Poem

Johnson County Library is pleased to announce that Natalie Wolf has won our writing contest on the theme Humanity with her story "A Study on the Nature of Companionship."

Natalie Wolf is a writer from the Kansas City area and currently pursuing an MFA in fiction writing at the University of Kansas. She is an editor for Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press and a former co-editor and co-founder of Spark to Flame Journal. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in Popshot Quarterly, The Hooghly Review, I-70 Review, JAKE, and more. You can find her on her website (https://nwolfmeep.wixsite.com/nmwolf)

Joy at the Green Guitar

Two hundred or so folks, we
don't much know each other.
We're here for Joy,

for her live singing and guitar.
The first notes drip from her fingers
and we sigh like a water dipper's
lifted to our lips. We're one room now:
listening.

Joy's voice rises like
biscuits in the oven as day
sings to darkness. Her light
goes everywhere.

Her hands on the guitar
untie the knots in us. Her song
sorts the loose strands of us,
begins to knit us back together,

a blanket made of each other.
We’re enfolded snug,
in last rippling notes, applause,
gifts of gratitude, a next tune,
friends, neighbors, community

Johnson County Library is pleased to announce that Lindsey Weishar has won our writing contest on the theme All Together Now with her piece "To Get Her."

Lindsey Weishar holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She is a contributor to a variety of outlets including Verily magazine, The Pitch, and the Ploughshares blog. Her chapbook, Matchbook Night, was published by Leaf Press (Canada) in 2018.

To get her

My sister’s nerves were disturbed by COVID
so I drove from Illinois to Kansas to get her.
The trick, said the red-headed girl
in my second-grade class, is to

Johnson County Library is pleased to announce that David Lee Garrison has won the open category of our writing contest on the theme of BREAKING FREE with "Putting Killers Away".

Dr. David Lee Garrison (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University) taught Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Kansas in 1978-79, and then at Wright State University until his retirement in 2009. He and his wife, Suzanne Kelly-Garrison, have residences in Oakwood, Ohio, and in Prairie Village, dividing their time between the two cities. Almost all of Suzanne’s family lives in Kansas; David has a cousin in Grandview, MO

Johnson County Library and The Writers Place are pleased to announce that Kaleah Petersen has won the open category of our writing contest on the theme of TIME with "A Matter of Time".

Kaleah Petersen is in eighth grade at Indian Woods Middle School and is taking a Creative Writing class. She enjoys writing poetry and fiction in her free time.

A Matter of Time
Time is precious
You always think
That you have more
Until
The only ticking you hear
Is your dying heart
Counting down
The final seconds of life
And every minute
Every second
Of your entire life
Flashes before you
In a single

The Readers Advisory committee is pleased to announce that Lisa Allen has won our Ain't It the Truth writing contest in the open category for her poem "Adoration."  With precise yet smoldering language, Allen's narrator carefully unravels the "secret histories" of the women who raised her--what remains hidden beneath the facades they were forced to adopt to survive.

Allen's choice of perspective allows readers to put themselves in the narrator's shoes and imagine the inner-workings of the matriarchs in their own lives.  "Adoration"'s truth doesn't come from absolute fact as much as lived