EVENTS
Tuesday, September 14 7 PM
Lawrence Public Library
Katie Armitage, LAWRENCE: SURVIVORS OF QUANTRILL’S RAID
Stunned and grieving survivors stared into their burned-out town on the western frontier in the midst of the Civil War. William C. Quantrill’s Missouri guerillas raided Lawrence, Kansas, on August 21, 1863, and killed 180 men and boys. Women lost husbands, children lost fathers, and fathers lost sons. Every one of the 2,500 residents lost either a loved one, a neighbor, or acquaintance. A few left town but most survivors were determined to remain and remember; not to “wink out.” Newcomers brought industry and innovation. The University of Kansas, 1866, and Haskell Institute, 1884 (now Haskell Indian Nations University), grew into major institutions.
Commemoration of Quantrill’s raid peaked on the 50th anniversary of the attack in August 1913, when 200 survivors gathered in Lawrence. In 1925, fewer survivors met to remember. Almost 150 years later, the “raid” echoes still. Through images and stories from archival collections, the author, a longtime Lawrence historian, explores how survivors of this horrific event rebuilt their lives, their town, and memorialized their experiences.
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Monday, September 20 7 PM
@ Lawrence Public Library
Sarah Smarsh, OUTLAW TALES OF KANSAS and IT HAPPENED IN KANSAS
Sarah Smarsh is a freelance writer and assistant professor of English at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, where she teaches creative nonfiction writing. Sarah has written for The Huffington Post, Kansas City’s The Pitch (Village Voice Media) and newspapers across the Midwest, and has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Kansas Press Association. She holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, as well as degrees in journalism and English from the University of Kansas. Find more information on Sarah at sarashsmarsh.wordpress.com.
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Thursday, September 23 7 PM
@ The Raven
Big Tent: Stories and Poems in Three Acts
Priscilla Howe (storytelling)
Chloé Cooper Jones (fiction)
Gary Lechliter
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Wednesday, September 29 7 PM
@ The Raven
Barbara Stuber, author of CROSSING THE TRACKS
About CROSSING THE TRACKS: At fifteen, Iris is a hobo of sorts – no home, no family, no plan. After her mother’s early death, Iris’s father focuses on big plans for his new shoe stores and his latest girlfriend, and has no time for his daughter. Unbeknownst to her, he hires Iris out as housekeeper and companion for a country doctor’s elderly mother. Suddenly Iris is alone, stuck in gritty rural Missouri, too far from her only friend Leroy and too close to a tenant farmer Cecil Deets, who menaces the neighbors, and Iris suspects, his own daughter.
Iris is buoyed by the warmth and understanding the doctor and his mother show her, but just as she starts to break out of her shell tragedy strikes. Iris must find the guts and cunning to take aim at the devil incarnate and discover if she is really as helpless, hopeless, and homeless – as she once believed.
Barbara Stuber co-authored her first book with her friend, Barbara Coleman Unell – a “Diotionary” of nonsense words – in the fourth grade. Her early spelling challenges somewhat resolved, she now weaves those words into short stories and novels. When not writing, she is an art museum docent. Barbara lives in Kansas City with her family about two hours from the good people of Wellsford, Missouri. CROSSING THE TRACKS is her first novel. Find more information at barbarastuber.com
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Thursday, October 14 7 PM
@ The Raven
Abayomi Animashaun, author of THE GIVING OF PEARS reads
Abayo Animashaun’s poems have appeared in such journals as African American Review, 5 A.M., Southern Indiana Review, and Diode, among others. A Puschart nominee and a recipient of a grant from the International Center for Writing and Translation, Animashaun won the Hudson prize in 2008 for his poetry collection, “The Giving of Pears”, which is available through Black Lawrence Press.
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Tuesday, October 19 7PM
@ Lawrence Public Library
Brent Crawford, author of CARTER FINALLY GETS IT & CARTER’S BIG BREAK
Brent Crawford’s first young adult novel CARTER FINALLY GETS IT was released by Hyperion-Disney in 2009. His second book, CARTER’S BIG BREAK was released in June 2010. He was born in Kansas but moved to LA and then New York City to pursue an acting career. He has worked in theatre, film, TV, and commercials (check him out on IMDB.com). He’s written numerous plays and scripts, as well as waited tables, bartended, sold hardware and clothing, worked construction, and even dumped airplane toilets (where do you think it goes?). He’s now a full-time writer living in Kansas City.
