Congratulations to Anola Pickett and Wyatt Townley! These Heartlanders are finalists for the Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence, sponsored by the Kansas City Branch of the American Association of University Women. The award recognizes excellence in writing by local authors.

Pickett’s middle grade historical fiction Wasatch Summer was published by by Bonneville Books, April 2011. Townley’s The Afterlives of Trees is a collection of poems published by Woodley Press in 2011.