English Department Professors Marcus Cafagna and Jane Hoogestraat, as well as English alums Rosalie O’Leary and Shiloh Peters, have poems that will appear in Storm Country: A Tribute to Joplin, an anthology complied by the Missouri Writer’s Guild and published by Mozark Press. Proceeds from the anthology, which will be available in early October, will beneift the Joplin School District Libraries.
The 60 works appearing in the anthology were selected by nationally known editor Kelli Allen (along with Susan Kirkpatrick and Missouri Writer’s Guild President Deborah Marshall) from over 300 entries. The volume of submissions, Jane Hoogestraat notes, “is a tribute to the number of people who value writing and literature as a response to natural disaster and human loss.”
Joplin Writer’s Guild President Claudia Mundell captures the spirit behind the anthology, explaining: “Not everybody can carry steel and lift walls and not everybody can cook, so everybody does what they can, and writers write.”
For additional information about Storm Country, please go to: http://www.missouriwritersguild.org/ or contact Jane Hoogestraat, Professor of English at Missouri State: (417) 836-6613