Meadowlark Press, LLC

Meadowlark Press releases historical novel set in Kansas and Missouri in early 20th century

2026-06-03T22:34:05.344-05:00

Set for release on June 23, Heaven in a Wildflower, a novel by Cynthia Mines, opens in a prairie parsonage in central Kansas where Kristin Thorsen escapes her lonely existence through the Oz books of L. Frank Baum and stories of the magnificent 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

Set among fields of emerald-green winter wheat, the story takes on Oz overtones when Kristin is befriended by a neighbor widow and a local seed merchant on a journey to trust her heart and summon the courage to explore beyond the vast horizon. She leaves the prairie for Kansas City where she is hired as a Harvey Girl at Union Station in the early 1920s and ventures into the 12^th and Vine jazz district.

“(The author) has thoughtfully and lovingly distilled Kansas history into a page-turning novel,” wrote Ted Ayres, producer/host of “Inside the Cover,” a PBS Kansas program, in an advance review. “This coming-of-age story will educate, inform, and entertain readers of all ages.”

For more than four decades, Mines has researched Kansas history through roles as publisher-editor of Travel Kansas magazine for 32 years, as a reporter for the Wichita Business Journal, and as the author of the nonfiction book, For the Sake of Art: The Story of a Kansas Renaissance, which was named a Kansas Notable Book in 2016. Her award-winning freelance projects have included travel articles for the Los Angeles Times, the Kansas City Star, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Fodor’s travel books. This is her first novel.

A sneak peek of the book will be available during a book signing hosted by Hemslojd during Midsummer’s Festival on June 20 in Lindsborg, Kansas, the prototype for the Swedish-settled community at the heart of the book.

The 360-page book will be available after June 23 in hard cover ($38), paperback ($25), ebook ($12) and audiobook narrated by Marsha Hoover ($16) wherever books are sold. The book has been certified free of AI by the Authors Guild.

Meadowlark Press, established in Emporia in 2014, publishes novels, memoirs, poetry and children’s books with a focus on Midwestern settings and authors. Meadowlark Press also awards the annual Birdy Prize to the best full-length collection of poetry nationwide.

To order, visit meadowlarkbookstore.com

More information about the author is at cynthiamines.com.

Interview with Meadowlark poet Tess Barry by Emily Mohn-Slate

2026-05-29T11:30:46.010-05:00

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ORIGINAL SUBSTACK STORY

"opening doors to the unexpected and beautiful"

poet and MFA program director Tess Barry on reading as mindfulness, learning to hear your own voice, and the necessity of finding a community of writers ✨

By Emily Mohn-Slate

This is a Beginner’s Mind interview, a series that explores the intersection of creative practice and mindfulness. Zen master Shunryū Suzuki Roshi said, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.” This series shines a light on the practices that sustain people in their daily lives and open the path to new possibilities. Subscribe for free below to make sure you don’t miss any future interviews. ✨

Today, I’m very excited to share an interview with poet and MFA Director, Tess Barry. The thing about Tess is that once you’re in her orbit, it’s inevitable that you will come to know and love her. For several years, I had the gift of being in a small poetry workshop with Tess and a few other poets I met through the Madwomen in the Attic. Over those years, Tess was deep in the writing of her debut poetry collection, The Marvelous Real, which just came out last fall. Once a month, we’d meet at Tess’s house on the South Side of Pittsburgh, and eat and drink and laugh and talk poems together. My time around Tess’s table shaped not only my poetics, but also my sense of how vital it is to have a community of smart readers as you do the hard work of making a book.

Tess Barry’s poems are defined by generosity and capaciousness. Her poems gather in and make room. There is a deep wildness, too—something strange and off-kilter that shifts our perceptions and changes the atmosphere. Richard Blanco says of Barry’s book, “The Marvelous Real is the perfect title for this inspiring collection. Real, because it graces the many seemingly ordinary moments of our lives, transfixing them into the extraordinary, and marvelous, because Barry guides us on a magical, dream-like journey through the many sublime spaces/places her poetic soul has witnessed, imagined, or desired. All this conveyed through a musicality that soothes us into our truest selves.”

Tess shares a rich window into her practices, many excellent reading recommendations, and a brilliant prompt from Terrance Hayes. Read on, friends.✨

Tess Barry

What are your writing/creative practices? Do you have any rituals or habits that help you in your daily life?

