Meadowlark Press, LLC

Book Launch: Papa's Pills by Rosemary Maxey

2026-03-03T16:50:00.003-06:00

Help us welcome Meadowlark Intern, Leon Enabnit

2026-03-03T13:06:00.004-06:00

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.

2026-02-09T11:05:00.001-06:00

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

2026-01-30T09:46:00.004-06:00

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

2025-12-26T13:44:00.001-06:00

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

You're Invited! Virtual Book Launch Event for Afloat by Catherine Anderson (2025 Birdy Poetry Prize Winner)!

2025-12-12T14:30:00.001-06:00

Please join 2025 Birdy Poetry Prize Winner Catherine Anderson
for a reading and discussion of Afloat!

When: December 15th, 7 p.m. CT

Where: Zoom (click link to join)

Get your copy of Afloat HERE!

In Afloat, Catherine Anderson inspects the world around her with the detail of a scientist, the imagery of a painter, and the introspection of a philosopher. Through frequently “quotidian” scenarios—learning to knit, cutting rhubarb, purchasing flowers at the grocery store—Anderson ruminates on themes of love, spirituality, and justice, celebrating the beauty and wonder around us but not shying away from the loss and pain that so often accompany them. These poems saint all they touch—feather dancers, bell ringers, rubber pastries, tardigrades—revealing the holy in the everyday and the profound ties that connect us to each other, the natural world, and all that has come before. Winner of the 2025 Birdy Poetry Prize by Meadowlark Press.

About the Author:
Catherine Anderson has published five collections of poetry, including Everyone I Love Immortal (Woodley Press, 2019), Woman with a Gambling Mania (Mayapple Press, 2014), The Work of Hands (Perugia Press, 2000), In the Mother Tongue (Alice James Books, 1983), and Afloat (Meadowlark Press, 2025). In 2022, a memoir about her late brother who had nonspeaking autism, My Brother Speaks in Dreams: Of Family, Beauty & Belonging, was published by Wising Up Press. She has been recognized for her poetry by the Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation, the Southern Humanities Review, the I-70 Review and the Crab Orchard Review. Over the years, her poems have also appeared in the Southern Review, the Harvard Review, and the Dunes Review, among many others. She lives in Kansas City, where she has worked for over twenty years assisting new immigrants and refugees to become skilled interpreters. Learn more about Catherine at www.catherineanderson.uno

A Word from the 2025 Birdy Poetry Prize Judge, Jose Faus, author of The Life and Times of José Calderon:
The punch of certain lines concusses long after you’ve closed Afloat— “From a darkness known only to her / into a light both of us could see”—the author explores the many facets, triumphs, illusions, delusions, highs and lows of being mother, daughter, sister, lover, teacher, creator, nurturer, icon, and rebel. In forceful narrative poems part memoir, lyric, ode, elegy, manifesto, a vibrant musicality, urgent in its revelations, carries from gasp to gasp. These are challenging and captivating cadences. Worth every round.

You're Invited! Open House at the Meadowlark Headquarters!

2025-12-03T15:53:00.002-06:00

Come see where the book magic takes place!

Doors open at 3:00 o'clock at the Meadowlark Office, up the stairs at 701 Commercial St (we are above the music store). We are inviting you to a come-and-go open house from 3 to 5, then the festivities will move to ground level where we will have a table set up for Emporia First Friday from 5 to 8.

We will have books for sale, snacks & giveaways, and Meadowlark authors and book editors to meet and greet!

You're invited! Traces of the Holy Book Launch Event with Arlice W. Davenport!

2025-11-13T18:59:00.001-06:00

We invite you to join Meadowlark poet Arlice W. Davenport for a reading and author talk on Zoom to celebrate his fifth poetry collection, Traces of the Holy!

WHEN: December 4th, 7 p.m. CT

WHERE: Click the Zoom link here!

ORDER TRACES OF THE HOLY HERE!

Arlice W. Davenport is the author of five full-length books of poetry and three chapbooks. All have been published by Meadowlark Press or Meadowlark Poetry Press in Emporia, Kansas. His academic background includes degrees in philosophy, literature, French, and religious studies, along with a concentration of work in art history. He and Norman Carr—whose abstract paintings have adorned the covers of Davenport’s most recent books—have been friends for more than forty years, traveling together internationally, along with Davenport’s wife, Laura. He lives in Wichita, Kansas.

"In his fifth book of poetry, Traces of the Holy, Arlice W. Davenport once again puts forward his thoughts and ruminations about life as poems, this time set against his lifelong readings and study in philosophy, literature, and theology; poems that sometimes sing, sometimes bellow, that seek, that find, that allude to, that delineate nuggets of truth or wisdom or hints at how to find them."
—Roy Beckemeyer, The Currency of His Light

"The best thing to do, I think, to get a feel for the power of this book is to take it into nature. There, with your self fully immersed in the world, you will become aware of the now, the only time you have at your disposal, the moments that Davenport so often invokes. Another thing you will learn with Traces of the Holy in hand is that we are all made for love, both eros and agape. And this book unobtrusively leads you to the Source of those loves."
—Emília Katriňáková, award-winning poet from Bratislava, Slovakia

New Titles on the Meadowlark Bookshelf!

2025-11-11T14:20:00.004-06:00

We have new titles on the

Meadowlark bookshelf!

