Sep 11, 2021 | Author Houses, Literary Landscapes, Nebraska, Novelists, Volume 1
Wright Morris Boyhood HomeCentral City, Nebraska By Nathan Tye For Wright Morris, home was both a physical place and emotional ache. Born in Central City, Nebraska, in 1910, Morris made his life elsewhere, but returned to the Platte Valley in his writing and...
Sep 11, 2021 | Graves, Illinois, Literary Landscapes, Poets, Volume 1
Edgar Lee Masters Ann Rutledge’s GravePetersburg, Illinois By Jason Stacy As a boy, I found it unsettling that Edgar Lee Masters anthologized the dead in an Illinois cemetery that never existed. Spoon River Anthology’s ghosts haunted the same rich Illinois soil I...
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...
Sep 11, 2021 | Literary Landscapes, Missouri, Novelists, Volume 1
William Gass ParkviewSt. Louis, Missouri By Devin Thomas O’Shea The epigraph of The Tunnel reads, “The descent to hell is the same from every place,” but William Gass chose to set his magnum opus in a leafy suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, called Parkview. Parkview is...
Sep 11, 2021 | Literary Landscapes, Poets, Schools, Volume 1, Writers of Color
Naomi Shihab Nye Central Elementary SchoolFerguson, Missouri By Taylor Fox There’s a haunted feeling that comes with walking around an empty schoolyard. Barren playgrounds and darkened windows convey emptiness, dejection. It’s unnatural for playgrounds to go quiet....
