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Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Saltwood, by Leon Unruh, is awarded Finalist in the Midwest Book Awards
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
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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Friday, June 12, 2026
You're Invited, Grand Rapids! Book Launch for Poet Colleen Alles
Meadowlark Press releases
Luminescence in Season by Colleen Alles
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.
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
Wednesday, June 3, 2026
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 12th 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.
Friday, May 29, 2026
Interview with Meadowlark poet Tess Barry by Emily Mohn-Slate
CLICK HERE TO READ THE ORIGINAL SUBSTACK STORY
"opening doors to the unexpected and beautiful"
poet and MFA program director Tess Barry on reading as mindfulness, learning to hear your own voice, and the necessity of finding a community of writers ✨
This is a Beginner’s Mind interview, a series that explores the intersection of creative practice and mindfulness. Zen master Shunryū Suzuki Roshi said, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.” This series shines a light on the practices that sustain people in their daily lives and open the path to new possibilities. Subscribe for free below to make sure you don’t miss any future interviews. ✨
Today, I’m very excited to share an interview with poet and MFA Director, Tess Barry. The thing about Tess is that once you’re in her orbit, it’s inevitable that you will come to know and love her. For several years, I had the gift of being in a small poetry workshop with Tess and a few other poets I met through the Madwomen in the Attic. Over those years, Tess was deep in the writing of her debut poetry collection, The Marvelous Real, which just came out last fall. Once a month, we’d meet at Tess’s house on the South Side of Pittsburgh, and eat and drink and laugh and talk poems together. My time around Tess’s table shaped not only my poetics, but also my sense of how vital it is to have a community of smart readers as you do the hard work of making a book.
Tess Barry’s poems are defined by generosity and capaciousness. Her poems gather in and make room. There is a deep wildness, too—something strange and off-kilter that shifts our perceptions and changes the atmosphere. Richard Blanco says of Barry’s book, “The Marvelous Real is the perfect title for this inspiring collection. Real, because it graces the many seemingly ordinary moments of our lives, transfixing them into the extraordinary, and marvelous, because Barry guides us on a magical, dream-like journey through the many sublime spaces/places her poetic soul has witnessed, imagined, or desired. All this conveyed through a musicality that soothes us into our truest selves.”
Tess shares a rich window into her practices, many excellent reading recommendations, and a brilliant prompt from Terrance Hayes. Read on, friends.✨
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| Tess Barry |
What are your writing/creative practices? Do you have any rituals or habits that help you in your daily life?
My writing practice usually begins with reading. Ideally, I like to sit and read a writer I love before writing. It helps to still my mind and move my mind into a quiet creative space. I like to write in the morning first thing. I love to read poetry, but also love fiction and nonfiction.
Lately, I have been reading some wonderful books – The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, who joined us as a guest writer at Carlow’s January MFA residency and will join us in June in Dublin for the Ireland residency. It is an epistolary novel and just wonderful.
I am also loving Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh’s award-winning collection of lyric essays Unmothered, Untongued. Lee is a gorgeous poet and brilliant writer of all genres and her work astounds me in its depth and power. Lee takes language and form to new places. Lee is a mentor in our MFA program and a wonderful person and great teacher. I go back to collections of poetry I love and lately it has been Nick Laird’s Feel Free. He is an astounding poet and has visited our MFA program in Ireland.
What are the most important mindfulness/spiritual practices in your life?
Reading closely is a mindfulness practice and has been a balm and joy throughout my life. If I am feeling unsettled, reading stills me and returns me to myself. Spending time in nature is a great way of entering a mindful space, too. I love to be outdoors and find the natural world is another gateway into the creative self, a place to still the noise and quiet the mind.
Last spring we had robins build nests on our front and back porches and it was beautiful to see the nests created and have the robins swooping in and out when you opened the doors. It was magical. Mindfulness is like that, creating a space where you can open doors to the unexpected and beautiful. I love to listen to all kinds of music and music is transportive in a different way, sometimes listening to music can get me to a place of mindfulness. I have had many mindfulness practices I’d say from running, to walking, to gardening, walking our Saint Bernard, Lucy, and reading or listening to music. Reading helps to build one’s interior life and without that you would have nothing to draw from in terms of creativity. I am not sure who said “the best writers are writers who read,” but it is very true.