Living Fire, by Lois Ruby

$20.00

Shipping Soon!

… a rollicking novel with humor and heart, in harmony with the Kansas motto, “To the stars through difficulties.”

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Provocative Lines, The Art of Breaking and Arranging Lines Into Poetry , by Kristine A. Polansky

$30.00

More than just a book about writing poetry, this is a history lesson on language and poetic form.

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When I Go West: New and Selected Poems, by Bill Sheldon

$20.00

In When I Go West, William Sheldon compiles nearly twenty-five years of poetic reflection into one august volume.

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Cravings, by Linzi Garcia

$16.99

Pay attention: Linzi Garcia knows the recipe for a good poem—honesty, longing, and a bit of blood. In Cravings, Garcia boldly embraces the messiness of life, love, and growing older, day by day. The characters in Garcia’s poems are all flawed, and the better for it. They swallow their sins, break bread together, and toast to creation. Some of these poems are as sweet and warm as fresh-baked cookies at 2 a.m., while others turn up the heat. But never enough to burn you. Just enough to leave you hungry for more.

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The Crow Lady: Barbara Waterman-Peters, by Cathy Callen

$25.00

This book contains more than 27 full-color images of Barbara’s work, including watercolor, oil on canvas, and sketches.

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Saltwood, by Leon Unruh

$25.00

A former Russian assassin using the alias Nick Deveraux has become a mysterious American hero but is kept under wraps following his spectacular capture. The FBI releases him after two years, right into the hands of the Russian mob.

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Salt, by Kerry Moyer

$16.99

Through thrown baseballs and travels down gravel roads, through days of coffee and nights of beer, music and memories, Moyer also examines his dual role of son and father.

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The Immigrant Next Door, by James Kenyon

$25.00

31 interviews of U.S. immigrants—the historical and cultural contributions of this book are a celebration of the perseverance and industry of the American spirit.

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Hearst's Other Castle (2nd Edition), by Enfys McMurry

$20.00

Hearst’s Other Castle provides a fascinating insight into the lifestyle of a man whose desires knew no barriers and relates an extraordinary chapter in the story of a historic castle. A Cottonwood Book, by Meadowlark Press

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2025 Birdy Poetry Prize Winner, Afloat, Available for Preorder!

2025-10-09T12:13:00.000-05:00

Afloat by Catherine Anderson Is Now Available for Preorder!

Click HERE to place your order!

ABOUT THE BOOK
In Afloat, Catherine Anderson inspects the world around her with the detail of a scientist, the imagery of a painter, and the introspection of a philosopher. Through frequently “quotidian” scenarios—learning to knit, cutting rhubarb, purchasing flowers at the grocery store—Anderson ruminates on themes of love, spirituality, and justice, celebrating the beauty and wonder around us but not shying away from the loss and pain that so often accompany them. These poems saint all they touch—feather dancers, bell ringers, rubber pastries, tardigrades—revealing the holy in the everyday and the profound ties that connect us to each other, the natural world, and all that has come before.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Catherine Anderson has published five collections of poetry, including Everyone I Love Immortal (Woodley Press, 2019), Woman with a Gambling Mania (Mayapple Press, 2014), The Work of Hands (Perugia Press, 2000), In the Mother Tongue (Alice James Books, 1983), and Afloat (Meadowlark Press, 2025). In 2022, a memoir about her late brother who had nonspeaking autism, My Brother Speaks in Dreams: Of Family, Beauty & Belonging, was published by Wising Up Press. She has been recognized for her poetry by the Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation, the Southern Humanities Review, the I-70 Review and the Crab Orchard Review. Over the years, her poems have also appeared in the Southern Review, the Harvard Review, and the Dunes Review, among many others. She lives in Kansas City, where she has worked for over twenty years assisting new immigrants and refugees to become skilled interpreters.

2026 BIRDY POETRY PRIZE SUBMISSIONS ARE OPEN!

SUBMIT HERE!

You're Invited! Cravings by Linzi Garcia Book Launch Party!

2025-09-09T10:40:00.001-05:00

BOOK LAUNCH PARTY DETAILS

TIME: 6 PM

DATE: SEPTEMBER 15TH

PLACE: UNION STREET SOCIAL

WHAT TO EXPECT: READING, LIVE MUSIC, Q&A, GIVEAWAYS, BOOK SIGNING

FUN FACT: FIVE COVERS TO CHOOSE FROM!

Pay attention: Linzi Garcia knows the recipe for a good poem—honesty, longing, and a bit of blood. In Cravings, Garcia boldly embraces the messiness of life, love, and growing older, day by day. The characters in Garcia’s poems are all flawed, and the better for it. They swallow their sins, break bread together, and toast to creation. Some of these poems are as sweet and warm as fresh-baked cookies at 2 a.m., while others turn up the heat. But never enough to burn you. Just enough to leave you hungry for more.

What readers are saying:
Cravings is a book of many hungers—of the foods desired at 2:00 a.m., of the places that are rich with memories, of the loves that are a holiday and of the loves that last and become a home. Linzi is talented at distilling so many moments to their most intimate details. She witnesses and listens at intersections, in bars, to police scanners and offers tender snapshots of moments that might otherwise have been overlooked. The world asks us to pay attention and these poems say yes.

