This work offers the writings and thoughts on Kansas of 17 authors. The contributors' views span the period 1910 to 1994: they show not only a physical love of Kansas the place, but also present it as a state of mind. Writers include William Allen White, Zula Bennington Green and Robert Day.

An anthology of poetry and prose from thirty-five of today’s leading literary voices from the Sunflower State, brought together to explore how Kansas makes us feel and why we’re proud to call it home.Kansas Matters gathers thirty-five of the state’s leading literary voices to offer profound insights into the feelings that Kansas evokes. This living map of personal geographies and histories draws on the rich emotions and memories that bind Kansans to the Sunflower State.Brought together in a new anthology of thirty-five poems, essays, and short fiction, these writers reflect on twenty-first-century Kansas: on the beauty of the land and the fight for its preservation; the divisions of identity and the belonging of home; the context of our history and our hopes for the future.These contemporary voices show us Kansas as we know it to be and Kansas as we want it to be—a complex, emotional, and inspiring assertion of why Kansas matters.

A Kansas Notable BookAn anthology of poetry and prose from thirty-five of todays leading literary voices from the Sunflower State, brought together to explore how Kansas makes us feel and why were proud to call it home.Kansas Matters gathers thirty-five of the states leading literary voices to offer profound insights into the feelings that Kansas evokes. This living map of personal geographies and histories draws on the rich emotions and memories that bind Kansans to the Sunflower State.Brought together in a new anthology of thirty-five poems, essays, and short fiction, these writers reflect on twenty-first-century Kansas: on the beauty of the land and the fight for its preservation; the divisions of identity and the belonging of home; the context of our history and our hopes for the future.These contemporary voices show us Kansas as we know it to be and Kansas as we want it to bea complex, emotional, and inspiring assertion of why Kansas matters.

A Kansas Notable BookAn anthology of poetry and prose from thirty-five of todays leading literary voices from the Sunflower State, brought together to explore how Kansas makes us feel and why were proud to call it home.Kansas Matters gathers thirty-five of the states leading literary voices to offer profound insights into the feelings that Kansas evokes. This living map of personal geographies and histories draws on the rich emotions and memories that bind Kansans to the Sunflower State.Brought together in a new anthology of thirty-five poems, essays, and short fiction, these writers reflect on twenty-first-century Kansas: on the beauty of the land and the fight for its preservation; the divisions of identity and the belonging of home; the context of our history and our hopes for the future.These contemporary voices show us Kansas as we know it to be and Kansas as we want it to bea complex, emotional, and inspiring assertion of why Kansas matters.

Falling under the spell of these short stories by O. Henry Award–winning author Thomas Fox Averill, a reader might well wonder: What in the world is ordinary? If there really are "just plain folks" anywhere at all, they'd surely be in the solid Midwestern Kansas of Averill's fiction. And yet the "ordinary" people we meet in these stories lead us into one startling encounter after another with the mystery, the magic, and, yes, the transcendence that even the most mundane life secretly holds. In writing that has been called "lyrical" (New York Times), "compelling" (Kansas City Star), and "voluptuous" (Booklist), Averill explores the relationship between fathers and sons, the dead and the living, the natural and the unnatural. With crystalline clarity he reveals the ordinary and the extraordinary genius of a place, a time, a solitary soul embedded in the minutiae of the everyday: a young boy hunting for a runaway horse; a couple ostracized in their small town; a grieving high school basketball star; a child with a voice purer than a tuning fork; a gay son seeking his father's acceptance; two boys playing bocce with the parish priest for high stakes—the secret of their birth. If there is magic in love, in acceptance, in sorrow and solace in all the usual places, then these stories find that magic with ordinary genius.

Raised in the traditional kitchen from which his mother runs her Buen AppeTito catering service, Weston Tito Hingler's childhood is shaped by the foods he eats, especially those he must try before he is allowed to enter the Tsil Café where his father invites--and at times challenges--diners to experience foods of the New World cooked New Mexican style.Filled with recipes and definitions of New World ingredients, Averill's novel follows Wes as he navigates his way through the duelling cuisines of his passionate parents and the signature recipes of his life.