My writing practice usually begins with reading. Ideally, I like to sit and read a writer I love before writing. It helps to still my mind and move my mind into a quiet creative space. I like to write in the morning first thing. I love to read poetry, but also love fiction and nonfiction.

Lately, I have been reading some wonderful books – The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, who joined us as a guest writer at Carlow’s January MFA residency and will join us in June in Dublin for the Ireland residency. It is an epistolary novel and just wonderful.

I am also loving Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh’s award-winning collection of lyric essays Unmothered, Untongued. Lee is a gorgeous poet and brilliant writer of all genres and her work astounds me in its depth and power. Lee takes language and form to new places. Lee is a mentor in our MFA program and a wonderful person and great teacher. I go back to collections of poetry I love and lately it has been Nick Laird’s Feel Free. He is an astounding poet and has visited our MFA program in Ireland.

What are the most important mindfulness/spiritual practices in your life?

Reading closely is a mindfulness practice and has been a balm and joy throughout my life. If I am feeling unsettled, reading stills me and returns me to myself. Spending time in nature is a great way of entering a mindful space, too. I love to be outdoors and find the natural world is another gateway into the creative self, a place to still the noise and quiet the mind.

Last spring we had robins build nests on our front and back porches and it was beautiful to see the nests created and have the robins swooping in and out when you opened the doors. It was magical. Mindfulness is like that, creating a space where you can open doors to the unexpected and beautiful. I love to listen to all kinds of music and music is transportive in a different way, sometimes listening to music can get me to a place of mindfulness. I have had many mindfulness practices I’d say from running, to walking, to gardening, walking our Saint Bernard, Lucy, and reading or listening to music. Reading helps to build one’s interior life and without that you would have nothing to draw from in terms of creativity. I am not sure who said “the best writers are writers who read,” but it is very true.

Do you have a mantra or motto related to your creative/mindfulness practices/life? What piece of wisdom do you have on a post-it note to help you remember it?

I don’t think I have a mantra or motto, but I have certain lines from writers I love or literature I love that I might write down, save, and return to.

When I was growing up my mother had a James Baldwin quote she posted around our house and it is a quote I always return to. It comes from Nobody Knows My Name, More Notes on a Native Son, and I’ll excerpt it here:

“To be with God is to really be involved with some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you. I conceive of my own life as a journey toward something I do not understand, which in the going toward makes me better. I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others. Love does not begin and end in the way we think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” —James Baldwin

I love this Baldwin quote and for me it speaks to the creative process—a journey toward something we do not understand, which in the going toward makes us better.

I also love this quote from the late Australian poet Les Murray (he is a poet I love and was always discussed as a candidate for the Nobel prize):

“Everything except language knows the meaning of existence” —Les Murray, from his poem “The Meaning of Existence”

Here’s the full poem:

The Meaning of Existence

Everything except language

knows the meaning of existence.

Trees, planets, rivers, time

know nothing else. They express it

moment by moment as the universe.

Even this fool of a body

lives it in part, and would

have full dignity within it

but for the ignorant freedom

of my talking mind.

—Les Murray, from Poems the Size of Photographs, (FSG, 2002).

Jack Gilbert is another favorite poet of mine and I love this quote from Gilbert’s poem “Tear it Down”:

“We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows.”

One of my favorite fiction writers is the brilliant Irish writer Claire Keegan. And I am so fortunate to have heard her read and speak about writing many times at Carlow’s MFA residencies in Ireland. She is a brilliant writer and teacher. I could fill a book with quotes from Claire’s talks to us and here is one I love:

“It is the reader in me that is drawn to the writing. I’m always striving to please the reader in me. What suits the reader in you? Trust the reader inside you.” —Claire Keegan

at a January MFA residency dinner in Pittsburgh with Carlow MFA alums K.J. Bryant, Rachel Walton, and Beth Casteel. Carlow’s MFA community is filled with people I love and admire and is where I spend much of my time.

What helps you when you get stuck with your creative/writing or mindfulness practices?

