You're Invited! Local Writers Read, April 8th

 

Learn About Our Readers

Jerilynn Jones Henrikson

Like First Citizen William Allen White, Jerilynn is proud to be from Emporia. Her schooling is of this place. Here, she met and married her husband, Duane Henrikson, also an Emporia native. Their four children were raised here, and two of them have returned to raise their families here. One of her seven grandkids attended ESU. Jerilynn says she’s addicted to this town, this prairie and its sky. She is also addicted to words and the stories they build. She taught Language Arts at Emporia High School for 20 years, and after retiring in 2003 began tending to her desire to be a writer. She has written eight children’s picture books, a humorous memoir, and two historical fiction YA novels, including her award-winning Meadowlark book, A Time for Tears. 

Julie Sellers

Julie Sellers was born and raised in the Flint Hills near the small town of Florence, Kansas. Those great expanses of tallgrass prairie and reading fueled her imagination, and she began writing at an early age. After living in several states and countries, Julie is happy to make her home in Atchison, KS. She has published three academic books, and her creative prose and poetry have appeared in publications such as 105 Meadowlark Reader, Wanderlust, Kansas Time + Place, and more. Julie was the Kansas Author’s Club Prose Writer of the Year in 2020 and 2022. In the Kansas Voices Contest, she was the Overall Poetry Winner in 2022 and the Overall Prose Winner in 2017 and 2019. Her collection Kindred Verse: Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables (Blue Cedar Press) was released in 2021. Her debut novel, Ann of Sunflower Lane, was released by Meadowlark Press in 2022.

Duane L. Herrmann

Duane L. Herrmann’s family has lived in Kansas since the 1860s. His poetry celebrates the prairie and life on the prairie. He is an internationally published, award-winning poet and historian and the author of 11 books, including Family Plowing, a poetry collection published by Meadowlark in 2019. This book consists of new unpublished poems, published but previously uncollected poems, and some poems from previous collections, many revised. In addition to writing, he has carried baby kittens in his mouth, pet snakes, and has conversations with owls, but is careful not to anger them! Duane is an important voice in poetry, honoring the Midwest, its culture, its wildlife, and its people.

Lisa Stewart

At 54, Lisa Stewart set out to regain the fearless girl she once had been. Hot, homeless, and horseback, she snapped back into every original cell—riding her horse, Chief, 500 miles home. On an extraordinary homegoing from Kansas City to Bates and Vernon Counties in Missouri, Lisa exhausted herself, faced her past, trusted strangers, and stayed in the middle of her frightened horse to learn, perhaps for the first time, that this world was out to protect her. You can read all about it in her memoir, The Big Quiet, published by Meadowlark in 2021.

Olive Sullivan

Olive Sullivan holds an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine and an MA from the University of Colorado-Denver. A bookbinder, she lives in Pittsburg, KS, where she grew up. She loves taking long walks on the prairie with dogs and traveling anywhere that requires a passport–and almost anywhere that doesn’t. Olive’s Meadowlark books include Skiving Down the Bones, published in 2022, and Wandering Bone, published in 2017.

A’Kena LongBenton

A’Kena LongBenton is a metro Detroit native, who recently moved to Emporia (with her husband, Larry Benton) to teach instructional design and technology courses at Emporia State University. As a Harvard-trained college educator, A’Kena specializes in video productions of classic/cultural literature and other disciplines. She has written for a professional development magazine, academic/literary journals, and print/online educational newsletters in the disciplines of English, language arts, instructional technology, and distance learning. Her work has been featured in a regional criminology college textbook regarding multicultural issues facing America. A’Kena has written an academic-related booklet on public speaking, two books of poetry, and two booklets of short stories using only six words or less. Most of her 20+ writings have been in academia, but A’Kena takes immense joy in the moments when she can write for pleasure. Specifically, A’Kena was asked to write a poetic piece on Summer Palace (an imperial garden created by the Qing Dynasty) when she was teaching college professors in Beijing, China. 

New Book by Pittsburg Poet, Olive L. Sullivan

Pittsburg, KS – Olive L. Sullivan, Pittsburg, is the author of the newest book from Meadowlark Press, now available. Sullivan will be reading from Skiving Down the Bones at the Pittsburg Public Library at 6:00 pm on Monday, December 12. The event is free to the public.

