Bøger udgivet af Spartan Press

Shawn Pavey has delivered newspapers, mowed lawns, bagged groceries, cut meat, laid sewer pipe, bussed tables, washed dishes, roofed houses, crunched numbers, rented cars, worked in hotels, worn an apron at Kinko's, and been paid to write everything from re¿sume¿s to music reviews. Currently, he earns a living as an Executive Recruiter in Mission, KS where he lives with his wife and two worthless but adorable cats. He is the author of Talking to Shadows (2008, Main Street Rag Press) and Nobody Steals the Towels from a Motel 6 (2015, Spartan Press), Co-founder and former Associate Editor of The Main Street Rag Literary Journal, and a former board member and officer of The Writers Place, a Kansas City-based literary non-profit. His poems, essays, and journalism appear in a variety of national and regional publications. He's hosted poetry readings in bars, coffee shops, haunted houses, bookstores, libraries, front porches, seedy motel rooms, and abandoned warehouses. A graduate of the University of North Carolina's Undergraduate Honors Creative Writing Program, he likes his Tom Waits loud, his bourbon single-barrel, and his basketball Carolina Blue.

Al Ortolani's newest collection of poetry, On the Chicopee Spur, was released from New York Quarterly Books in 2018. How Wally Lost His Thumb and the Boy Scouts Became Cannibals, a mix of old and new "Wally poems" also appeared from Spartan Press the same year. A previous collection, Ghost Sign, co-authored with J.T. Knoll, Adam Jameson, and Melissa Fite Johnson was selected as a Kansas Notable Book for 2017. In 2019, Ortolani was a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Series Award. He is the Manuscript Editor for Woodley Press in Topeka, Kansas, and has directed a memoir writing project for Vietnam veterans across Kansas in association with the Library of Congress and Humanities Kansas. After 43 years of teaching English in public schools, he currently lives a life without bells and fire drills in the Kansas City area.

James P. McNamara is a Kansas City based poet. His work has appeared, but sometimes it doesn't. He has seen the ocean once and mountains twice. You can learn more about him on outhereincarcountry.com

Cal Louise Phoenix was born, raised, and educated in Kansas, where she continues to reside. Her poetry, fiction, and non fiction have appeared in literary pub-lications since 2010, including her essay "Renovating Shabbat," which won the Beecher's 2015 Contest in non fiction. Tracing Ghosts is her first book.

Darrien E. Case was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri and considers his home one of the most slept on cities in the U.S. Darrien is currently working on his BA in Liberal Arts - Creative Writing and a minor in business. Since his first public performance at Uptown Arts Bar three years ago, Darrien's poetry has been featured on 41 Action News, Voyage ATL Magazine and even TEDx. Because his first love was music, Darrien consistently incorporates songs into his poetry. He represented KC at the 2018 National Poetry Slam and made finals stage with his team at the 2019 Rustbelt Regional Slam. Case is a 10-time KCPS champion while also being awarded "Best Newcomer" in 2018 and "Best Slam Artist" in 2019 by the Music and More Poetry Foundation.

Cameron Morse was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6 month life expectancy, he entered the Creative Writing program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, Portland Review and South Dakota Review. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press's 2018 Best Book Award. His second, Father Me Again, is available from Spartan Press and third, the chapbook Coming Home with Cancer, belongs to Blue Lyra Press's Delphi Poetry Series. He lives with his wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri, where he manages Inklings' FOURTH FRIDAYS READING SERIES with Eve Brackenbury and serves as poetry editor for Harbor Review.

Americana songwriter and Kansas-City-based storyteller K.W. Peery is the author of eight poetry collections: Tales of a Receding Hairline; Purgatory; Wicked Rhythm; Ozark Howler; Gallatin Gallows; Howler Holler; Bootlegger's Bluff; Cockpit Chronicles. He is founder and co-editor of The Angel's Share Literary Magazine (Shine Runner Press). His work is included in the Vincent Van Gogh Anthology Resurrection of a Sunflower, The Cosmic Lost and Found: An Anthology of Missouri Poets (Spartan Press), Best of Mad Swirl Anthology 2018 and the Walsall Poetry Society Anthology, Diverse Verse II & III. Credited as a lyricist and producer, Peery's work appears on more than twenty studio albums over the past decade.Website: www.kwpeery.com

"Tender but tough." That's how one poet characterizedLinda M. Lewis's poems of love and spite, loss and triumph.Linda gratefully accepts the appraisal. A professor emeritaof Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, she has beenan activist, critic, educator, editor, wife, mother, andgrandparent. She is the author of numerous critical essaysand four books: The Promethean Politics of Milton, Blake,and Shelley; Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Spiritual Progress;Germaine de Staël, George Sand, and the Victorian WomanArtist; and Dickens, His Parables, and His Reader. This isher first volume of verse.

