Northerns Garners Third Award for Poetry Collection

 

Janice Northerns’ poetry collection, Some Electric Hum, was awarded the 2021 Nelson Poetry Book Award by the Kansas Authors Club at the organization’s state convention, held virtually Oct. 8-10. The contest was judged by Dr. Sandra Cox, an associate professor at Southeast Missouri State University, who had this to say about Northerns’ work:

“Whether considering family, motherhood, or romantic connections, Some Electric Hum reads … like a treatise on the ways communities are crafted by wanting, having, and then letting go. … This book exemplifies her skill in giving language to those fragile and ephemeral experiences of connection, as well as her determination to understand how connection might be felt in the barely perceptible hum of a completed circuit, closed but still alive with alternating electric currents.”

Some Electric Hum was published last year by Lamar University Literary Press and was named the winner of the 2021 Byron Caldwell Smith Book Award for poetry by the University of Kansas. The book was also selected as a 2021 WILLA Literary Award Finalist in Poetry by Women Writing the West.

Northerns, who has lived in Liberal with her husband, Bill McGlothing, since 1998, holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Texas Tech University, where she received the Robert S. Newton Award for Creative Writing. She retired from teaching English at Seward County Community College in 2019 and now enjoys writing full-time. For more information about her work, or to order a copy of her book, visit her web site: www.janicenortherns.com

Membership in the Kansas Authors Club is open to creative, technical, academic, and journalistic writers. For more information, visit the KAC website: www.kansasauthorsclub.org