“Long before the Pandemic locked us all into our homes, my personal period of isolation began with my 2017 diagnosis of Acute Myleoid Leukemia, a particularly deadly and fast acting cancer,” writes Sullivan in the book’s opening pages.

The resulting collection of poetry paints a picture of loss, but also of survival in the face of loss. Skiving “through layers of / loss and sorrow, honing in on what matters,” this book shows us how one woman faces her own impending death, the loss of her husband and her father, and comes out on the other side, very much alive, “only truth remaining.”

Sullivan is also the author of Wandering Bone (Meadowlark Press, 2017), a collection of travel poems. Her poetry has also appeared in several journals including The Midwest Quarterly, The Little Balkans Review, and the online magazine Dead Housekeeping, as well as in the award-winning anthology Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems. She has published short fiction and creative essays and performs regularly with the band Amanita. She holds an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine and an MA from the University of Colorado-Denver. A bookbinder, she lives in Pittsburg, Kansas, where she grew up. She loves taking long walks on the prairie with dogs and traveling anywhere that requires a passport—and almost anywhere that doesn’t.

Meadowlark Press is an independent publisher, specializing in books by Midwest authors since 2014. Learn more at meadowlarkbookstore.com. The book can be ordered from the author, from the publisher, and any bookstore. It is available locally at Books and Burrow in Pittsburg.

###

 

Celebrating a Bookaversary! Poems from Wandering Bone, by Olive L. Sullivan

Wandering Bone, Poems by Olive L. Sullivan
Meadowlark Books - December 2017
Purchase at the Meadowlark bookstore, or wherever you buy books!

Family Bed

Polished mahogany,
newlywed bedstead
gleaming in the back of a beat-up buckboard
all the way from St. Louis
to the Oklahoma prairie.
Not much: headboard,
footboard carved like the coach of a sleigh.
Homestead bedstead.
Thick red Russian quilts don’t show
the stains of childbed —
nor deathbed stains, neither.

Now the bed’s in Denver
covered with neon coral-colored sheets
and on Sundays a tangle of
bony legs and knobby little knees —
And over this sweet jumble of our limbs is
Grandma Larson’s memory quilt,
her daddy’s beard pulled snug
against my Frankie’s baby chin,
and the Christmas tree
from nineteen ought-six across
our ticklish toes.

Two cats quilt us all together,
fabric, flesh, sinew, bone and bed,
bedstead stitched fast with
their quick-pointing quilting feet,
their tabby tails tucked in around our shoulders.
Homestead, bedstead, bedrock, cats and all —
family bed.

©Olive L. Sullivan, 2017 – Wandering Bone

Landslip

If I were a planet,
continents would be shifting.

The Meadowlark Reader: Three by Olive Sullivan

Each Wednesday we will share an excerpt from a Meadowlark book. Use the "Follow our website" form on the right to receive Meadowlark updates by email. 

Family Photos

 The last time I remember talking to you,

you were wearing your purple silk dress,

your white hair twisted by the wind

that seemed would blow you over.

You had the little rocking chair in your hand

and you asked me who was stealing your things,

why my dad wouldn’t let you go home.

Meadowlark - December 2017
ISBN-13: 978-0996680189 

I was twelve. There was nothing I could do

but carry the chair and take you back inside with me

to the house we shared, even though you didn’t  recognize it.

The last time I saw you, in your satin-lined coffin,

my mother was wearing a red dress.

She said it was your happy day —

you were free, no longer confused,

no longer afraid.

 

When you died, I thought,

well, that’s me, no more stories, no more history,

but I can’t look through a photo album without you

leaning over my shoulder.

 

Years later, racked with sorrow and confusion,

my marriage flying to pieces,

my heart in chunks of ash and ice and searing fire and helpless,

I passed an old woman in the parking lot at King Soopers

holding a bag of groceries.

She looked lost. The wind rocked her,

wrapped her purple silk dress around her frail legs.

I came back to ask if she needed help

and you looked out of her eyes and told me

everything would be all right.