It is helpful to me to read, to be in community with other writers and artists, to take a walk, visit a museum, listen to music. I had an experience at an exhibit some years ago that is a good metaphor for getting to that deep creative space—I saw an exhibit at The Cloisters in NYC–it is a sound installation by Janet Cardiff called The Forty Part Motet, and consisted of forty high-fidelity speakers positioned on stands in a large oval configuration throughout the Fuentidueña Chapel. The exhibit was a reworking of the forty-part motet Spem in alium numquam habui from the 16th century by Tudor composer Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505–1585). Spem in alium, which translates as “In No Other Is My Hope,” is perhaps Tallis’s most famous composition. As you walked through the exhibit you could stop at each speaker to hear individual unaccompanied voices but then also have the cumulative effect in this beautiful space of all voices. Spem in alium and The Forty Part Motet is a great metaphor for FINDING YOUR WAY to the creative process, getting close and stilling yourself and leaning in to hear one voice—your voice—which paradoxically is what gives you access to cumulative voices. I grew up in a family of 10 children and heard many voices in my home and hear them still. One central aspect to good writing is in the authenticity of one writer’s particular voice, but also the ability for a singular voice to convey the universal, the paradox of the particular voice that gives us access to the universal voice of humanity.

What does the phrase “beginner’s mind” mean to you? Does it connect to your creative/or spiritual practices? How?

I think “beginner’s mind” is a great way to think about creating art, writing. The more I learn the less I know about poetry and writing, about the nature and mystery of the creative process. The beginner’s mind suggests a state where you are uninhibited and not self-conscious, free to be honest. A state where you might act from instinct as opposed to being weighted down by expectation or foreknowledge. It suggests an expansive and natural place and so a perfect place from which to write. I’ve experienced a blissful state sometimes when writing when overtaken by self-forgetfulness and it is a magical thing. I think beginner’s mind is the space I am always trying to get to and write from, and in the age of distraction it is even more difficult to get there for long periods of time. Reading or music can get you there. Walking or exercise might, being out in nature. I think stepping away from phones and screens is key to getting there. The space of beginner’s mind is similar to moments of great joy or sadness, in that it is a space that allows for moments of sudden insight and clarity. It connects to my creative practices because it is a sacred space I want to return to. But it is also an elusive space given the age we are living through and the difficulty in getting to that deep space of quiet within ourselves when we are distracted 24/7 with screens and bombarded with information.

Are there any books / writers / teachers / approaches that have been transformative for you that you would recommend to readers?

There have been many books, writers, and teachers who have been transformative in my life. I love literature and have been shaped by many writers I return to including Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, Pablo Neruda, Seamus Heaney, Ruth Stone, Terrance Hayes, Claire Keegan, Carol Ann Duffy, Les Murray, Lynn Emanuel, Simon Armitage, Lucille Clifton, Sheila Carter-Jones (her latest book Every Hard Sweetness is really powerful and transformative, Rebecca Morgan Frank (a brilliant contemporary poet), and Kenzie Allen (her Cloud Missives is a beautiful book), as well as countless others.

I’ve had great teachers including our former MFA and Madwomen director Jan Beatty, Lynn Emanuel, all the Carlow MFA mentors in the U.S. and Ireland. In high school and grade school, I had exceptional English teachers who fostered my love of literature and desire to write. One of the best teachers I ever had was Marah Gubar (daughter of Susan Gubar) who taught in my graduate program at the University of Pittsburgh and now teaches at MIT. A fantastic person and professor who really understood literature’s power and a great storyteller. I took a literature course with her and learned so much about writing and reading.

at Trinity College, Dublin in June 2025 at the Carlow MFA residency. Tess Barry with Poets and MFA mentors Enda Wyley, Jean O’Brien, and Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh

I would recommend to women writers Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops, a singular community of writers. I’ve been a Madwomen since 2007, a Madwomen mentor and instructor, and I think it is so important for writers to have a community. I found a great one in Madwomen and then through Carlow’s MFA program. I would also recommend starting a workshop with other writers.

There are so many communities that have been meaningful to my growth as a writer and to my life – Carlow’s Madwomen in the Attic, Carlow’s MFA program, and the many workshops I have been a part of, including the Josephine Street poets, who met at my house for a number of years (Lisa Alexander, Jennifer Jackson Berry, Rachel Mennies, Michelle Stoner, Bernadette Ulsamer, and Emily Mohn-Slate). The Josephine Street poets were a great group of post-MFA writers. This workshop was intimate and strengthened me as a writer and editor. The Josephine Street group remain poets I deeply admire and cherished friends.

I am so grateful for Carlow’s MFA community and the chance to come together with our mentors, students, alums, and guest writers twice a year. It is such a tonic to the darkness of our current world. One book I would recommend is: Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook (Univ of Iowa, 2010). It is a great book for teachers of poetry and is comprised of a number of short essays—great for teachers AND also a fantastic book for poets about poetry.

