News

Our October featured member, Judith Towse Roberts, is an area writer, teacher of creative writing, and poet. Judith graduated from The University of Missouri at Kansas City with a B.A. in English Language and Literature and went on to receive her M.A. in English/Education, as well as a second Masters in Counseling/Psychology. The Mid-America Press has published her  book of poetry entitled, Chrysanthemums I Once Thought Sweet, which was a finalist in the Thorpe Menn competition, published student books of creative writing which have won awards for excellence both statewide and nationally, and her works have appeared in many literary magazines as well as Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul.  Judith retired from Avila University where she taught composition and finished a career of 40 years of teaching in both public and private schools.  She has conducted workshops throughout the State and is currently conducting creative writing workshops in the inner city for at-risk students with The Writers Place as coordinator of a program called “In Our Own Words”.

Writers Place Members,

The Writers Place plans to publish a Member Yearbook in 2022.  We are excited to offer you the opportunity to publish one piece in our 2021-2022 Writers Place Yearbook. Send one poem, one short story, one excerpt from a longer work of fiction or play, or one piece of creative nonfiction. Prose submissions should not exceed 1500 words. Please include a 50 to 100-word bio.

To be eligible, your membership in the Writers Place must be current. If you have let your membership lapse, then simply renew it in order to be eligible, or you can become a member by joining online at our website (writersplace.org) or sending in a check for membership.  A membership lasts for one year, so it may be time to renew.

All submissions are due by December 31, 2021. Submissions may be previously published provided you have the rights returned to you.  Please submit a Word document on one poem or one prose piece as an email attachment to bgulley@jccc.edu. We will publish the yearbook on the Writers Place website and publicize through our email and social media network. We look forward to highlighting your words.

                                                                        The Writers Place Board of Directors

Voices from the Writers Place audiobook is now available to stream/download! Twenty-five writers reading their work.

Stream online at Voices from the Writers Place | The Writers Place (bandcamp.com). 

Our September featured member is Polly Alice McCann. Polly Alice McCann's lyrical poetry paints a picture of the narratives of the internal heartland. Poet, curator, artist, editor, speaker. She is a writing professor, founder, and managing editor of Flying Ketchup Press. With a B.A. in Studio Art and her MFAC in Writing from Hamline University, Polly shows her art internationally-- recently in the Netherlands and Santa Monica, CA. She has been published in US newspapers and magazines, most recently Rattle Magazine. She credits much of her creative work due to her research on dreams which won her the 2014 Ernest Hartmann award from Berkeley, CA. She says her favorite thing is to tell stories-- other people's, her own-- maybe yours. Find out more at pollymccann.com. You can find her first three books of narrative free verse, Kinlight, Tea with Alice, and Puss ‘n Boötes: Dark Poems. Find her at www.pollymccann.com.

In 2020 she founded Ketchupedia to connect writers, artists, and creatives in the Kansas City area and region through dialogue surrounding resources & collaboration. Ketchupedia helps poets “catch up” with their art, other creatives, and their audience through podcast, radio, and an annual poet in residence to create a single author collection by a regional poet who connects community advocacy and the arts, as well as poetry editor mentorships to exponentially increase the sharing of poetry.

For the month of August, we feature David Arnold Hughes. David Arnold Hughes Is a retired Firefighter and poet. He currently lives in North Kansas City MO. David has been a member of TWP since about 2003. He has participated in many readings at TWP, served on the outreach committee, and as a repairer of locks, lights, and other small maintenance issues and was once named, Member Of The Year.

He co-hosted Blue Monday Open Mic.at Uptown Arts Bar, for a couple of years, and guest hosted readings at Corbin Theater in Liberty MO a number of times. He has frequently read at bars, coffee houses, libraries, book stores, and theaters throughout  the Kansas City area. He has been published in a number of poetry journals around the Midwest, as well as the west coast and UK.

He has published 3 chapbooks, 2 are still in print. They are, in chronological order: Firefighters And Stained Glass Women, blue chair press 2005, The Sound Time Makes, iUniverse 2008, Born A Stranger, Spartan Press 2017.

Gary Lechliter is a birder, poet, and editor.  He has written poetry since 1981 and gives credit to Michael Heffernan, Jim McCray, Tom Wilson, Brian Daldorph and Philip Miller as mentors.  James Tate, William Stafford, Mark Strand and Anne Sexton have influenced his writing style. He is recipient of the Langston Hughes Award and the David Ray Award.  He is the author of four books of poetry and the edited anthology The Shining Years. In addition to managing editor of I-70 Review, Gary is an editor for Woodley Memorial Press. He holds an advanced degree in psychology and worked in the Mental Health field for many years.  He and his wife Camille will be re-locating to New Mexico in 2021. 

Beth Gulley lives in Spring Hill, Kansas and teaches writing at Johnson County Community College. She has an MA from UMKC and a PhD from the University of Kansas. When not writing about teaching, Beth primarily writes poetry.

She in 2018 published a chapbook, $!*# Hole Countries: A Find and Replace Meditation.  Her poems also appear in the Bards Against Hunger Anthology, From Everywhere a Little: A Migration Anthology, the Thorny Locust, and The Gasconade Review Presents: Storm A’Comin’, Kansas Letters to a Young Poet, and the 105 Meadowlark Reader. She has been a proud member of the Facebook group 365 Poems in 365 Days since 2015, and her poems appear in all three of the 365 Poems in 365 Days anthologies.

Beth serves on the Riverfront Reading Committee and is a Writer’s Place board member. When not writing and teaching, she loves thrift store shopping, traveling, and drinking coffee. More information can be found on her blog at https://timeeasesallthings.wordpress.com/.

For the month of May, we are featuring member Catherine Anderson. Anderson’s most recent collection of poetry is Everyone I Love Immortal (Woodley Press). Other collections are Woman with a Gambling Mania (Mayapple Press), The Work of Hands (Perugia) and In the Mother Tongue (Alice James Books).  A recipient of the Cornelia C. Ward Fellowship in Poetry at Syracuse University where she received an MA in English, she has received awards from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, The Crab Orchard Review and the I-70 Review. In 2019, she was a finalist for the Jake Adam York Auburn Witness Poetry Prize from the Southern Humanities Review. Poems have also appeared in bosque, the Dunes Review, the Laurel Review and other journals. She lives in Kansas City and works at Jewish Vocational Service where she heads programs for spoken language interpreters from the city’s immigrant communities. On the third Monday of the month she facilitates the Poetry Reading Circle sponsored by The Writer’s Place.

Everyone I Love Immortal, Woodley Memorial Press

http://woodleypress.org/books

Woman With a Gambling Mania, Mayapple Pres

http://mayapplepress.com/woman-with-a-gambling-mania-catherine-anderson/

This month, The Writers Place is featuring Wayne Courtois. Wayne has been involved with The Writers Place since 2010, has served as a board member and is currently a member of the TWP Programming Committee.

Wayne is author of the award-winning memoir A Report from Winter, the literary novel Tales My Body Told Me, and the gay erotic novels My Name Is Rand and In the Time of Solution 9. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in many anthologies and journals, including The Shining Years, I-70 Review, Hibernation and Other Poems by Gay Bards, and Assaracus (poetry) and Jonathan (fiction) from Sibling Rivalry Press.

Wayne is owner and sole proprietor of The Art of Grants, LLC, and as a grant writer has raised millions for HIV/AIDS services, hospice care, and the arts. He lives in Kansas City with his husband of 32 years, author and translator Ralph Seligman.