This work offers the writings and thoughts on Kansas of 17 authors. The contributors' views span the period 1910 to 1994: they show not only a physical love of Kansas the place, but also present it as a state of mind. Writers include William Allen White, Zula Bennington Green and Robert Day.

An anthology of poetry and prose from thirty-five of today’s leading literary voices from the Sunflower State, brought together to explore how Kansas makes us feel and why we’re proud to call it home.Kansas Matters gathers thirty-five of the state’s leading literary voices to offer profound insights into the feelings that Kansas evokes. This living map of personal geographies and histories draws on the rich emotions and memories that bind Kansans to the Sunflower State.Brought together in a new anthology of thirty-five poems, essays, and short fiction, these writers reflect on twenty-first-century Kansas: on the beauty of the land and the fight for its preservation; the divisions of identity and the belonging of home; the context of our history and our hopes for the future.These contemporary voices show us Kansas as we know it to be and Kansas as we want it to be—a complex, emotional, and inspiring assertion of why Kansas matters.

A Kansas Notable BookAn anthology of poetry and prose from thirty-five of todays leading literary voices from the Sunflower State, brought together to explore how Kansas makes us feel and why were proud to call it home.Kansas Matters gathers thirty-five of the states leading literary voices to offer profound insights into the feelings that Kansas evokes. This living map of personal geographies and histories draws on the rich emotions and memories that bind Kansans to the Sunflower State.Brought together in a new anthology of thirty-five poems, essays, and short fiction, these writers reflect on twenty-first-century Kansas: on the beauty of the land and the fight for its preservation; the divisions of identity and the belonging of home; the context of our history and our hopes for the future.These contemporary voices show us Kansas as we know it to be and Kansas as we want it to bea complex, emotional, and inspiring assertion of why Kansas matters.

A Kansas Notable BookAn anthology of poetry and prose from thirty-five of todays leading literary voices from the Sunflower State, brought together to explore how Kansas makes us feel and why were proud to call it home.Kansas Matters gathers thirty-five of the states leading literary voices to offer profound insights into the feelings that Kansas evokes. This living map of personal geographies and histories draws on the rich emotions and memories that bind Kansans to the Sunflower State.Brought together in a new anthology of thirty-five poems, essays, and short fiction, these writers reflect on twenty-first-century Kansas: on the beauty of the land and the fight for its preservation; the divisions of identity and the belonging of home; the context of our history and our hopes for the future.These contemporary voices show us Kansas as we know it to be and Kansas as we want it to bea complex, emotional, and inspiring assertion of why Kansas matters.

Falling under the spell of these short stories by O. Henry Award–winning author Thomas Fox Averill, a reader might well wonder: What in the world is ordinary? If there really are "just plain folks" anywhere at all, they'd surely be in the solid Midwestern Kansas of Averill's fiction. And yet the "ordinary" people we meet in these stories lead us into one startling encounter after another with the mystery, the magic, and, yes, the transcendence that even the most mundane life secretly holds. In writing that has been called "lyrical" (New York Times), "compelling" (Kansas City Star), and "voluptuous" (Booklist), Averill explores the relationship between fathers and sons, the dead and the living, the natural and the unnatural. With crystalline clarity he reveals the ordinary and the extraordinary genius of a place, a time, a solitary soul embedded in the minutiae of the everyday: a young boy hunting for a runaway horse; a couple ostracized in their small town; a grieving high school basketball star; a child with a voice purer than a tuning fork; a gay son seeking his father's acceptance; two boys playing bocce with the parish priest for high stakes—the secret of their birth. If there is magic in love, in acceptance, in sorrow and solace in all the usual places, then these stories find that magic with ordinary genius.

Raised in the traditional kitchen from which his mother runs her Buen AppeTito catering service, Weston Tito Hingler's childhood is shaped by the foods he eats, especially those he must try before he is allowed to enter the Tsil Café where his father invites--and at times challenges--diners to experience foods of the New World cooked New Mexican style.Filled with recipes and definitions of New World ingredients, Averill's novel follows Wes as he navigates his way through the duelling cuisines of his passionate parents and the signature recipes of his life.