Oct 18, 2024 | Literary Landscapes, Schools, Volume 15, Writers of Color
Toni Morrison Thayer Hall West Point, New York By Trivius Caldwell Born Chloe Wofford on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison was the second of four children and a precocious reader. She attended Howard University in 1949 and, later, taught there for...
May 9, 2024 | Kansas, Kansas, Literary Landscapes, Novelists, Schools, Volume 14
Bienvenido Santos Ablah Library Wichita, Kansas By Abby Bayani-Heitzman 🎧 Listen at HPPR 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...
May 4, 2024 | Kansas, Kansas, Literary Landscapes, Schools, Volume 14
Ben Lerner Topeka High School Topeka, Kansas By Molly Hatesohl 🎧 Listen at HPPR There are many things in Room 103 of Topeka High School that evince its history. Designed in 1930 during the Collegiate Gothic Revival, its granite fireplace and wrought iron chandeliers...
Oct 17, 2021 | Illinois, Literary Landscapes, Nature, Novelists, Schools, Volume 6
MARY HUNTER AUSTIN Blackburn CollegeCarlinville, Illinois By Karen Dillon and Naomi Crummey As professors in the English department at Blackburn College, we have always been aware of the legacy of the college’s most famed writer, Mary Hunter Austin, who was born in...
Oct 5, 2021 | Illinois, Literary Landscapes, Novelists, Schools, Volume 4
WILLA CATHER The Fine Arts BuildingChicago, Illinois By Jesse Raber Chicago isn’t an iconic setting for Willa Cather, the great novelist of the prairies. Yet, in a sense, during Cather’s time Chicago writing was prairie writing. When H.L. Mencken crowned...
Sep 11, 2021 | Indiana, Literary Landscapes, Nonfiction, Schools, Volume 1, Writers of Color
Zitkála-Šá Earlham HallRichmond, Indiana By Leah Milne I was a Midwest transplant, born and raised on the East Coast. Before I left home, friends joked about flatland and cornfields and voiced concerns about my entering what they perceived to be a region of...