Do you have a mantra or motto related to your creative/mindfulness practices/life? What piece of wisdom do you have on a post-it note to help you remember it?
I don’t think I have a mantra or motto, but I have certain lines from writers I love or literature I love that I might write down, save, and return to.
When I was growing up my mother had a James Baldwin quote she posted around our house and it is a quote I always return to. It comes from Nobody Knows My Name, More Notes on a Native Son, and I’ll excerpt it here:
“To be with God is to really be involved with some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you. I conceive of my own life as a journey toward something I do not understand, which in the going toward makes me better. I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others. Love does not begin and end in the way we think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” —James Baldwin
I love this Baldwin quote and for me it speaks to the creative process—a journey toward something we do not understand, which in the going toward makes us better.
I also love this quote from the late Australian poet Les Murray (he is a poet I love and was always discussed as a candidate for the Nobel prize):
“Everything except language knows the meaning of existence” —Les Murray, from his poem “The Meaning of Existence”
Here’s the full poem:
The Meaning of Existence
Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.
Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.
—Les Murray, from Poems the Size of Photographs, (FSG, 2002).
Jack Gilbert is another favorite poet of mine and I love this quote from Gilbert’s poem “Tear it Down”:
“We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows.”
One of my favorite fiction writers is the brilliant Irish writer Claire Keegan. And I am so fortunate to have heard her read and speak about writing many times at Carlow’s MFA residencies in Ireland. She is a brilliant writer and teacher. I could fill a book with quotes from Claire’s talks to us and here is one I love:
“It is the reader in me that is drawn to the writing. I’m always striving to please the reader in me. What suits the reader in you? Trust the reader inside you.” —Claire Keegan
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| at a January MFA residency dinner in Pittsburgh with Carlow MFA alums K.J. Bryant, Rachel Walton, and Beth Casteel. Carlow’s MFA community is filled with people I love and admire and is where I spend much of my time. |
What helps you when you get stuck with your creative/writing or mindfulness practices?
It is helpful to me to read, to be in community with other writers and artists, to take a walk, visit a museum, listen to music. I had an experience at an exhibit some years ago that is a good metaphor for getting to that deep creative space—I saw an exhibit at The Cloisters in NYC–it is a sound installation by Janet Cardiff called The Forty Part Motet, and consisted of forty high-fidelity speakers positioned on stands in a large oval configuration throughout the Fuentidueña Chapel. The exhibit was a reworking of the forty-part motet Spem in alium numquam habui from the 16th century by Tudor composer Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505–1585). Spem in alium, which translates as “In No Other Is My Hope,” is perhaps Tallis’s most famous composition. As you walked through the exhibit you could stop at each speaker to hear individual unaccompanied voices but then also have the cumulative effect in this beautiful space of all voices. Spem in alium and The Forty Part Motet is a great metaphor for FINDING YOUR WAY to the creative process, getting close and stilling yourself and leaning in to hear one voice—your voice—which paradoxically is what gives you access to cumulative voices. I grew up in a family of 10 children and heard many voices in my home and hear them still. One central aspect to good writing is in the authenticity of one writer’s particular voice, but also the ability for a singular voice to convey the universal, the paradox of the particular voice that gives us access to the universal voice of humanity.
What does the phrase “beginner’s mind” mean to you? Does it connect to your creative/or spiritual practices? How?
I think “beginner’s mind” is a great way to think about creating art, writing. The more I learn the less I know about poetry and writing, about the nature and mystery of the creative process. The beginner’s mind suggests a state where you are uninhibited and not self-conscious, free to be honest. A state where you might act from instinct as opposed to being weighted down by expectation or foreknowledge. It suggests an expansive and natural place and so a perfect place from which to write. I’ve experienced a blissful state sometimes when writing when overtaken by self-forgetfulness and it is a magical thing. I think beginner’s mind is the space I am always trying to get to and write from, and in the age of distraction it is even more difficult to get there for long periods of time. Reading or music can get you there. Walking or exercise might, being out in nature. I think stepping away from phones and screens is key to getting there. The space of beginner’s mind is similar to moments of great joy or sadness, in that it is a space that allows for moments of sudden insight and clarity. It connects to my creative practices because it is a sacred space I want to return to. But it is also an elusive space given the age we are living through and the difficulty in getting to that deep space of quiet within ourselves when we are distracted 24/7 with screens and bombarded with information.