Jas Abramowitz is a writer, actor, and performance poet. He is originally from Kansas City, MO and spent seven years in Chicago, IL before moving to Jacksonville, Florida in 2015. His poetry performance credits include four years as part of OPUS, a memorized poetry performance group in Kansas City, and is a 3 time winner of Chicago's Green Mill Poetry Slam.

The Gasconade Review is a literary and arts publication based out of the Osage Arts Community (http://osageac.org/), located on the Gasconade River, just outside of Belle, Missouri. It appears twice annually, focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on writers and artists from the region and state, but occasionally also features folks what ain't from around here. All submissions must be hand delivered between the months of April and October and the hours of 3pm to 6pm. A decent bourbon is appreciated. Proper river attire required. Don't worry, the dogs won't bite.

From the beginning of time, poems have been smuggled out of prisons, exchanged on battlefields, passed from hand to hand, carved on walls, written in the margins, distributed on street corners, and carried in coat-pockets overseas. Every culture and generation produce poetry in response to the injustices of its time. Deeply rooted in resilience, the enduring nature of poetry and its ability to capture the struggles of the past can serve as a sustaining force in a sea of turmoil. If creativity is a form of protest, then the poet is the protester. Pablo Neruda saw the power of poets and the remarkable potential of their words: Earth, people, and poetry are one and the same entity tied together by mysterious subterranean passages. When the earth blooms, the people breath freedom, the poets sing and show the way.¹ When poems are gathered together, they form a mighty body that is impossible to constrain, like the sea. Every time a poem touches someone's conscience, like gathering drops, it invites the possibility for action, forming a tempest. Thus, the transformative potential of resistance poetry can serve as a potent antidote against the injustices of the world.

Michael Hathaway lives in St. John, Kansas in his child-hood home with his family of felines. By day, he works as Keeper of History for Stafford County, and by night edits and publishes Chiron Review literary journal which he founded in 1982. He's worked many day jobs to enable his poetry habit including newspaper typesetter/compositor, society editor, librarian, janitor, chaufeur, painter, wall-paperer, ladies clothing store clerk, babysitter, pet-sitter, house-sitter, and living assistant to the mentally disabled. He served 12 years on the Goodman Library city board, and currently serves as secretary/treasurer for the Stfford County Central Democratic Party. In 2008, he accidentally became an ordained minister of Spiritual Science (which has its roots in Theosophy and Gnosticism). He's had 12 books of poetry and prose published, as well as 300+ poems in journals and anthologies. He was founding chairman of Poetry Rendezvous that celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2018. For more information about Chiron Review: http://www.chironreview.com.

Patrick Dobson is a writer, scholar, and poet. He is the author of two award-winning travel memoirs, Seldom Seen: A Journey into the Great Plains (2009) and Canoeing the Great Plains: A Missouri River Summer (May 2015). His first book of poetry, a brief infidelity and other reveries, was published by Spartan Press in 2017. He earned a doctorate in American History and American Literature in 2013 and teaches American History, Modern Latin American History, and Western Civilization at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS.

The Konza Prairie is owned by The Nature Conservancy and Kansas State University, and is operated as a field research station by the university's Division of Biology. It is one of 26 sites within the Long Term Ecological Research Network. It has a continental climate characterized by warm, wet summers and dry, cold winters. Average annual precipitation (32.9 in, 835 mm) is sufficient to support woodland or savanna vegetation; consequently, drought, fire and grazing are important in maintaining this grassland. The site is topographically complex with an elevation range from 1050 to 1457 ft (320 to 444 m). In addition to the dominant tallgrass prairie, Konza contains forest, claypan, shrub and riparian communities. Limestone outcrops are found throughout the landscape. Konza Prairie is located within the largest remaining area of unplowed tallgrass prairie in North America, the Flint Hills. Konza supports a diverse mix of species including 576 vascular plants, 31 mammals, 208 bird species, 34 types of reptiles and amphibians, 20 kinds of fish, and over 700 types of invertebrates. A herd of approximately 300 bison is maintained on the Konza, and native white-tailed deer and wild turkey are often present in large numbers. Members of the public are allowed onto portions of the Konza Prairie through three loop hiking trails (approximately 2.6, 4.5, and 6 miles).

Stefene Russell is a St. Louis-based poet, writer, editor and actor. She is a member of Poetry Scores, an arts collective dedicated to translating poetry into other media, including music, visual art, and food, and was Laumeier Sculpture Park's 2018 poet-in- residence. Her works include Inferna (2013, Intagliata Press) and The Possum Codex (2015, Otis Nebula). Find her online at stefenerussell.com.

Reading The Immigrants' New Camera: A Family Collection is like sitting down to a large Italian meal. Maryfrances Wagner's images are seasoned with the immediacy of Kansas City's Little Italy, the family kitchen, the table with its stories, tender, painful, and humorous. The poet's narratives simmer in the richness of the Italian-American experience. Yet, as the best poems do, Wagner's poetry connects the reader to the universal, but with a hint of fresh basil and chopped tomatoes.Al Ortolani,author of On the Chicopee Spur