So, over the last 4 years or so, I’ve met several Prairie Village residents who have published works available for purchase or borrowing from our local libraries. Here are a few:

Nancy Kalikow Maxwell, Author

I met Nancy one day shortly after Meadowbrook Park opened. She and I were both on a walking tour of the new park with a JCPRD tour guide. We quickly learned we were both PV residents, and not too long after that she joined the Prairie Village Arts Council where she brought her writing skills to many aspects of the committee including the blog.

Nancy was born and raised in this area but lived outside of Kansas for most of her adult life. She came back to PV not too long before I met her after a career as a librarian and working as writer and the creator of the Hallmark Tree of Life Jewish greeting card line.

Typically Jewish is her latest book published in 2019.

Nancy has family on both coasts now, and spends a fair amount of traveling to visit them and, I presume, getting ideas for her next book. 😊

… writer Nancy Kalikow Maxwell poses many such questions in eight chapters—Worrying, Kvelling, Dying, Noshing, Laughing, Detecting, Dwelling, and Joining—exploring what it means to be “typically Jewish.” While unearthing answers from rabbis, researchers, and her assembled “Jury on Jewishness” (Jewish friends she roped into conversation), she—and we—make multitudes of discoveries…

Jewish Publication Society

Trish Reeves, Author

Trish Reeves is a Ward 3 resident who I met when campaigning in 2019 and have gotten to know virtually during the last 3+ years of my Council service. She taught English and Creative Writing at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas for 21 years, and she most recently completed 22 years of volunteering with the Changing Lives Through Literature program with Johnson County Corrections.

Trish’s latest book is a volume of poetry, The Receipt, which I’ve ordered from Rainy Day Books and look forward to digging into:

In The Receipt, poetry blends with history and its lessons in a tribute to the human spirit. Reeves’s poems are a receipt for life lived through the ages as well as her own.

Whether pre-cataclysmic Pompeii, Michelangelo on horseback to Bologna, or a plague doctor’s first encounter with Angel Island, Reeves’s fine eye, ear, and imagination find the imagery, metaphors, and language to create rhythms of history.

Cynren Press

Brad Sneed, Illustrator

I recently met Brad Sneed at VillageFest! I recognized his name immediately as the illustrator of the wonderfully fun Johnson County Library’s 6 by 6 Ready to Read program collateral. Which I had a hard time finding online to share with you, but the link in this paragraph takes you to a YouTube video with one of the illustrations – Goat in a Boat.

I’m not really currently reading the book below, but I DO remember reading it with Abi when she was little. 😍

His latest book, Because I’m New, is illustrated AND written by Brad.

Brad Sneed is an artist, illustrator, and author of books for young readers. His books include Deputy Harvey and the Ant Cow Caper and Lucky Russell, and he has illustrated numerous books for other authors.

Bookshop.org

Check out these books from our JoCo Library or purchase your own copy from your favorite independent bookseller (Rainy Day Books is my fave!).

Are YOU a Prairie Village-based author, illustrator, or editor? Let me know! I want to support your work. 🙂