Are there any books / writers / teachers / approaches that have been transformative for you that you would recommend to readers?
There have been many books, writers, and teachers who have been transformative in my life. I love literature and have been shaped by many writers I return to including Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, Pablo Neruda, Seamus Heaney, Ruth Stone, Terrance Hayes, Claire Keegan, Carol Ann Duffy, Les Murray, Lynn Emanuel, Simon Armitage, Lucille Clifton, Sheila Carter-Jones (her latest book Every Hard Sweetness is really powerful and transformative, Rebecca Morgan Frank (a brilliant contemporary poet), and Kenzie Allen (her Cloud Missives is a beautiful book), as well as countless others.
I’ve had great teachers including our former MFA and Madwomen director Jan Beatty, Lynn Emanuel, all the Carlow MFA mentors in the U.S. and Ireland. In high school and grade school, I had exceptional English teachers who fostered my love of literature and desire to write. One of the best teachers I ever had was Marah Gubar (daughter of Susan Gubar) who taught in my graduate program at the University of Pittsburgh and now teaches at MIT. A fantastic person and professor who really understood literature’s power and a great storyteller. I took a literature course with her and learned so much about writing and reading.
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| at Trinity College, Dublin in June 2025 at the Carlow MFA residency. Tess Barry with Poets and MFA mentors Enda Wyley, Jean O’Brien, and Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh |
I would recommend to women writers Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops, a singular community of writers. I’ve been a Madwomen since 2007, a Madwomen mentor and instructor, and I think it is so important for writers to have a community. I found a great one in Madwomen and then through Carlow’s MFA program. I would also recommend starting a workshop with other writers.
There are so many communities that have been meaningful to my growth as a writer and to my life – Carlow’s Madwomen in the Attic, Carlow’s MFA program, and the many workshops I have been a part of, including the Josephine Street poets, who met at my house for a number of years (Lisa Alexander, Jennifer Jackson Berry, Rachel Mennies, Michelle Stoner, Bernadette Ulsamer, and Emily Mohn-Slate). The Josephine Street poets were a great group of post-MFA writers. This workshop was intimate and strengthened me as a writer and editor. The Josephine Street group remain poets I deeply admire and cherished friends.
I am so grateful for Carlow’s MFA community and the chance to come together with our mentors, students, alums, and guest writers twice a year. It is such a tonic to the darkness of our current world. One book I would recommend is: Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook (Univ of Iowa, 2010). It is a great book for teachers of poetry and is comprised of a number of short essays—great for teachers AND also a fantastic book for poets about poetry.
A Prompt from Tess ✨
This is one of my favorite prompts. It is by the wonderful poet Terrance Hayes and comes from a book entitled The Working Poet (Autumn House Press, 2009). It is a complicated, involved prompt but always produces great results. I encourage people to give it a try. CLICK HERE FOR PROMPT
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| Order your copy of The Marvelous Real HERE! |
TESS BARRY is the author of The Marvelous Real, a poetry collection published in December 2025 by Meadowlark Press and a finalist for Meadowlark’s 2025 Birdy Poetry Prize. Barry was shortlisted for the Manchester Poetry Prize. Twice a finalist for North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Prize and Aesthetica Magazine’s Poetry Award, she has also been shortlisted several times for the Bridport Poetry Prize. Her work has been widely published in the U.S. and abroad and appeared in journals such as: Aesthetica, The Compass Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, Cordella Magazine, Mslexia, The Louisville Review, North American Review, and The Stinging Fly, among others. She is a fellow of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project and the director of Carlow University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, a low-residency program in the U.S. and Ireland.
More from Tess ✨
- Order your copy of The Marvelous Real from Meadowlark Press!
- Follow Tess on IG @tess.barry88 and @carlowumfa to follow Carlow’s great MFA community
- Learn more at her website
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| One of my favorite poems from The Marvelous Real |
Your turn: What resonates with you? Do you have any other questions or thoughts to share with Tess?
Saturday, May 23, 2026
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Thursday, May 14, 2026
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
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
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