Red Fern Booksellers
Join Editors Leslie VonHolten and Tom Averill as they discuss their new book, Kansas Matters: 21st-Century Writers on the Sunflower State.
This anthology expands our state's stories through 35 poems, essays, and short fiction that explore the beauty of the land and the fight for its preservation, the division of identity and the belonging of home, the context of our history and our hopes for the future.
It is a complex, emotional, and inspiring assertion of why Kansas matters.
Joining Leslie and Tom, are contributors Rex Buchanan, Wes Jackson, Rolf Potts, and Josh Svaty.
This event will take place at Red Fern Booksellers (106 S. Santa Fe) on Sunday, December 7 at 2:00 pm.
Thomas Fox Averill
Thomas Averill is professor emeritus of English at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, where he taught creative writing and Kansas studies.He is an O. Henry Award short-story winner and author of ten books.His introduction to What Kansas Means to Me: Twentieth Century Writerson the Sunflower State (1991) was titled “Afflicted with Affection,” and he remains so. In 2010 he created the Thomas Fox Averill Kansas Studies Collection at Washburn’s Mabee Library.
Leslie VonHolten
Leslie VonHolten writes about land and culture in the prairie and Great Plains regions. She is a 2022 Tallgrass Artist Residency fellow and long-time commentator on High Plains Public Radio in Garden City, Kansas. Her recent essays have been published in The New Territory, Literary Landscapes,and The Dark Mountain Project. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas.
Rolf Potts
Rolf Potts is the author of five books, including the bestseller Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel (Random House, 2003). His essays and reportage have appeared in the likes of National Geographic Traveler, Outside, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, National Public Radio, and the Travel Channel. He is based in north-central Kansas, where he keeps a small farmhouse on 30 acres with his wife, Kansas-born actress Kristen Bush.
Rex Buchanan
Rex Buchanan grew up in Rice County, Kansas, on the edge of the Smoky Hills. He is director emeritus of the Kansas Geological Survey, based at the University of Kansas. He is the editor or co-author of five books, including Roadside Kansas, Kansas Geology, and Petroglyphs of the Kansas Smoky Hills, all published by the University Press of Kansas. He does occasional commentaries for Kansas Public Radio.
Joshua Svaty
Joshua Svaty is a former legislator and State Secretary of Agriculture from rural Ellsworth, Kansas, where he and his family have been farming since the 1860s. He is married to Kimberly and they raise their four children in Topeka, where Joshua works with his wife in her firm, Gencur Svaty Public Affairs. Svaty speaks and advises nationally and internationally on matters related to agriculture, energy, and natural resources.
Wes Jackson
Wes Jackson was born and raised on a farm near Topeka. He co-founded The Land Institute in 1976. Jackson is a 1992 MacArthur Fellow, renowned author, plant geneticist, and emeritus professor of Biology. He is widely recognized as one of the foremost figures in the international sustainable agriculture movement. He authored and co-authored numerous books, including the seminal New Roots for Agriculture, conceptualizing the idea of The Land Institute’s work on natural systems agriculture modeled on and inspired by the Kansas prairie. Jackson is also the author of the recent books Hogs Are Up: Stories of the Land, with Digressions, and An Inconvenient Apocalypse.