 

This photo shows Thanksgiving dinner, circa 1940,

twenty-some years before I will be born.

Everyone’s around the table —

that’s me in your sepia flowered dress —

there’s my face.

Another photo: there’s you and Grandpa on the beach

with Jack and Mabel, Roy and Virginia,

Grace and Clifford. Your dress, wet from the surf,

is plastered against your knees.

Virginia wears a daring bathing suit with short sleeves

and a ruffled neckline. I see it still so clearly,

but when I was back in Galveston last year,

only the postcards would reminisce with me.

 

Now I am a grandmother.

My grandbaby too looks out of that 1940s Thanksgiving photo —

she’s standing by my side wearing the body of a nine-year-old boy.

Face, eyes, dreams, names — the bones remember.

 

Wandering Bone 

Copyright © 2017 Olive Sullivan 

Meadowlark Books

Ghost City 

From the rooftop you can see 

it’s a city of ghosts — 

abandoned gardens, 

dead buildings, 

windows empty holes, 

black mildew like graffiti 

painting the yellow walls, 

sculpted cornucopias

crumbling to component dust. 

Only the stray dogs 

at the shanty town 

by the river still move, 

white shadows slinking 

along the malecón 

where lovers strolled 

holding hands above the colonial river. 

Now, garbage and feral children, 

cats and pigeons claim the streets. 

Wandering Bone 

Copyright © 2017 Olive Sullivan 

Meadowlark Books

Pin Oak

The world is turning shades of blue,
a wall of clouds moving in from the west
to meet the darkening sky behind us.
Pin Oak Lake lies still, waiting,
a palette for the sky to fill.
Two hawks rise up, their cries
eerie in the winter dusk,
their feathers striking the last notes of gold
from the setting sun. They
wheel and circle, a dance of rage
or love or something in between —
We cannot tell. It does not matter.

Wandering Bone 

Copyright © 2017 Olive Sullivan 

Meadowlark Books

 Learn More

 

A Publisher's Diary -- Oh the Places these Poets Take Me

I was looking forward to Poetry in Pittsburg, first because it was my chance, finally, to meet Olive Sullivan, author of Wandering Bone (Meadowlark 2017) in person. Olive has had a rather tough time, health wise, since the publication of her first poetry book. So I was thrilled to get this opportunity to help Olive debut her book in her hometown. We were joined by Ronda Miller, WaterSigns (Meadowlark 2017) and Izzy Wasserstein, When Creation Falls (Meadowlark 2018).

Any author who has ever organized a book event knows that they can be hit and miss. It's not unusual to hear a story about an author traveling for a reading to find perhaps only an audience of three. So there is always a certain amount of anxiety prior to a book event, and as soon as even a handful of attendees show up, you can hear the authors breathing great sighs of relief.

At this book event, however, we had more than a handful. We pretty much filled up our seating and ended up adding a few extra seats. Even better, the audience was warm and appreciative. It was truly one of the best poetry readings I have attended.

Much credit, of course, goes to Olive and the work she did sharing the news of our event with the locals. I spent the rest of the weekend feeling pretty blissful and relaxed. I wanted to figure out how to bottle the entire experience and perhaps repeat it, town by town, all across the state of Kansas.

 (And the second reason I was looking forward to Pittsburg? I attended school there, my freshman year of college, nearly 30 years ago! I have made a few trips back to visit friends, but the last one was too long ago. I was due for a return visit. And how wonderful that it was such a great one!)

I had a fabulous time in Pittsburg, Kansas, with poets Olive Sullivan, Ronda Miller, and Izzy Wasserstein. We were hosted at the fabulous Eclectic Soul Studio. It was a beautiful setting and the audience was warm and welcoming. As well, we were treated to music by the band, Amanita. 

For our Poetry in Pittsburg event, we also enjoyed the following before and after press!

July 20, 2018 - Joplin Globe
Pittsburg Poet Sullivan to Read from Latest Book

July 21, 2018 -- KOAM TV, Channel 7 Pittsburg
Book Launch

Celebrating Poetry in Pittsburg at the Eclectic Soul Studio on July 21

Pittsburg, KS – Three poets will be reading and talking about poetry on Saturday, July 21, 4-6pm at the Eclectic Soul Studio, 601 North Broadway. All have had books published by Meadowlark Books, Emporia, within the last year.