—Traci Brimhall, Poet Laureate of Kansas (2023-26), Love Prodigal

Linzi Garcia writes with more guts than the next 100 poets you will read. She is fearless in putting reality on a page. Cravings is a collection of bone-saw poetry with a New Orleans chaser. The pain and the pretty are poured in equal measure. Men will feel the sweetness and the sting, family will feel love, readers will be enthralled, and poets will feel admiration and a shot of jealousy. The beauty is in the brutality. Her poems have us begging for a second helping of both soothing and savagery. So, dig in, take a bite, have another slice, and if there happens to be a razor blade within . . . what’s a few stitches, besides a good story?

—Todd Cirillo, Disposable Darlings

Cravings offers readers a triumphant and vivid glimpse into the shifting and shimmering layers of desire, as experienced by Garcia’s authentically well-crafted poet speaker. The voice is consistent, honest, earthy, and real. At her core, she is a woman who wants to experience each delicious threshold of life—artisthood, joy, loss, community, motherhood, and sensuality all echo like howls through a hallway here, showing us that cravings exist all around us—on the tongue, across the page, and most importantly, upon the delicate tapestries of our souls.

—Skye Jackson, Libre

No one since Diane di Prima has brought such Beat energy to a page—and as much flair. Linzi’s poetry is the blue-white butane flame, the peacock’s plume, the guillotine blade. She does not look away from the eye of the flame. She looks in. What she sees she writes: with the reporter’s eye, the lover’s heart, the saxman’s ear, the Beat’s rugged walking shoes.

—Kevin Rabas, Poet Laureate of Kansas (2017-19), More Than Words

Join us in Topeka on Sunday, September 7: Book Launch and Reception for The Crow Lady: Barbara Waterman Peters

2025-08-29T10:37:00.005-05:00

The Crow Lady: Barbara Waterman-Peters, a new book by Cathy Callen, will make its debut at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, 1515 S.W. 10th, Topeka, KS.

Please join us on Sunday, September 7, 2025

2:00 – 4:00 p.m.

with Introductions and readings at 2:30 p.m.

The Crow Lady, Barbara Waterman-Peters, is an introduction to Kansas artist Barbara Waterman-Peters, for young readers. It explores her interest in and identification with crows, asking readers to use imagination as they think about crows, flying and art. Barbara has provided four sketches of crows and 26 of her paintings to illustrate the book.

The inclusion of Barbara's art makes this book a treasure for adults as well.

Poet Laureate of Kansas Traci Brimhall's Book Launch Event for Eat Your Words Anthology

2025-07-27T10:00:00.018-05:00

YOU'RE INVITED!
A NIGHT OF FOOD, POETRY, & A BOOK OF BOTH!

About the Book:

ENJOY THESE 20 RECIPES FROM 20 GREAT CHEFS
These recipes have come from all four corners of Kansas. All of these great chefs have offered up delicious recipes that can be small snacks, hearty meals, or treats for your sweet tooth.

SAVOR THESE 20 POEMS FROM 20 WONDERFUL WRITERS
Paired with each of the recipes is a poem that it inspired. Kansas poets reflected on the joy, grief, delight, and nostalgia of some classic (and new) dishes.

COOK UP YOUR OWN LINES WITH 9 PROMPTS
This book also contains prompts based on the poems. The prompts offer ingredients for poems and a set of instructions you can use—or cook up your own poetic recipe!

About the Event:

Please join us for food, poetry readings, prize giveaways, and more, from 6-8 p.m. on August 25th at Union Street Social!

Poet Laureate of Kansas Traci Brimhall will host the event and talk about the project, its contributors, her role as poet laureate, and what we can do to continue celebrating Kansas poetry and food!

Eat Your Words will be available for purchase at the event, or you can preorder your copy now to pick up at the event (or have it shipped to you, if you're unable to make it to the event)!

Tickets are $5 and cover the cost of three raffle tickets and plenty of snacks! Additional raffle tickets can also be purchased for $2 each (or for a nonperishable food donation), and raffle prizes include goodies from a variety of chefs, restaurants, and other Kansas businesses.

Union Street Social owner and chef, Amanda Hague, is featured in the book, and she will be preparing book-inspired food for your enjoyment! The cash bar will be open, too! Union Street Social is a Midwestern-style supper club and classic cocktail bar. Attire ranges from casual to cocktail.

We encourage you to invite your friends and share the news!

Saturday Book Launch for New Collection of Poetry by Kerry Moyer

2025-07-22T10:31:00.003-05:00

EMPORIA, KS: The public is invited to the book launch for the newest collection of poetry by Emporia poet, Kerry Moyer. Come for the poetry, the music, mingling with friends, and snacks on Saturday, July 26, from 2:00-4:00 p.m. at Middle Ground Books, 606 Commercial in Emporia.

Poet Dennis Etzel Jr. says, “… Moyer continues looking for the restorative connections between land and life, the Flint Hills as one leading metaphor for mortality, loss, and grief. Through thrown baseballs and travels down gravel roads, through days of coffee and nights of beer, music and memories, Moyer also examines his dual role of son and father. He writes along that liminal space of dipping deep into what Charles Simic said was the endless reservoir of childhood and his dreams for his children, with the ‘hope the salt we share remains.’”

