Bart Edelman's poem "Fuse" published by Abandoned Mine

 Meadowlark poet Bart Edelman (Whistling to Trick the Wind, 2021) recently had his poem "Fuse" published in the Third Issue of Abandoned Mine! Congratulations, Bart!

Join us for the Launch Celebration of Ann of Sunflower Lane

 

October 7, 2022

6:30 PM CST

Join author Julie A. Sellers & Meadowlark Press on Zoom to celebrate the launch of Ann of Sunflower Lane.

Register to receive a Zoom link at tinyurl.com/SunflowerLane.

Order your copy of the book at meadowlarkbookstore.com. 

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Meadowlark Press announces the publication of Ann of Sunflower Lane by award-winning author Julie A. Sellers. Sellers’s book is a tribute to the Kansas Flint Hills, booklovers and reading, and Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.

 

Sellers explains that the novel is not an adaptation of Montgomery’s classic novel, but a story of the way books and reading impact readers. “The title character, Ann Alwyn, is an avid reader, and when she comes to live with the grandparents she never knew at Sunflower Lane farm, she discovers a kindred spirit in an old edition of Anne of Green Gables. Her reading of that and other texts frames her experiences as she integrates herself into life on the farm and in the small-town community of Storey, Kansas.”

 

“Ann of Sunflower Lane is a love-letter to books and reading, and especially to the power of Anne of Green Gables to reflect and to shape life,” says Elizabeth Rollins Epperly, Professor Emerita and founder of the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island.

 

Marah Gubar, Associate Professor of Literature at MIT and author of Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children’s Literature (2009), said, “I love how vividly this book conjures up contemporary rural life in a small town, chronicling how the transplanted Ann comes to terms with her troubled family history by putting down new roots and reinvigorating old ones.”

 

“I love this character, this book. Readers of all ages will fall in love with Ann of Sunflower Lane,” said Kansas writer Cheryl Unruh, author of Gravedigger’s Daughter: Vignettes from a Small Kansas Town.

 

Sellers was the Kansas Authors Club 2020 Prose Writer of the Year and the Overall Poetry (2022) and Prose (2017, 2019) winner of the Kansas Voices Writing Contest sponsored by the Winfield Arts and Humanities Council. She is the author of Kindred Verse: Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables (Blue Cedar Press, 2021).

 

Sellers is available for readings for interested groups. For more information, visit the author’s website at www.julieasellers.com.

Ann of Sunflower Lane, by Julie A. Sellers

  

Author Julie A. Sellers

Meadowlark Poet Bart Edelman reads at A Day of Poetry in Los Angeles

Bart Edelman, author of Whistling to Trick the Wind, was among the Los Angeles-area poets to participate in A Day of Poetry in Los Angeles! Watch him read his poem "In Heaven" in the video below (also linked HERE), timestamp 3:08:16. 

"In Heaven" was published in the Spring 2022 San Pedro River Review. The poem reads:

The A Day of Poetry in Los Angeles event received wide media coverage. Check out more pictures, videos, and news stories about the event at these links:

• Full Recording of Event on LA CityView35 (Bart first appears at 2:47:38)
• Event Photos
• Media Coverage on NBCLA
• Media Coverage on The Eastsider
• Media Coverage on LA This Week

Arlice Davenport's Kind of Blue Book Launch Recording

 Last month, Arlice Davenport's third poetry collection,
Kind of Blue, came into the world! 

Thank you so much to those who attended the book launch party that evening! If you didn't make it, you can still be a part of (nearly) all the fun by watching the recording of the book launch HERE. 

Find Kind of Blue  (and Arlice's other books)
at the Meadowlark bookstore
or anywhere else you buy books!

Visit us at the Kansas Book Festival on Saturday, September 24

 Meadowlark Press looks forward to visiting with you at the 11th annual Kansas Book Festival on Saturday, September 24, 2022 at Washburn University in Topeka. The event will be hosted by the Mabee Library at the center of campus.

Presentations include author talks, outdoor performances, a book-art exhibit, food trucks, and exhibitor tents. Meadowlark will have our books available for sale, including two 2022 Kansas Notable Titles: Ava: A Year of Adventure in the Life of an American Avocet, by Mandy Kern, illustrated by Onalee Nicklin and Blue Collar Saint, poems by Brenda Leigh White.

Saturday, September 24, 2022, 9:00AM to 4:00PM

Free Admission and Open to the General Public

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9:00AM Kansas Notable Book Awards, Mabee Library Lounge

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3:00PM Straight Talk from Kansas Publishers, Mabee Library, Bottom Level 

Panel including Meadowlark Press, Blue Cedar Press, Personal Chapters, University Press of Kansas & Flint Hills Publishing

Learn more about the event at kansasbookfestival.com. 

2022 Kansas Notable Titles by Meadowlark Press

Remembering Mike Hartnett

 

I got the sad news last evening that Meadowlark author, Mike Hartnett, has passed away. 