A Prompt from Tess ✨

This is one of my favorite prompts. It is by the wonderful poet Terrance Hayes and comes from a book entitled The Working Poet (Autumn House Press, 2009). It is a complicated, involved prompt but always produces great results. I encourage people to give it a try. CLICK HERE FOR PROMPT

Order your copy of The Marvelous Real HERE!

TESS BARRY is the author of The Marvelous Real, a poetry collection published in December 2025 by Meadowlark Press and a finalist for Meadowlark’s 2025 Birdy Poetry Prize. Barry was shortlisted for the Manchester Poetry Prize. Twice a finalist for North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Prize and Aesthetica Magazine’s Poetry Award, she has also been shortlisted several times for the Bridport Poetry Prize. Her work has been widely published in the U.S. and abroad and appeared in journals such as: Aesthetica, The Compass Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, Cordella Magazine, Mslexia, The Louisville Review, North American Review, and The Stinging Fly, among others. She is a fellow of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project and the director of Carlow University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, a low-residency program in the U.S. and Ireland.

More from Tess ✨

Order your copy of The Marvelous Real from Meadowlark Press!
Follow Tess on IG @tess.barry88 and @carlowumfa to follow Carlow’s great MFA community
Learn more at her website

One of my favorite poems from The Marvelous Real

Your turn: What resonates with you? Do you have any other questions or thoughts to share with Tess?

Leave a Comment

2026-05-23T06:08:00.000-05:00

Greetings, dear readers:

There is a quiet reverence that emanates from our new Meadowlark release, Papa’s Pills.

Cheryl Unruh here. I’m part of the Meadowlark team, and I’d like to share a few thoughts with you about Papa’s Pills by Rosemary McCombs Maxey.

The book is set in 1996 on the Creek Reservation near Okmulgee, Oklahoma.

I felt a strong pull, a deep connection to the book because of the main characters—an elderly Muscogee couple, Selo and Tefe (Mother and Papa).

As I turned the pages, it felt as if I were sitting at the kitchen table watching Selo cook pork chops, the meat sizzling in the pan.

I was fascinated by the authenticity of these characters, by their conversations, by the everyday moments of their lives, as they navigate aging and dementia.

The work is fiction, but this book is not a light and breezy novel.

I kept reading.

For Selo and Tefe, every single day on their farm is a day of survival. Tefe is blind and nearly deaf. They are poor, rely on rides from others, and they often need medical attention.

These fictional characters felt touchable-real to me in their conversations and their actions.

Author Rosemary McCombs Maxey is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and is a Master Language teacher with the College of the Muscogee Nation.

Maxey’s choice to incorporate words and phrases from their language deepens the immersion for the reader.

Papa’s Pills is an invitation to explore the Muscogee (Creek) language and culture.

This is a powerful book. Because of the vividness of Selo and Tefe and their lasting relationship, I will carry them with me for a long time.

Cheryl

Buy Papa’s Pills here

Play video

The video above (with music) is from Papa’s Pills book launch, February 24,

at the College of the Muscogee Nation, Okmulgee, OK.

[1 min.]

Author Rosemary McCombs Maxey

Back: Linzi Garcia, Tracy Million Simmons (publisher), Lisa Kindsvater (editor).

Front:: Author Rosemary McCombs Maxey

Buy Papa’s Pills here

You're Invited! May 22 Book Launch Event: Huascar Medina's Protest as Love Poem

2026-05-14T16:34:05.601-05:00

Meadowlark Press releases Protest as Love Poem by Huascar Medina

We are honored to announce the release of Protest as Love Poem, Huascar Medina’s third poetry collection and a finalist of the 2025 Meadowlark Press Birdy Poetry Prize!

Book Launch Details:

7:00-8:30 p.m., May 22, 2026

ArtsConnect Topeka

909 N Kansas Ave.

Topeka, KS 66608

Preorder your copy here!

A portion of this book's proceeds will be donated to El Centro de Topeka.

Book Description:

A finalist for the 2025 Birdy Poetry Prize, Huascar Medina’s highly anticipated third book of poetry, Protest as Love Poem, is a four-part expression of love through defiant truths and collective survival. An urgent rebuttal to apathy, Protest as Love Poem is a plea for intimate authority and a call for a revolution. It is both political and personal, endearing and indignant—a direct request to feel more, not less, in this present moment.