Salt is Moyer’s fourth full-length poetry collection. Kerry works as a mental health professional to guide struggling youth. Kerry is a gravel cycling enthusiast who has completed 1,000 miles of 100-mile cycling race events. He holds a fifth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and a first-degree black belt in Hapkido and has studied various other martial arts. He enjoys leatherwork, woodwork, tinkering, and playing guitar. He lives with his family in Emporia, Kansas.

Meadowlark Press, established in Emporia, Kansas, in 2014, publishes prose and poetry with a focus on Midwest settings and authors. The press encourages book orders through independent bookstores. Salt is available locally at Middle Ground Books.

Purchase Salt at the Meadowlark bookstore.

Welcome Summer Interns, Mari Palma and Natalie Wolf!

2025-05-28T08:54:00.001-05:00

Meadowlark is excited to share this summer with two wonderful interns, Mari Palma and Natalie Wolf! Please join us in welcoming them!

Hello, my name is Mari, and I am currently a sophomore at Emporia State University.

As a student double-majoring in Marketing and Professional and Technical Writing, I have a passion for literature and the behind-the-scenes processes that go into promoting a business. For this reason, I am drawn to the marketing internship here at Meadowlark Press!

In my free time, I enjoy reading, crafting, nature walks, and hanging out with my cat, Cookie.

Hi! My name is Natalie, and I'm an MFA student in creative writing at the University of Kansas. My emphasis is on fiction writing, but I also write poetry and nonfiction. In my free time, I enjoy reading, writing, crafting, and spending time with my friends, family, and cats.

I'm interested in pursuing a career in editorial work after I graduate, and I'm excited to build my editing skills at Meadowlark this summer. I'm also thrilled to work with all of the lovely Meadowlark staff and authors!

The Heights of Love, by Meadowlark Author Boyd Bauman, Named Co-Winner of the 2025 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People

2025-05-19T16:27:00.001-05:00

A children’s book released by Meadowlark Press in 2024, The Heights of Love, by Boyd Bauman, was named co-winner of the 2025 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People in the category Pre-K to Grade 3. The awards program is organized by the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College of Paterson, New Jersey. The judges select “the most outstanding book for young people” in each category, published in the previous year.

The Heights of Love is a poem by Boyd Bauman about the lengths a father will go to for a daughter. A little girl’s request for a bunkbed, so that her daddy doesn’t have to lean down so far to kiss her goodnight, leads to lofty dreams. When “she longed for a bunk bed tall enough she could nest in that tree,” her father’s love compels him to comply. Soon, the girl is sleeping among the clouds and stars. But is she satisfied? The book is 32 illustrated pages, a bedtime story for daddies and dreamers.

Bauman grew up on a small ranch south of Bern, Kansas, his dad the storyteller and his mom the family scribe. He has published two books of poetry: Cleave and Scheherazade Plays the Chestnut Tree Café. After stints in New York, Colorado, Alaska, Japan, and Vietnam, Boyd now is a librarian and writer in Kansas City, inspired by his three lovely muses. “I'm humbled and honored and want to thank the team at Meadowlark Press and urge you to support them as they work to publish Midwest regional authors,” Bauman said about being a recipient of the award.

The book is illustrated by Onalee Nicklin, with graphite
pencils and colored pencils. Onalee Nicklin is the illustrator of the Kansas Notable Book (2022), Ava: A Year of Adventure in the Life of an American Avocet, story by Mandy Kern, and the author/illustrator of To Hide a Hazelnut.

The Heights of Love is available through www.meadowlarkbookstore.com and wherever readers buy books. Meadowlark encourages readers to support their nearest independent bookseller.

“The Poetry Center, founded in 1980 by award-winning poet, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, its executive director, has hosted thousands of poets over the years at its readings, workshops and conferences. These include Poet Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, inaugural poets and others of national and international reputation. Readings at the Center have included Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Lucille Clifton, Stanley Kunitz, Ruth Stone, Marge Piercy, Billy Collins, Richard Blanco, Patricia Smith and many others.

“The Poetry Center has been awarded several Citations of Excellence and is funded in part by a grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.”

Congratulations, Catherine Anderson, 2025 Birdy Poetry Prize Winner!

2025-05-17T21:05:00.000-05:00

We are thrilled to announce the winner of the
2025 Birdy Poetry Prize
Afloat by Catherine Anderson

Congratulations, Catherine!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Catherine Anderson has published four collections of poetry, including, Everyone I Love Immortal (Woodley Press); Woman with a Gambling Mania (Mayapple Press); The Work of Hands (Perugia Press) and In the Mother Tongue (Alice James Books). In 2022, a memoir about her dear, late brother who had nonverbal autism, My Brother Speaks in Dreams: Of Family, Beauty & Belonging, was published by Wising Up Press. She has been recognized for her poetry by the Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation, the Southern Humanities Review, the I-70 Review and the Crab Orchard Review. Over the years, her poems have also appeared in the Southern Review, the Harvard Review, and the Dunes Review, among many others. She lives in Kansas City, where she has worked for over twenty years assisting new immigrants and refugees to become skilled interpreters.

We would also like to extend a hearty congratulations to our Birdy finalists and semi-finalists!

Meadowlark would like to thank Jose Faus for serving as this year's judge.

