The prolific author best known for Their Eyes Were Watching God got her start as an anthropologist, listening to the stories and songs of former slaves in Florida in the 1930s. About fifty years later, a Kansas City woman found a connection with her own history and community in the voices Hurston captured. Her one-woman play about Zora Neale Hurston now takes her all over the world.
Her children's books shaped ideas about the Midwestern experience for multiple generations worldwide. She's been gone more than sixty years, but her influence remains strong; even now, fans and scholars attend a yearly Laurapalooza festival in her honor. Her autobiography has just recently been published, but good luck finding a copy. The first print run has sold out and the second will not even fill existing orders.
It’s cold outside, so now is the perfect time to curl up with a good book.
Central Standard took the opportunity to seek out some of the best books about Kansas City history. After all, even if you can't get outside to explore the city, you can still do it from the comfort of your home.
Local historian Monroe Dodd and Missouri Valley Special Collections manager Eli Paul gave us their recommendations of the best books for local history lovers, focusing on those that are a really good read.
As 2015 gets off to a chilly start, it's the perfect time to cozy up with some of 2014's hottest reads. Up to Date's Book Doctors share some of their favorite titles from last year.
From Jeffrey Ann Goudie, freelance writer and book reviewer:
Books have the remarkable ability to enthrall, captivate and inspire. When kids are trapped indoors during the cold winter months books can transport them into new and fascinating worlds.
On this edition of Up to Date, Steve Kraske and three Johnson County librarians review their top picks in children's literature.
The Best Children's Books of 2014:
From Kate McNair, young adult librarian at the Johnson County Library:
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. More information is here.
Our city is teeming with people who dream of writing that novel... someday. If those aspiring writers decided to turn their literary dreams into reality, where would they begin? Our guests offer advice and personal stories in honor of National Novel Writing Month.
Anna Quindlen's most recent work, Still Life with Bread Crumbs, tells the story of a 60-year old New York photographer and feminist who moves upstate in an effort to remake her life. On this edition of Up to Date, Quindlen talks with Steve Kraske about her connections to the lead character, why she never wants to be 25 again, and the changing face of the news business.
In late October, as the leaves begin to rustle and the winds begin to moan, our thoughts turn to night frights and all things ghoulish. In partnership with the ongoing100 Ghost Stories project at Wonder Fair in Lawrence, Central Standard presents three ghost stories by writers with local ties.
An Overland Park teenager plans his life around his favorite online video game to the point where his divorced parents agree on this much: “Get off the damn computer!”
Paul DeGeorge and his brother Joe have been writing and performing songs about the trials and triumphs of wizards-in-training since 2002. They look disorientingly similar, and both wear v-neck sweaters and neck ties. Their band, Harry and the Potters, has inspired its own genre: "wizard rock."
It was the younger brother, Joe, who first read the Harry Potter books. In his early 20s when the first books in the series came out, Paul, the older of the DeGeorge brothers, picked them up out of curiosity; he immediately related to the Harry Potter character as a punk.
It's directed by David Fincher (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Fight Club,Seven), and Flynn wrote the screenplay. Cape Girardeau, Mo., on the banks of the Mississippi River, was a stand-in for the fictional North Carthage, Mo.
'And Tango Makes Three,' 'Captain Underpants,' 'Annie On My Mind' and 'The Grapes of Wrath' are just a few of the banned or challenged books our Book Doctors like.
From their favorite recent reads to books they love on banned or challenged books lists, the Book Doctors are full of recommendations. They chatted with Steve Kraske on Friday's Up to Date. Here's a list of their picks:
William "Bill" Hickok died Monday at the age of 82 in Marina Del Rey, Ca. Two decades ago, Hickok and his wife, Gloria Vando, co-founded a literary community center in Kansas City, Mo. called The Writers Place.
Hickok, a first cousin several times removed of the gunslinger "Wild Bill" Hickok, was born in Kansas City; he graduated from Southwest High School and the University of Missouri.
Former Kansas City Star columnist Bill Tammeus, who still blogs for the paper, recently released a memoir titled Woodstock: A Story of Middle Americans.
It's about his boyhood in the Illinois town of Woodstock, in the middle of the 20th century. Through critical reflection on his early experiences and observations, Tammeus arrives at a handful of truisms about life in the Midwest, offered without sentimentality or rose-colored glasses, but with measured fondness.
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." For Maya Angelou, these words were a way of life. Her poetry and prose, even her off-the-cuff remarks during interviews, made people feel things deeply.
On Tuesday'sCentral Standard, local artist Peregrine Honig and writer Natasha Ria El-Scari join host Gina Kaufmann to share how Maya Angelou impacted their lives.
Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants series recently received the dubious distinction of topping the American Library Association's list of most-challenged books of 2013. With the author on his way to Kansas City, Central Standard took a look at what makes some of the most-challenged books so controversial.
On this Monday's Central Standard, author Stephanie Powell Watts shares a collection of short stories inspired by the uneducated and the the aspiring. Many of her characters are based on her own life or the lives of someone she's encountered.
With March creeping up on us, it’s time to start stocking up on those spring break reads. Should you go for a bestseller or a lesser-known work? Fiction or non-? Mystery or biography?
At the beginning of May, a national art project started here in Kansas City. This was first stop on a national tour for a conversation in the form of America Now and Here. Here’s how a Renga works — more than 30 Kansas City poets were challenged to write ten lines each….the subject that emerged is Kansas City, with references to cattlemen, ghosts, prairie grass, and Troost.
At the beginning of May, a national art project started here in Kansas City. This was first stop on a national tour for a conversation in the form of America Now and Here. Here’s how a Renga works — more than 30 Kansas City poets were challenged to write tens lines each….the subject that emerged is Kansas City, with references to cattlemen, ghosts, prairie grass, and Troost.
Kansas City’s own Turner High School is carrying on the tradition of the Troubadours of old. Teachers Marlee Stempleman and Jessica Kendall have fashioned a poetry project called the Troubadours Poetry Club where students express themselves by writing and reading their own works. This morning on Central Standard, Marlee Stempleman and two club members stop in to share their craft.
Here are a few poems written by young Turner Troubadours:
