May 9, 2024 | Kansas, Kansas, Literary Landscapes, Novelists, Schools, Volume 14
Bienvenido Santos Ablah Library Wichita, Kansas By Abby Bayani-Heitzman Filipino American writer Bienvenido “Ben” N. Santos had a complicated relationship with the Midwest. He first arrived in the United States in 1941 as a pensionado, or government-sponsored scholar,...
May 4, 2024 | Kansas, Kansas, Literary Landscapes, Nonfiction, Novelists, Volume 13
Truman Capote 1112 Gillespie Place Garden City, Kansas By Rosemary Hope This is the story of my house and the foursome who gathered for dinner Christmas Day 1959: Truman Capote, Nelle Harper Lee, and my parents, Dolores and Clifford Hope Jr. It was at the beginning of...
May 4, 2024 | Kansas, Kansas, Literary Landscapes, Nature, Novelists, Volume 13
Niki Smith Rock Springs Ranch Junction City, Kansas By Macy Davis Niki Smith never names Kansas in The Golden Hour. She doesn’t need to. Every page of the 2021 graphic novel shows Kansas. It starts with the cover, which looks through wheat in the foreground to kids on...
Sep 30, 2023 | Author Houses, Literary Landscapes, Nature, Novelists, Oklahoma, Volume 12
R. A. Lafferty 1724 S. Trenton Ave.Tulsa, Oklahoma By Michael Helsem “Everything, including dreams, is meteorological.” – R. A. Lafferty, ”Narrow Valley” A couple of years ago, my wife and I were visiting my young niece and her husband in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they...
Sep 30, 2023 | Literary Landscapes, Michigan, Nature, Novelists, Volume 12
Jim Harrison Mixed Coniferous ForestOsceola County, Michigan By Camden Burd “What we think of our hometown is our first substantial map of the world,” Jim Harrison wrote in his 2002 memoir, Off to the Side. A hometown takes the mishappen clay of a person and molds...
Sep 30, 2023 | Literary Landscapes, North Dakota, Novelists, Volume 12
Louis L’Amour World’s Largest BuffaloJamestown, North Dakota By Sheila Liming The most famous writer to ever come out of North Dakota never wrote anything that takes place there. Louis L’Amour often talked about revisiting his home state, which he left at the age of...