Here, you can watch the recording of the announcement event, including readings from 2024 and 2025 winners, Alicia Rebecca Myers (Warble) and Catherine Anderson (Afloat), as well as readings from 2024 and 2025 finalists, Ruth Bardon (Witness) and Huascar Medina (Protest as Love Poem). Thank you to all who attended the event and made it a special, celebratory evening!

Poet Laureate of Kansas, Traci Brimhall, Serves Up a Book of Kansas Chefs and Kansas Poetry

2025-05-14T10:22:00.007-05:00

Eat Your Words: A Kansas Poetry Cookbook

Meadowlark Press, Emporia, KS, August 2025

ISBN: 978-1-956578-73-7

EMPORIA, KANSAS: Meadowlark Press is delighted to announce an upcoming book with Poet Laureate of Kansas, Traci Brimhall, titled Eat Your Words: A Kansas Poetry Cookbook. As one of her focuses during her time as laureate, Brimhall’s aim is to connect the state’s agricultural roots to the arts. She gathered 20 chefs representing restaurants from all four corners of Kansas (and between) and paired them with 20 Kansas poets “in order to bring together rich poems that engage the senses; recipes that represent Kansas’s rich culinary offerings; and ‘ingredients’ for readers to write their own poems.”

The cookbooks will be available to purchase online and at select bookstores. The first run of 800 copies will be an entirely Kansas product—compiled, edited, designed, and printed in Kansas with 10% of the profit from sales going to the Kansas Food Bank. Brimhall looks forward to celebrating the book with chefs and poets at the Kansas State Fair, September 5-14.

Eat Your Words is available for preorder through www.meadowlarkbookstore.com with an expected ship date of August 2025.

###

Traci Brimhall serves as the current Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2023-2026. She began Poetry Harvest: Poems for the State Fair, in 2024. Her most recent collection of poetry is Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon Press, 2025). She is the author of four other collections of poetry. https://tracibrimhallpoet.com/

Meadowlark Press was established in Emporia, Kansas, in 2014 and publishes novels, memoirs, and children’s books with a Midwest regional focus. Meadowlark also supports a poetry press celebrating poets from coast to coast. https://www.meadowlarkbookstore.com/

You're Invited! 2025 Birdy Poetry Prize Announcement Event

2025-04-19T19:06:00.001-05:00

OUT NOW! Warble by Alicia Rebecca Myers - 2024 Birdy Poetry Prize Winner

2025-01-31T08:00:00.001-06:00

We are overjoyed to announce the release of the
2024 Birdy Poetry Prize winner,
Warble by Alicia Rebecca Myers

OUT NOW!
ORDER HERE!

About the Book:

The poems in Alicia Rebecca Myers’s debut collection explore a fascination with the phenomena within and beyond a person—whether becoming a mother or observing a sea turtle migration. The language is rich with metaphor but conversational and direct, with a compelling balance between prose and lineated poems. Myers finds in the everyday, in oxidized pesto and a crepe paper streamer, new ways of expressing shared experiences. She captures the full range of human emotion—sadness, grief, humor, and overarching love—as the poems process taking care of one aging parent in the wake of losing the other. Warble also contextualizes what it means to be a daughter and a mother in modern-day America by offering snapshots of pop culture and the wider American experience, from Love Is Blind to gun violence. This is a book that asks of us, “In a lifetime, what do we keep, and what do we release? What sings on beyond our time, and how are we immortalized by that music?”

About the Author:

Alicia Rebecca Myers is a poet and essayist who holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU, where she was a Goldwater Writing Fellow. Her writing has appeared in publications that include Best New Poets, Creative Nonfiction, FIELD, River Styx, Gulf Coast, SWWIM, december, Rattle, and The Rumpus. Her chapbook of poems, My Seaborgium (Brain Mill Press, 2016), was selected as a winner of the inaugural Mineral Point Chapbook Series, and she has been the recipient of a Kimmel Harding Nelson residency for poetry and a Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference nonfiction scholarship. Warble is her first full-length book.

A Comment from Our 2024 Birdy Poetry Prize Judge:

Warble encompasses the poetry of connection to the life force, weaving and unraveling immersions into grief and birth, presence and yearning, mother love and father loss, blossom and flight. These poems are compelling, brave, intimate, and, most of all, unafraid of telling the truth. I found that once I started reading them, I couldn’t stop, and I was called back to re-read many stunning dives into the tender and fierce edges of life, such as the complex compassion in “Addling,” the daring energy in “Open Water,” and the breathless love of “You Ask Me to Tell You the Story.” The title itself—Warble—speaks to that in-between state (as well as a bird) of being alive, trilling through each poem.

I picked this collection because of how deeply the poet wrote from what Edward Hirsch calls “the poetry of affection,” the poetry that connect us to our innate and vulnerable humanness. This quality is so vital when it comes to working with the fragments of brokenness, despair, and horror around us to craft a life, sustain a community, and behold the living earth with wonder and courage.

—Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, 2024 Birdy Poetry Prize Judge, Poet Laureate of Kansas (2009-2013), author of How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems

Our Next Open Reading Period: February 1 - March 15, 2025

2025-01-14T05:45:00.005-06:00

Next Open Reading Period: February 1 – March 15, 2025

What are we looking for?

Fiction:
We are open to full-length novels or collections of short stories. While we will consider manuscripts of any length, a minimum of 50,000 words is recommended for fiction submissions.