Olive Sullivan, Pittsburg, debuts Wandering Bone, her first full-length book of poetry. In addition to writing, Sullivan performs in the band Amanita, and in her free time, likes to fly-fish with her husband, the scholar and writer Stephen Harmon; takes long walks with dogs; and travel anywhere that requires a passport. She is an apprentice bookbinder.

Sullivan will be joined by Ronda Miller, Lawrence, author of

WaterSigns and MoonStain, both published by Meadowlark Books. Miller is the current state president of Kansas Authors Club, a writing organization that has been supporting authors since 1902. She is a Life Coach who specializes in working with clients who have lost someone to homicide.

The third poet in the trio is Izzy Wasserstein, Topeka,  author of When Creation Falls. Wasserstein teaches English at Washburn University, writes poetry and fiction, and shares a house with a variety of animal companions and the writer Nora E. Derrington. Her first poetry collection, This Ecstacy They Call Damnation, was a 2013 Kansas Notable Book.

Meadowlark Books is an independent publisher, specializing in printing books by authors from the heartland since 2014. Learn more at www.meadowlark-books.com.

The event will take place at Eclectic Soul Studio in Pittsburg. Eclectic Soul Studio offers a variety of classes and workshops including belly dancing. Owner Lastacia Ross is a certified intuitive healer. who offers reiki and meditation as well as sound healing and other services. 

###

A Publisher’s Diary – Celebrating Poetry Month in April

I don’t read poetry.

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a dozen times.

Beyond a collection of poems I wrote in high school, an early book-binding experiment that included glitter on the cover, I adopted the “I don’t read poetry” stance for more years than I would care to admit. Thankfully, I've gotten the opportunity to spend a lot of time with poets in the last couple of decades. I have found poetry workshops among my favorite gatherings of writers to attend, and I absolutely love going to readings, learning to hear the voice of a poet so well they continue reciting poetry to me, inside my head, as I turn the pages of their books.

Poet by poet, I fall in love with poetry.

Ronda Miller is the current president of the Kansas AuthorsClub, a life coach for people who have lost someone to homicide, and an advocate for special needs children. I first began reading/listening to Ronda’s poetry through KAC workshops and readings where she not only brought me to attention with her poetry (she sometimes writes on subjects I might once have been too shy/prudish to talk about), but Ronda encouraged me to exercise my voice, to tell my own truths through poetry, as well. Ronda’s two books of poetry have a special place on my bookshelf. MoonStain was the very first poetry book published by Meadowlark in 2015, and we were delighted to add WaterSigns in 2017.  I have learned so much through Ronda’s poetry. I have gained an intimacy with subjects I only knew peripherally (or perhaps simply would not admit I knew) and greater empathy for women’s issues and women, in general. Ronda has become one of my near-daily touchstones. If I am not reading her poetry, we might be exchanging notes on our shared interest in Kansas Authors Club, our common appreciation for fine desserts, or advice and life tidbits as they occur.

Kevin Rabas is the 2017-2019 Kansas Poet Laureate, and I always enjoy bragging that he was a Meadowlark author and poet first. Without Kevin in my life, there would be no Meadowlark. He was a co-conspirator on Green Bike, as well as author of the beautiful volume of poetry and short prose, Songs of My Father (Meadowlark 2016). Kevin’s enthusiasm for the arts and poetry is catching. If I am ever in need of a spark of creative confidence, a bit of time in Kevin’s presence will usually do it. There is ample opportunity to hear from Kevin directly as he tours Kansas finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary (a complete schedule can be found at the Kansas Humanities website) or you can almost always find him at First Fridays at Ellen Plumb’s City Bookstore in Emporia. Kevin will also be the keynote speaker at the Kansas Authors Club annual writing convention, which takes place in Salina this year. I am excited to add Kevin’s new book, Like Buddah-Calm Bird, to the Meadowlark poetry shelf in 2018.

