By Not only did I get to hear Richard Uhlig talk at ESU on Oct. 2, I ran into him again at the Kansas Book Festival last weekend in Wichita. His book wasn’t available at his ESU reading, but I bought a copy on Saturday. I had the book read by Sunday evening. It was that …
Richard Uhlig
Native Kansan Richard Uhlig spoke at ESU Tuesday evening about his novels and screenplays. Uhlig grew up in Herington, attended ESU for awhile and then went on to New York University to study film and television. In August, he published “Last Dance at the Frosty Queen” which is set in the fictional town of Harker …
Nature Reclaims Its Own
Here’s a special treat from our Flyover Friend in Indianapolis, native Kansan Ray Randolph. Something about Dave’s photographs, Overgrown Tractor and Farm Truck Near Cedar Point, inspired the writer in Ray and he composed a short piece of fiction about the old farmhouse, the tractor and the residents he imagined to have lived there. Here’s …
Kevin Rabas
While hanging out at ESU’s Memorial Union this afternoon, I ran into Kevin Rabas, poet, jazz musician, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Emporia State. Kevin published his first book of poetry a couple weeks ago: Bird’s Horn and Other Poems. Luckily, I just happened to have my camera: I also had 10 bucks on …
Walking on Water
I met Mike Everhart on Saturday, purchased his “Oceans of Kansas” book, visited his website. All of this thinking about Kansas oceans brought to mind a poem that I wrote five or six years ago… WALKING ON WATER When he was young, my brother, with his blond head bent toward the earth, searched for sharks’ …
Why I love spell checkers
lavender vertical exercise I never spell these words right. But the nearly-always-wonderful Word program automatically corrects my mistakes by quietly swapping der for dar in lavender. And when I misspell vertical, which is every single time I type the word, the spell-checker changes the le to al without saying a word. I guess it doesn’t …
Sconed
Two words that perpetually bungle me up are scone and sconce. Don’t know why. When writing, I have to say the word aloud to make sure that I’m not hanging a scone on the wall.
Four Years
This week marks my 4-year anniversary of writing the Flyover People column. My first column was published on January 28, 2003, just in time for Kansas Day. When I got the go-ahead to write the column in January of 2003, John Lechliter, Managing Editor of The Gazette at the time, said something like, “Some people …