Any genre will be considered, but we are especially interested in stories that take place in the Midwest and/or follow themes or characters that have a strong Midwest connection.

Nonfiction:
We are most interested in publishing full-length memoirs, true stories of growing up, lives lived, in the Midwest. While we will consider manuscripts of any length, a minimum of 50,000 words is recommended for memoir submissions.

We are looking for memoir writers who draw us in with story, who can make us feel the experience of living in a particular time or place.

Other types of nonfiction with a strong Midwestern appeal will also be considered. If you have a complete manuscript that you feel is a fit for Meadowlark, send it along!

Poetry:
Full-length poetry manuscripts (55 page minimum) will be considered. Poems may be previously published in journals and/or anthologies, but not in full-length, single-author volumes. For our Open Reading poetry collecions, we welcome manuscripts with a mix of poetry and prose.

Read the Guidelines Before Submitting

Remembering Ronda Miller, Meadowlark Poet

2025-01-01T16:03:00.004-06:00

In December, we received the sad news that Ronda Miller, Meadowlark poet (among many other Kansas literary titles), passed away. Ronda was a wonderful poet and her book, MoonStain, was the very first Meadowlark book of poetry. She dedicated her life to serving her various communities, offering guidance and assistance to those in need. She is, and will continue to be, deeply missed. We are grateful that her spirit may continue on in the words and memories she left us.

Ronda coordinated the annual Celebration of William Stafford poetry reading event. This upcoming February, the event will be held as a remembrance for both Ronda and William Stafford. We invite you to join us February 1, 1-4 p.m.

Below is Ronda's official obituary, originally published in The Lawrence Times:

11/3/1952 – 12/9/2024

Ronda Jae Miller passed into the next life on December 9th, 2024. She was born in Fort Collins, Colorado on November 3rd, 1952, the youngest child of Gerald and Peggy Wiggins. After the death of her mother at age three, she was raised by her maternal Grandparents Leonard and Helen Miller on the high plains of Cheyenne County, Kansas. She was shaped greatly by the tragic early loss of her mother but found enjoyment in her childhood reading, riding horses, running track, and exploring the expansive beauty of western Kansas around their family farm with her siblings and cousins.

Upon graduating from Saint Francis High School in 1970, Ronda settled in Lawrence, Kansas, and quickly found her place in a community she admired for its diversity and freedom of thought. She attended the University of Kansas, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and completed postgraduate coursework in Human Development/Family Life. Over the years she worked as a union organizer, restaurateur at The Casbah, commercial fashion model, police officer, and early childhood educator for 30 years, retiring in 2018.

Ronda was married twice, to Joseph Goodman in 1978, and to Dimitry Shreders in 1987. With Dimitry, she welcomed her two beloved children into the world, a son Scott in 1988 and a daughter Apollonia in 1991. She was also the loving stepmother of Dimitry’s two older sons, Sasha and Nick.

Later in life, she rekindled a passion for words, beginning a prolific 15-year stretch of writing and sharing poetry, often traveling across the state to participate in events with the Kansas Authors Club. She was the author of five published books, a contributor to many others, and was working on a memoir. During the final three years of her life, she taught creative writing to incarcerated people. She advocated for countless organizations and causes, hosting many events. Ronda profoundly impacted the local writing community and left a lasting legacy of poetry. She believed that her purpose in life was to connect with others through the transformative power of the written word. She would often state, “It isn’t about my life, it is about allowing myself to meet the poems I am meant to write.”

She is survived by two children, Scott Shreders (Anna) of Michigan, and daughter Apollonia Racca (Gabriel) of California; two step-sons, Alexander “Sasha” Shreders of Massachusetts, and Nicholas Shreders (Julie) of Massachusetts; four siblings: sister Jena Acors (Vernon) of Virginia, brother Scott Wiggins of Colorado, half-sister Vanessa Ostrom of North Carolina, and half-brother Calvin Wiggins of Arizona. Ronda also leaves behind many loving cousins, nieces and nephews, step-siblings, in-laws, many incredible friends, and her sweet rescue dog Patience.

Ronda was preceded in death by her parents, grandparents, half-brother Andrew Wiggins, niece Sorrel Wiggins, many beloved uncles and aunts, cousins, friends, and the father of her children, Dimitry Shreders.

A Celebration of Life ceremony is planned for March 15th, 2025, from 1-4pm at Maceli's (1031 New Hampshire) in downtown Lawrence, Kansas, with interment in St Francis, Kansas. Donations in her honor are accepted at The Transformative Language Arts Network, The Lawrence Humane Society, and The Kansas Land Trust.

Meadowlark Press Celebrates 10th Anniversary!

2024-12-10T14:45:00.003-06:00

You're invited to join Kansas-based Meadowlark Press for our 10th anniversary celebration event! Meadowlark Press was established in Emporia in 2014 and publishes novels, memoirs, children's books, poetry, and more. Meadowlark has published over 70 titles, many of which have won awards! Meadowlark focuses on Kansas and midwestern authors, though its poetry spans coast to coast. The event will give guests a chance to learn more about Meadowlark, meet the publisher and authors, play games and win raffle prizes, enjoy refreshments, and take advantage of our book sale. The special event will take place from 2-4 p.m., December 15th, at the Emporia Public Library. Please be a part of making this 10th anniversary celebration something extra special!

