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.

 

Open Reading Period: February 1 - March 15, 2026

We are now reading for our 2027 bookshelf! If you have a completed manuscript, spend some time with our submission guidelines to decide if we might be a good fit. 

2025 Birdy Poetry Prize Finalist Book Launch Details! The Marvelous Real by Tess Barry

2025 Birdy Poetry Prize Finalist

Click HERE to place your order!

Book Launch Event: January 3, 4:30 p.m.
Carlow University, Gailliot Center

In The Marvelous Real, Tess Barry illuminates the ordinary to reveal the extraordinary mystery and majesty of life, love, death, family, and the ghostly world beyond. With precise, vivid language, Barry renders a reality that is always more than meets the eye, always shifting and deepening our perception of the known and unknown. Barry invites readers into a lyrical world of joy, wonder, loss, humor, and human connection. The Marvelous Real is a journey in sound, rhythm, and imagery—from a mother as Walden Pond, to déjà vu in Old San Juan, to a childhood game of old church lady bank robbers, a work from Picasso’s Blue Period, and a brother’s hands. These poems illustrate the power of language to embody and transcend human experience. Barry’s debut is indeed a marvelous real.

Tess 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 four times for the Bridport Poetry Prize. Her work has been widely published in the US and abroad and has appeared in journals, such as: Aesthetica, The Compass Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, Cordella Magazine, Mslexia, The Louisville Review, North American Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Stinging Fly, among others. Barry holds an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Carlow University and an MA in English from the University of Pittsburgh. 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 US and Ireland.

What Readers are Saying:
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.
—Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of Homeland of My Body

These poems touch on the magic and mystery of childhood mixed with the serene undercurrent of nature and observations from a growing transcendence of the very world we understand as real. In these poems you can’t get lost, only found.
—Sheila Carter-Jones, author of Every Hard Sweetness

Emptied of all but wildness, Tess Barry’s poetry lets the energy of life flood across the page: a mother as Walden Pond, a sailor on a bus to Atlantic City, the loneliness of J. D. Salinger, the edgy Irish diaspora, all her essences of being alive transform the reader, reminding us that “My whole life has been ripe with wild fruit.” The Marvelous Real is a major achievement in Irish-American poetry.
—Thomas McCarthy, Irish author of Pandemonium and Plenitude

Tess Barry celebrates being alive in The Marvelous Real. These are poems to treasure, to read and reread, a poet immersed in and enchanted by language.
—Jean O’Brien, Irish author of Stars Burn Regardless

Tess Barry’s The Marvelous Real is a paean to the small, seemingly ordinary moments of our lives—infusing these moments with magic, wonder, and a capacious gratitude in which the real is, indeed, rendered exceedingly marvelous. These are earthy poems filled with tenderness, humor, and the imagination of a glorious mind. The Marvelous Real is a sensual and stunningly beautiful debut.
—Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh, author of Tsunami vs. the Fukushima 50