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Friday, October 22 7PM
@ The Raven
Paul Goldman, author of WILD JOY: RUMINATIONS
Paul Goldman is an Ecstatic Poet, Performance Artist and founder of The Rime Buddhist Center Gratitude Open Mic Night in Kansas City, Missouri. Paul has just released a new book of Ecstatic Poetry, WILD JOY: RUMINATIONS. Vern Barnet, “Faiths and Beliefs” columnist for The Kansas City Star had this to say about WILD JOY: RUMINATIONS: “[Written] with the freshness of an adolescent’s first love and with the maturity of wisdom in declaring that ‘the bringer of joy unbounded brings deep sorrow,’ these ‘chanted words connect like a string of rosary beads,’ to ‘reveal a new human, Homo Luminous.’ The wild, holy energy within this book can burst forth only from a ‘man who has lost himself in love,’ such as Rumi and other seers, whose poetry this volume now joins.”
Paul’s CD, Wild Joy Released (spoken Word by Paul Goldman & Sacred Musical Accompaniment by Tom Jacobs) was released earlier this year. Mark Scheel, author of the award-winning collection, “A Backward View”, said the CD is “…a tsunami of the soul is sweeping over humankind, and Paul Goldman, with his Sufistic voice is there, fully in the vanguard, helping to define and shape its Divine message of love, healing and joy.” (Excerpted from Evolving “A Guide for Conscious Living” April 2010 Volume III Issue 2.)
Paul Goldman states that his poetic mission is to foster an awakening to one’s own divinity and a reckoning of self-love in all who read or listen to these ecstatic words of Wild Joy!
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Tuesday, October 26 7PM
@ The Raven
Katherine Leiner, author of GROWING ROOTS
GROWING ROOTS is made up of 58 young folks who are involved in sustainability that revolves around food. They are not just farmers, but cooks, filmmakers, artists, beekeepers, mushroomers and food activists —to name only a few. Lawrence’s Hillary Brown from Local Burger is featured in the book.
From Katherine Leiner:
I began this project after my youngest child graduated from college and left me an empty nester. I had no one to cook for, no one to share meals with. I felt the quiet most often in the kitchen. In the spring of 2007, I began traveling back and forth across the nation interviewing what I now know is a new breed of young people who, like many in the 60s and 70s, find passion in good food. Their sustainable lifestyles revolve around food that has been grown locally, without pesticides, herbicides, hormones, or chemical fertilizers. They understand that the privilege of healthy eating does not come easily. It comes from hard work on the land, in the schoolroom and by using the political process.
Healthy food is a right for everyone. The young people profiled in a very abbreviated fashion here, are examples of young people living and working across this wide nation of ours, who are exploring means of democratizing our food system to produce healthy, nutritious food for all. Sitting at their tables, I became reinvigorated, enthusiastic again about my food choices. My book is a collection of their stories and their recipes illustrated with photographs. www.growingroots.info
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Thursday, October 28 7 PM
@ The Raven
Big Tent: Stories and Poems in Three Acts
Aliki Barnstone, poetry
Angela Glover, prose/poetry
Jeff Koterba, memoir
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Wednesday, November 10 7 PM
@ The Raven
John Reimringer, author of VESTMENTS reads
Taught this prayer as a boy by his grandfather, James Dressler recites it when he’s tempted by earthly desires. But intimacy is not easily denied. Originally drawn to the priesthood by the mystery, purity, and sensual fabric of the Church, as well as by its promise of a safe harbor from his violent father, James finds himself—just a few years after his ordination—attracted again to his first love, Betty García. Torn between these competing loves, and haunted by his father’s heritage, James finds himself at a crossroads. Exploring age-old and yet urgently contemporary issues in the Catholic Church, and infused throughout by a rich sense of the history and vibrant texture of Saint Paul, this is an utterly honest and subtly lyrical novel. Read an excerpt of VESTMENTS.
John Reimringer grew up in Topeka, Kansas and completed his undergraduate studies at University of Kansas. A former newspaper editor and a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Arkansas, John Reimringer lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with his wife, the poet Katrina Vandenberg. VESTMENTS is his first novel.