USING WORDS TO HEAL: I’ve Been Fighting This War Within Myself Makes the HPPR Summer Reading List

2024-11-01T15:00:00.001-05:00

Antonio Sanchez-Day’s posthumous poetry collection with Meadowlark Press, I’ve Been Fighting This War Within Myself, made it to the High Plains Public Radio Summer Reading List. Meadowlark’s own Emilie Moll explains why readers should choose the newly awarded Kansas Notable book to read in 2024.

Read the article here or listen to the audio at HPPR’s Radio Reader’s Book Club series!

I’m Emilie Moll, editorial assistant for Meadowlark Press, for the High Plains Public Radio Summer Reading List. Our small, independent press specializes in stories from the Midwest, and today I'll be talking about a Meadowlark Book, I’ve Been Fighting This War Within Myself, by Antonio Sanchez-Day.

Antonio was a poet from Lawrence, KS who lived from 1974 to 2021. In his poetry, he shares his culture, the pain of rejection, the peace of belonging, the anguish of his regrets, and many lived experiences of serving two prison sentences and the events that led him there, all written in captivating verse. Published posthumously, this second poetry collection carries on Antonio’s legacy of using words to express and to heal.

Recently awarded a Kansas Notable title, I’ve Been Fighting This War Within Myself gives a voice to a population whose experiences are deeply personal and, it seems, rarely represented in literature. The book is filled with photocopies of lined loose-leaf paper, marked with poems in Antonio’s handwriting, which reminded me the whole way through the book of how real, and from the not-so distant past all of this was.

I thought to myself, as I was writing essays in school on lined paper, Antonio was writing lyrical rap songs, sharing how they make, quote-unquote, Jailhouse coffee, and fighting a violent battle with his own inner demons on the same type of paper. This poetry brought me closer to one point two million individuals – Americans incarcerated in the United States prison system, as of 2024. It gave me a reminder I did not know that I needed – that inmates are equally as human as those walking the streets, and are not to be shelved and forgotten, left without a voice after their final sentencing – and Antonio showed me how brave these voices can be.

This poetry showed me a depth of pain and darkness I had not known before, and with the same wing, brought me back up to the light and taught me resiliency. Antonio seemed to tell me between these pages that, no matter what grave it seems you have found yourself in, you can make it out again.

The first section of this collection is called, “Hometown: Trying to siphon out the love from the hate”. As I embarked on this journey with Antonio, I got the sense that he did just that with each poem he wrote. To me, it seemed that the venom on these pages was the pain that he wanted to leave behind, and by trapping it on the page, he might’ve walked away lighter. These poems are acts of transformation and reflection. They are breadcrumbs that take you through Antonio’s life. And they immortalize him, his choices, and his unique voice.

Antonio built a community of writers around himself, both during and after he completed his sentence. It was during his sentence, as a student in the creative writing classes offered at the Douglas County Jail, that he met Brian Daldorph. Brian is a poet, Professor of English at the University of Kansas, and creative writing instructor at the Douglas County Jail, who curated this posthumous collection. Antonio regularly returned to the Douglas County Jail after his sentence, this time as an instructor to these classes. Brian has this to say about his experience with Antonio:

“You are still with us, Antonio, in these words [...] and in the hearts of those who knew you and loved you for showing us the marvelous transformation you were able to make as you hauled yourself out from the quote, basement’s basement, end quote, to sit with judges and give them good advice, to tell us all how it is possible to move beyond trauma and to appreciate the simple joys of being alive.”

I’ve Been Fighting This War Within Myself is available wherever you buy books. As a Kansas Notable book, be sure to encourage your loved ones, as well as librarians and teachers to put this on their shelves. Learn more about I’ve Been Fighting This War Within Myself, what we’re doing with the proceeds, and other Meadowlark titles at meadowlarkbookstore.com

I am Emilie Moll for the High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club’s Summer Reading List.

A Coming-of-Age Story: Al Ortolani's BULL IN THE RING Makes it to HPPR's Radio Readers Book Club

2024-10-25T14:56:00.003-05:00

As you may have heard, the celebrated Kansas poet and long-time educator Al Ortolani has written his first fiction novel, Bull in the Ring. Over the summer, this honest and edgy coming-of-age story was featured on High Plains Public Radio’s Summer Reading List. Emilie Moll talks about why everyone should meet Danny Prego, the novel’s captivating young protagonist.

Read the article here or listen to the audio on HPPR Radio Readers Book Club!

I’m Emilie Moll, editorial assistant for Meadowlark Press, for the High Plains Public Radio Summer Reading List. Our small, independent press specializes in stories from the Midwest, and today I'll be talking about Bull in the Ring, by Al Ortolani, a Meadowlark Book. This was Al’s first fiction novel, on which I had the honor of working as an editor.

Bull in the Ring is the introspective, entertaining, and gritty coming of age story for anyone – from the young, reluctant reader looking for a book that says, “to hell with the rules,” to those who might feel a historical sense of familiarity when they pick up this book. In a similar vein to Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, this PG-13, lyrical novel by beloved Kansas educator and poet, Al Ortolani, takes you back to small-town Southeast Kansas in the 70s – think picking up a pack of cigarettes for Mom, drinking a cold beer before doing something stupid with your teammates, a football coach finding creative ways to discipline, Coke bottle returns, classic cars, leather boots, and definitely chickens – some are fried and some are still feathered.

