Workshop Leaders
Cheryl Unruh loves words. And sentences. The flat land of Kansas. Sunshine. And a big blue sky (puffy white clouds are optional). She builds poems, essays, and short stories at a small desk in her home in Emporia, Kansas.
She is the author of two books of essays, Flyover People: Life on the Ground in a Rectangular State, a 2011 Kansas Notable Book, and Waiting on the Sky: More Flyover People Essays, a 2015 Kansas Notable Book. Cheryl has won awards from the Kansas Press Association and the Kansas Association of Broadcasters. She received the 2016 Kansas’ Finest Award from Kansas! Magazine. Her first book of poetry, Walking on Water, was published by Meadowlark Books in 2017.
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Tracy Million Simmons leaks words from her fingertips. She enjoys writing about the people and places of her home state of Kansas, both real and imagined. She is a 17-year, multi-district member of the Kansas Authors Club.
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Tracy is a past mini-fellowship winner from the Kansas Arts Commission and has received an honorable mention in the Kansas Voices contest (Winfield). She is the author of Tiger Hunting, a 2013 J. Donald Coffin Memorial Book Award winner, and one of three authors of Green Bike, a group novel. Tracy is the founder of Meadowlark Books, an independent publisher that focuses on stories and authors from the heartland. Her collection of short stories, A Life in Progress, is due out in September 2017.
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