional Excellence Award, serving as a two-time Peace Corps Volunteer, and working as a U.S. State Department-sponsored English Language Fellow. She trained teachers in India and Liberia, empowered women entrepreneurs in Tanzania, and shared innovative teach­ing methods globally. These experiences are shared in her memoir.

Her contributions earned regional and national recognition, including the City of Wichita’s proclamation of August 15, 2000, as “Lakshmi Kambampati Day” and ING Ltd.’s “Unsung Hero” award for her creative teaching approaches. She has presented at national and inter­national conferences on education and pedagogy, bridging cultures through knowledge exchange.

The 232-page book is now available in paperback ($25) and ebook ($9) wherever books are sold.

Meadowlark Press, established in Emporia in 2014, publishes novels, memoirs, poetry and children’s books with a focus on Midwestern settings and authors. Meadowlark Press also awards the annual Birdy Prize to the best full-length collection of poetry nationwide.

Full-page detail on the Meadowlark website: https://www.meadowlarkbookstore.com/s/stories/uncharted-paths-a-memoir-of-teaching-and-learning

For bulk orders or more information, visit meadowlarkbookstore.com or email info@meadowlark-books.com.

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You're Invited, Grand Rapids! Book Launch for Poet Colleen Alles

Meadowlark Press releases 

Luminescence in Season by Colleen Alles

 Meadowlark Press announces the release of Luminescence in Season by Colleen Alles! Alles will be celebrating the release of this book from 5:30-8:00 p.m. on July 9 at Fountain Street Church Chapel in Grand Rapids, alongside Michigan Poet Eric Greinke.

Book Launch Details:

5:30-8:00 p.m., July 9

Fountain Street Church Chapel

24 Fountain St NE

Grand Rapids, MI 49503

Book Description:

The poems in Luminescence in Season pause to consider the wonders of everyday interactions: a summer wedding, a neighbor’s wandering dog, a trip to the public museum to see the carousel in motion. Anchored by the triptych poem, “Travelogue” and rendered in three parts, these poems take the reader from the depths of black moss to the shallow water at the surface where life’s true ecstasies can be found.

About the Author:

Colleen Alles is a writer, former librarian & teacher, and Michigan girl for life. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Michigan State University (2005) and her MLIS from Wayne State University (2015). Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Red Cedar Review, Tar River Poetry, The Write Michigan Anthology, The Michigan Poet, and other places. Colleen is co-editor for fiction with Barren Magazine and is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at Spalding University (Louisville, KY). Her most recent book of poetry was recently a finalist for the Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award. Colleen is represented by Jenna Satterthwaite (Storm Literary Agency). Colleen writes, runs, reads, and worries she wouldn’t make sense outside the Midwest. You can find her online at www.colleenalles.com

 

What Readers Are Saying:

In her new collection of poems, Luminescence in Season, poet Colleen Alles holds up a glowing lantern, illuminating page by page. In her beautiful poems, which seem like prayers, she guides us to and past the wellsprings of those we love, some sitting around our dinner tables each night, some transitioning, some already gone, though only outwardly so. 

—Kathleen Driskell, author of Goat-Footed Gods and Kentucky Poet Laureate
                2025-26
 
In these tender, quiet poems, Colleen Alles captures daily moments that might otherwise escape our notice—cleaning her son’s fingerprints from a mirror, making a cup of tea, skipping stones, comforting a beloved dog during a storm, riding a carousel with her daughter. Being with these poems is a joy. Through the poet’s careful attention, seemingly ordinary moments transform into meditations, odes, and prayers. I want to linger in this book, where, as Alles writes of baking a cake in a small house, “the sweetness touches every room.”

—Kathleen McGookey, author of Paper Sky

 The book is available for purchase now at meadowlarkbookstore.com or anywhere you buy books!

Meadowlark Press releases historical novel set in Kansas and Missouri in early 20th century

 Set for release on June 23, Heaven in a Wildflower, a novel by Cynthia Mines, opens in a prairie parsonage in central Kansas where Kristin Thorsen escapes her lonely existence through the Oz books of L. Frank Baum and stories of the magnificent 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

            Set among fields of emerald-green winter wheat, the story takes on Oz overtones when Kristin is befriended by a neighbor widow and a local seed merchant on a journey to trust her heart and summon the courage to explore beyond the vast horizon. She leaves the prairie for  Kansas City where she is hired as a Harvey Girl at Union Station in the early 1920s and ventures into the 12^th and Vine jazz district.  

            “(The author) has thoughtfully and lovingly distilled Kansas history into a page-turning novel,” wrote Ted Ayres, producer/host of “Inside the Cover,” a PBS Kansas program, in an advance review. “This coming-of-age story will educate, inform, and entertain readers of all ages.”

For more than four decades, Mines has researched Kansas history through roles as publisher-editor of Travel Kansas magazine for 32 years, as a reporter for the Wichita Business Journal, and as the author of the nonfiction book, For the Sake of Art: The Story of a Kansas Renaissance, which was named a Kansas Notable Book in 2016. Her award-winning freelance projects have included travel articles for the Los Angeles Times, the Kansas City Star, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Fodor’s travel books. This is her first novel. 

 A sneak peek of the book will be available during a book signing hosted by Hemslojd during Midsummer’s Festival on June 20 in Lindsborg, Kansas, the prototype for the Swedish-settled community at the heart of the book.    

The 360-page book will be available after June 23 in hard cover ($38), paperback ($25), ebook ($12) and audiobook narrated by Marsha Hoover ($16) wherever books are sold. The book has been certified free of AI by the Authors Guild.

Meadowlark Press, established in Emporia in 2014, publishes novels, memoirs, poetry and children’s books with a focus on Midwestern settings and authors. Meadowlark Press also awards the annual Birdy Prize to the best full-length collection of poetry nationwide.

To order, visit meadowlarkbookstore.com 

More information about the author is at cynthiamines.com.