Join us for the Kansas Authors Club District 5 monthly meeting on Saturday, April 11, 2015, at the Rockwell Branch Library in Wichita. The meeting runs from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.
The program will commemorate National Poetry Month with presentations by John Jenkinson and Diane Wahto in a program titled “Words and Music.”
Jenkinson, a singer-songwriter, will play and sing. Diane and John will read and answer questions about poetry and their own writing.
John Jenkinson’s misspent youth consisted of long years enduring low-end jobs – gandydancing, tin-man hustling, drumming, taxi-driving, grifting and grave-site peddling among them. A late return to the groves of Academe resulted in an MFA from Wichita State University, a PhD from the University of North Texas, and a Milton Center post-doctoral Fellowship in Poetry at Newman University. His most cherished degree, however, remains the one he earned at the School of Hard Knocks, where he continues post-graduate studies. John’s poems have been recipients of an AWP Intro Journals Award, the Ellipses Prize, a New Voices Award, a Balticon Science Fiction Award, and awards from Kansas Voices. His poems appear in a surprising variety of journals and anthologies. Currently, he teaches literature and writing at Butler Community College in Kansas, where he directs the Oil Hill Reading Series. John has spent the past several years engaged in song-writing and occasional performances, although recent health troubles have kept his performances brief and infrequent. Good news? Therapy is finally bearing fruit, and he hopes to start performances again very soon, probably in time for the April presentation. Best thing about John? His new, and first, granddaughter, Lucille!
The program will commemorate National Poetry Month with presentations by John Jenkinson and Diane Wahto in a program titled “Words and Music.”
Jenkinson, a singer-songwriter, will play and sing. Diane and John will read and answer questions about poetry and their own writing.
John Jenkinson’s misspent youth consisted of long years enduring low-end jobs – gandydancing, tin-man hustling, drumming, taxi-driving, grifting and grave-site peddling among them. A late return to the groves of Academe resulted in an MFA from Wichita State University, a PhD from the University of North Texas, and a Milton Center post-doctoral Fellowship in Poetry at Newman University. His most cherished degree, however, remains the one he earned at the School of Hard Knocks, where he continues post-graduate studies. John’s poems have been recipients of an AWP Intro Journals Award, the Ellipses Prize, a New Voices Award, a Balticon Science Fiction Award, and awards from Kansas Voices. His poems appear in a surprising variety of journals and anthologies. Currently, he teaches literature and writing at Butler Community College in Kansas, where he directs the Oil Hill Reading Series. John has spent the past several years engaged in song-writing and occasional performances, although recent health troubles have kept his performances brief and infrequent. Good news? Therapy is finally bearing fruit, and he hopes to start performances again very soon, probably in time for the April presentation. Best thing about John? His new, and first, granddaughter, Lucille!
Diane Wahto graduated with an MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University in 1985, where she started by knowing nothing about writing poetry. She taught English composition, literature, and creative writing at Butler Community College until she retired in 2009. She was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets award for her poem, “Somebody is Always Watching,” a poem that also won first prize and was published in the American Institute of Discussion Review. In 2013, Wahto was the New Voice poet for the Salina Spring Poetry series. Her most recent publications include poems in To the Stars through Difficulty and Begin Again, anthologies edited by former Kansas poet laureate Caryn Mirriam Goldberg. Other poetry has been published on Goldberg’s web project Kansas Time + Place. Her cinquain “Home” was chosen by Wyatt Townley, current Kansas poet laureate, for publication in newspapers in Kansas. “South of Emporia,” is now hanging on a tree in the Bird Run Nature Preserve near Junction City, Kansas. Diane has three children who married three wonderful women, five grandchildren and one granddaughter-in-law. Living with her husband Patrick Roche and the two dogs, Annie and Mulan, in Wichita, Wahto continues to write, learn about writing, and participate in several writing groups around the city and the state.