Mike Hartnett was a retired high school English/Speech teacher and business journalist (magazine columnist and editor and newsletter publisher), winning awards from the American Society of Business Press Editors. He led a memoir-writing group for the Douglas County Senior Citizen Center and was a co-leader of a men’s writing group at the Douglas County Jail.

Mike was the co-author of a play, Worthy of the Name, which was presented at Chicago’s Cultural Affairs Center, and a collaborator of a readers’ theater production, Prose & Cons, Voices From Behind Bars. He was the author of a memoir, And I Cried, Too: Confronting Evil in a Small Town (Meadowlark, 2019).

When I first received Mike's manuscript, it had been more than 40 years in the making. I met a kind and thoughtful man who obviously still carried the weight of the events from his years at Lincoln College. We talked extensively about his desire to publish his book, and his decision to publish it now, finally, in 2019. Almost as soon as he had signed his publishing contract, Mike's wife Barbara was diagnosed with cancer. The pleasure of seeing his book come to life was mixed with the pain of sharing his final years with the love of his life. All our plans for a book launch and book tours were set aside, though the book has done exceptionally well despite all of life's distractions. Barbara passed away in the spring of 2021.

Through Mike, I met the poet Antonio Sanchez-Day (now deceased), and became better acquainted with Brian Daldorph, both of whom became/will become Meadowlark authors. Mike will forever be considered a cornerstone author of Meadowlark Press. He took a chance on me when I was still relatively small and less experienced. His book solidified Meadowlark as a Midwest press, and much enlarged our audience of readers.

In our most recent email exchange a few weeks ago, I shared my delight at the success his book was achieving in ebook format. He replied immediately that he was "doing ok" and shared future events where we might have an opportunity to visit in person. I am very sorry to miss those visits. 

Time is often so much shorter than we imagine it will be.

Tracy Million Simmons

Owner/Publisher, Meadowlark Press

Birdy Poetry Prize + Bart Edelman Judge's Feature + Cupping Our Palms Sneak Peek

 

Click on image above for submission details!

THE BIRDY POETRY PRIZE IS OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS!

In honor of this time of year, we will be celebrating myriad aspects of the Birdy Poetry Prize. We begin the celebration with a feature on the 2022 Birdy Poetry Prize judge, Bart Edelman, and the winning manuscript (soon-to-be-book) he selected, Cupping Our Palms by Jonathan Greenhause!

About Bart Edelman:

Bart Edelman was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and spent his childhood in Teaneck. He earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Hofstra University. He has taught at Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, Santa Monica College, West Los Angeles College, Long Beach City College, UCLA, and Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal. Most recently, he was appointed to the Affiliate Faculty in the MFA Program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Edelman served as Poet-in-Residence at Monroe College of the State University of New York. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He has been awarded grants and fellowships from the United States Department of Education, the University of Southern California, and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin to conduct literary research in India, Egypt, Nigeria and Poland. In addition, he received National Endowment for the Humanities grants for a series of lectures at public libraries on “The Common Good: Individualism and Commitment in American Life,” and “Trails: Toward a New Western History.” Collections of his work include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, and Whistling to Trick the Wind. He lives in Pasadena, California.

Bart Edelman's Judge's Statement on Selecting Cupping Our Palms by Jonathan Greenhause as the 2022 Birdy Poetry Prize Winner:

These provocative, trustworthy poems owe their strength to narrators who are not afraid to confront their own sense of awe, misgivings, and incredulity, as it pertains to their various stations in life. The prevailing subject of parenthood, and what it means to shepherd children through the stages of growth, keeps circling in this superb collection–none more so than in “The Perfect Dad.” Long before this final section, however, we witness personal journeys towards reconciliation and how to parent not only a child, but also humankind, on a practical, universal level. Cupping Our Palms has a stirring habit of casting its readers far out into a sea of curiosity and wonder, and, then, rather methodically, reeling or easing its audience back to shore, turn by gradual turn, through its eloquent language and structural change of pace. Compelling as “Beacons of Light,” “Not for Sale,” “Parabolic,” and “Relics” appear, they’re gateways to more profound questions the poet addresses and destiny poses, to all readers. Yes, here are rich, haunting poems, replete with honest voices whose declarations linger, long after the collection is complete–lessons well learned–but never quite at rest.

Learn more about Bart Edelman HERE

Poems from Cupping Our Palms

Learn more about, and preorder, Cupping Our Palms HERE

About Jonathan Greenhause:

Jonathan Greenhause has won the Ledbury Poetry Competition, Aesthetica Magazine’s Creative Writing Award in Poetry, the Telluride Institute’s Fischer Poetry Prize, and the Prism Review Poetry Prize, and his poems have appeared in America, december, New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Poetry Society, The Rialto, RHINO, Subtropics, and the Times Literary Supplement. Jonathan lives in Jersey City with his wife and their two sons, all within a stone’s throw of the local freight line.