About the Author:

Huascar Medina is a father, poet, and editor living artfully in Topeka, Kansas. He’s the author of three books of poetry, How to Hang the Moon (Spartan Press, 2017), Un Mango Grows in Kansas (Spartan Press, 2020), and Protest as Love Poem (Meadowlark Press, 2026). He served as Poet Laureate of Kansas from 2019-2022. His work has appeared in Flint Hills Review, Gasconade Review, Green Mountains Review, KANSAS! Magazine, Latino Book Review, The New York Times, and elsewhere.

What Readers Are Saying:

In Protest as Love Poem, Huascar Medina breaks us with his lines. Sometimes short and urgent, warning us, “The red hats / are coming.” Other times, long and flowing as if in prayer . . . a haunting invocation longing for mother tongue to offer us “a place of refuge and safety.” These poems, however, are anything but safe. They are a punch to the gut. There is a discomfort in these poems. An uneasiness like one might feel living in a place that goes out of its way to make a Brown man feel like an immigrant in his own land. Devastatingly acute erasures share space with palliative prayers in Protest as Love Poem. After reading it, I found myself trying to think of one word that could best capture how I feel about this book . . . necessary. These poems are necessary, needed, essential, maybe now more than ever. These poems need no tulips to walk through. Huascar tells us as only a poet can, honestly and openly to our faces, “Right now, Brown people are disappearing, / in broad daylight, in America.” In Protest as Love Poem, Huascar exposes himself to us in an aching way, “speaking in a way / only a wound could heal.” People need to read these poems. Profs need to teach these poems. I don’t curse lightly, but damn . . . these poems must be spread far and wide.

—Joaquín Zihuatanejo, author of Occupy Whiteness and IMMIGRANT

In an era of ubiquitous anti-Latinx scapegoating, surveillance, and ridicule, Medina’s poems serve as brave protest poems, vulnerable truth-telling documents, and affirmations of empowerment and force. The stripped-down, accessible language effectively pulls the reader into a powerful narrative of resilience and survival, a candid account of a Latino in middle America. A must-read collection of fortitude and charm.

—Jose Hernandez Diaz, author of Bad Mexican, Bad American

Huascar Medina’s third book of poetry, Protest as Love Poem, beats the drum of revolution with tender power and calls us to action with his earnest interrogation of the multifaceted human experience. With one foot in the Heartland and the other rooted in his Motherland, Huascar weaves a passionate immigrant citizen song heavy with the body politic and a molotov mother tongue— “rooted in rebellion; / harvesting more than survival . . . / a higher yield of Joaquins, Huertas, and Guevaras.” Medina summons the celestial and stars to the frontline of this love song for his people. “On Earth, / humans don’t treat us / human enough—call us / aliens. To cope, I became celestial, brilliant- / bodied, full of gravity, pulled down, heavier— / wishing to warp time and safer spaces.” Within these pages, there is still safe space, a reprieve from the apathy and disillusion turned toward spiritual striving and finding what we all search for: Libertad and Love.

—Kai Coggin, Hot Springs Poet Laureate and author of Mother of Other Kingdoms

Please Join Us 4/28 and 5/5 for the 2026 Diverse Voices Book Launch Events!

2026-04-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

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!

2026-04-24T11:54:46.184-05:00

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

2026-04-15T09:33:00.000-05:00

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.

###

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

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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Shop Meadowlark

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

Meadowlark Press, LLC

Meadowlark Press releases historical novel set in Kansas and Missouri in early 20th century

Interview with Meadowlark poet Tess Barry by Emily Mohn-Slate

"opening doors to the unexpected and beautiful"

You're Invited! May 22 Book Launch Event: Huascar Medina's Protest as Love Poem

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!

Congratulations to 2026 Birdy Poetry Prize Winner David Ebenbach!

We are thrilled to announce the winner of the 2026 Birdy Poetry PrizeThese Blessings Are All We Have by David Ebenbach!

Congratulations, David!

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!

Meadowlark Press Announces New Kansas-Themed Essay Collection by Jenna Brack

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

We are thrilled to announce the winner of the
2026 Birdy Poetry Prize
These Blessings Are All We Have
by David Ebenbach!

Meadowlark would like to thank Poet Laureate of Kansas
Traci Brimhall for serving as this year's judge!

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