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WORD: Submissions Closed So KCUR's Arts Team Can Catch Up On Reading

Earlier this month, KCUR launched WORD, a new series of on-air readings by area poets, essayists and short-story writers.

WORD airs on Sunday mornings at 7:35 and 9:35. Our first episode was Avila University English professor Stanley Banks with a poem about driving while black; next was University of Kansas professor Brian Daldorph, whose poems are informed by a creative writing class he teaches for inmates at the Douglas County Jail.

The KCUR Arts team asked for submissions on December 5, 2014. Since then we’ve received more than 200 poems, essays, and short stories to consider. From those, we’ve already selected the first few months of WORD episodes.

But we still have a lot of submissions to read, and because we want to give all of them a thoughtful review, we’re hitting “Pause” and closing submissions for now.

We started WORD to provide greater exposure for the literary arts within our listening area, and it's already working. (All of our WORD readings are archived on SoundCloud.)

We’re gratified by the enthusiastic response to this new project. To writers who submitted work and haven't heard from us, thanks for your patience — we promise we will be in touch. To writers who'd planned to submit but didn't get around to it, our apologies. When the time is right, we’ll put out a call for more entries.

Stay tuned.

A free press is among our country’s founding principles and most precious resources. As director of content-journalism at KCUR, I want everyone in our part of America to know we see them and we’re listening. I work to make sure the stories we tell and the conversations we convene reflect our complex realities, informing and inspiring all of us to meet the profound challenges of our time. Email me at cj@kcur.org.
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