Cheryl Unruh is my sister from another mother, as well as my first friend in what was once-upon-a-time my new life in Emporia. I fell in love with Cheryl via her writing on her website and her long-running Emporia Gazette column, “Flyover People,” which eventually became two amazing volumes of Kansas essays. I was delighted in 2017 to publish Cheryl’s first volume of poetry, Walking on Water, where she explores the themes of Kansas/Kansans/children of the prairie in poetry with the same attention to detail she gives her prose. Cheryl’s humor shines in her poetry, as well as her heart. So relatable, I find myself tacking words from Cheryl to my mirror and inside the covers of my personal journals.

Olive Sullivan is a poet I have had the pleasure of getting to know solely through her poetry. Her book, Wandering Bone, contains some of my favorite poems, which I am sharing as part of my personal celebration of poetry this month.

There are currently five books of poetry on the Meadowlark bookshelf, with three terrific new volumes planned for 2018, including collections by Izzy Wasserstein and Tyler Robert Sheldon.

To celebrate National Poetry Month, I decided to give a gift of poetry to any reader who asked. Meadowlark Books has created a Poetry Sampler that includes selections from all of our poetry books, including our 2018 poetry books! Sign up via the form below to get this sampler (PDF format) delivered to your email inbox. It’s nearly ready to go!

Tracy Million Simmons

Meadowlark Books

Click here to get a copy of The Meadowlark Books Poetry Sampler - 2018

Meadowlark Books Debuts Four New Books at Author Meet & Greet at Ellen Plumb’s City Bookstore

---

12/10 update: The Emporia Gazette added an interview and did so much more with this! Thank you to Regina Murphy for this coverage. Read the Gazette article here.

---

Emporia publisher, Meadowlark Books, will host an Author Meet and Greet at Ellen Plumb’s City Bookstore on Friday, December 8, 2017, from 5-7pm. Authors will read, visit with readers, and sign books for this come-and-go event. There will be snacks and drawings for giveaways.

The author lineup for the event includes Kansas Poet Laureate, Kevin Rabas, reading from his book of poetry, Songs for my Father; Ronda Miller, Kansas Authors Club state president in 2018 and author of MoonStain and WaterSigns, reading her latest poetry; and founder of Meadowlark, Tracy Million Simmons, reading from A Life in Progress, and Other Short Stories.

Michael D. Graves, 2016 Kansas Notable Book Award recipient, will be reading from the newly released, second-installment of his Pete Stone, Private Investigator series, Shadow of Death. The novel, set in 1930s Wichita, follows Stone, who wakes up in jail accused of killing a cop. Stone must prove his innocence before he’s abandoned by his clients, his friends, and one special lady.

Cheryl Unruh, former Gazette columnist and two-time Kansas Notable author, Flyover People (2011) and Waiting on the Sky (2015), will read from her poetry book, Walking on Water.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, three-time notable book award winner and 2009-2013 Kansas Poet Laureate, will read from her newest book, Everyday Magic: Field Notes on the Mundane and the Miraculous, which features the best of her blog of the same title, and highlights many topics such as travel and homecoming, beloveds and the art of loving, grief and resilience, arts and politics, and spirits and being a body.

Emporia State University student and fantasy writer, Hannah Jeffers-Huser, will be reading from What Lies Beyond, Book I of the Salacir Chronicles. Also featured at the event will be James Kenyon, a northwestern Kansas native who has published a collection of short memoirs, A Cow for College, recollections of growing up on the family farm, and Olive L. Sullivan’s book of poetry, Wandering Bone.

Meadowlark Books is an Emporia based publisher which got its start in 2014 with the publication of Green Bike, a group novel by Rabas, Graves, and Simmons. The publisher now has thirteen titles by poets and authors writing about and/or from Kansas, including the 2016 Kansas Notable Book, To Leave a Shadow by Michael D. Graves. The publisher also won the 2016 “It Looks Like A Million” book design award by the Kansas Authors Club, with the titles To Leave a Shadow and MoonStain. More about Meadowlark Books can be found at meadowlark-books.com. All Meadowlark titles are for sale on the publisher’s website, at Ellen Plumb’s City Bookstore at 1122 Commercial, Emporia, KS, and can be ordered through any online or independent bookstore.

###