Danny Prego is unlike your typical young protagonist from Kansas. Growing up, many protagonists that I read from Kansas were from a farm or lived life on the Prairie – it never resembled my own midwestern experience. In this book, you get a look at what it’s really like to live under the geographic moniker, “Pullet County,” a location where everyone works at the local chicken factory, and which to this day is the poorest county in the State of Kansas. What struck me was how immediately charmed I was by Danny – his angst dripped from the page with every clever, sarcastic turn of phrase.

He makes questionable choices. He resents his lot in life. And yet, to see the world through his eyes is to see living in poverty and with alcoholism for what it is. Danny shows you his wounded heart – and you can’t help but ache for him. For me, reading this book was like gaining a little brother, and feeling the emotional depth of his experiences was inevitable due to the intimate nature of its prose. I shared his pride and shame, felt his pangs of jealousy, came to understand his apathy, became a cynic in his world myself, and found myself celebrating each small victory and each strand of hope as it came.

Al Ortolani approaches his first novel with the heart of a poet, and with the deft skill of a longtime author and educator in language and linguistics.

Melissa Fite Johnson, author of Green, had this to say about the book.

“Al Ortolani’s Bull in the Ring manages to conjure other great coming-of-age stories—think Catcher in the Rye, think The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian—while being “in a football conference all on its own.” Danny Prego is an instantly iconic protagonist, masking deep hurt and insecurity with careful bravado and one-liners, with his dad’s boots that make him taller and the dream of a letter jacket that will make him feel like someone. Bull in the Ring is a time capsule of a book that made me nostalgic for an era before I was even born.”

Bull in the Ring is available for purchase wherever you buy books. Learn more about Bull in the Ring and other Meadowlark titles at meadowlarkbookstore.com.

I am Emilie Moll for the High Plains Public Radio Reader’s Book Club’s Summer Reading List.

Meadowlark Press, LLC

Book Launch: Papa's Pills by Rosemary Maxey

Help us welcome Meadowlark Intern, Leon Enabnit

Open Reading Period: February 1 - March 15, 2026

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

You're Invited! Virtual Book Launch Event for Afloat by Catherine Anderson (2025 Birdy Poetry Prize Winner)!

You're Invited! Open House at the Meadowlark Headquarters!

You're invited! Traces of the Holy Book Launch Event with Arlice W. Davenport!

New Titles on the Meadowlark Bookshelf!

We have new titles on the

Meadowlark bookshelf!

Living Fire, by Lois Ruby

Provocative Lines, The Art of Breaking and Arranging Lines Into Poetry , by Kristine A. Polansky

When I Go West: New and Selected Poems, by Bill Sheldon

Cravings, by Linzi Garcia

The Crow Lady: Barbara Waterman-Peters, by Cathy Callen

Saltwood, by Leon Unruh

Salt, by Kerry Moyer

The Immigrant Next Door, by James Kenyon

Hearst's Other Castle (2nd Edition), by Enfys McMurry

2025 Birdy Poetry Prize Winner, Afloat, Available for Preorder!

You're Invited! Cravings by Linzi Garcia Book Launch Party!

Join us in Topeka on Sunday, September 7: Book Launch and Reception for The Crow Lady: Barbara Waterman Peters

Poet Laureate of Kansas Traci Brimhall's Book Launch Event for Eat Your Words Anthology

Saturday Book Launch for New Collection of Poetry by Kerry Moyer

Welcome Summer Interns, Mari Palma and Natalie Wolf!

Meadowlark is excited to share this summer with two wonderful interns, Mari Palma and Natalie Wolf! Please join us in welcoming them!

The Heights of Love, by Meadowlark Author Boyd Bauman, Named Co-Winner of the 2025 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People

Congratulations, Catherine Anderson, 2025 Birdy Poetry Prize Winner!

We are thrilled to announce the winner of the 2025 Birdy Poetry PrizeAfloat by Catherine Anderson

Congratulations, Catherine!

We would also like to extend a hearty congratulations to our Birdy finalists and semi-finalists!

Poet Laureate of Kansas, Traci Brimhall, Serves Up a Book of Kansas Chefs and Kansas Poetry

You're Invited! 2025 Birdy Poetry Prize Announcement Event

OUT NOW! Warble by Alicia Rebecca Myers - 2024 Birdy Poetry Prize Winner

We are overjoyed to announce the release of the 2024 Birdy Poetry Prize winner, Warble by Alicia Rebecca Myers

Our Next Open Reading Period: February 1 - March 15, 2025

Remembering Ronda Miller, Meadowlark Poet

Meadowlark Press Celebrates 10th Anniversary!

USING WORDS TO HEAL: I’ve Been Fighting This War Within Myself Makes the HPPR Summer Reading List

A Coming-of-Age Story: Al Ortolani's BULL IN THE RING Makes it to HPPR's Radio Readers Book Club

We are thrilled to announce the winner of the
2025 Birdy Poetry Prize
Afloat by Catherine Anderson

We are overjoyed to announce the release of the
2024 Birdy Poetry Prize winner,
Warble by Alicia Rebecca Myers