Max McCoy's Blog: Max McCoy

Here’s the cover of my new novel, which goes on sale soon. What to say? It’s always difficult to talk about a new book, because it’s all such shameless self-promotion. But I can say that people I trust tell me it might be my best western novel. So, there’s that.

My column today over at the Kansas Reflector.

My column today over at the Kansas Reflector.

Whew! We made it past 2020. Max is now booking in-person appearances for June 2021 and beyond. Use the contact page to send an inquiry.

There were no in-person events in 2020 because of the pandemic. From the Tallgrass Writing Workshop to Ozark Creative Writers, all were canceled. As events are scheduled for 2011, they will be added here.

Max will be at Ozark Creative Writers in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, from Thursday, Oct. 10, to Saturday, Oct. 12. For registration info and to view the schedule, click the image above.

Max will be receiving the Kansas Notable Book Award for ELEVATIONS: A PERSONAL EXPLORATION OF THE ARKANSAS RIVER at 9 a.m. in the capitol’s Senate Chamber, along with some other notable characters. At 1 p.m., he’ll be talking about ELEVATIONS in the House Chamber, and signing books after in the book tent on the festival grounds.

For more info, visit the Kansas Book Festival page.

Ellen Plumb’s City Bookstore, 1122 Commercial, Emporia, Kansas, will host seven award-winning authors during the Halfway To Everywhere Festival.

11:00 am — Hazel Hart, author of the meticulously researched historical fiction series, A Pierce Family Saga, set in the Kansas Territory of 1855.

11:45 am — Miranda Asebedo, author of 2019 Kansas Notable Book THE DEEPEST ROOTS (HarperTeen, 2018) and the upcoming A CONSTELLATION OF STARS (HarperTeen, Nov. 5, 2019). Cottonwood Hollow, Kansas, is a strange place. For the past century, every girl has been born with a special talent, like the ability to fix any object, heal any wound, or find what is missing.

12:30 pm — C.J. Janovy, author of 2019 Kansas Notable Book Award winner NO PLACE LIKE HOME: LESSONS IN ACTIVISM FROM LBGT KANSAS (University Press of Kansas, 2018). Kansas stands at the very center of American stereotypes about red states. In the American imagination, it is a place LGBT people leave. Janovy tells us why they stay in this epic story of how a few disorganized and politically naive Kansans, realizing they were under attack, rolled up their sleeves, went looking for fights, and ended up making friends in one of the country’s most hostile states.

2:00 pm — Huascar Medina, 2019-21 Poet Laureate of Kansas. In his role as Poet Laureate, Medina will promote the humanities as a resource for all Kansans through public presentations and discussions about poetry in communities across the state. Medina is a Topekan, Latino, a writer, and a performer. He calls himself a helianthus — a type of sunflower that has planted a seed in Kansas, taken root, and is now blooming.

2:45 pm — George Frazier is the author of 2018 Kansas Notable Book Award winner THE LAST WILD PLACES OF KANSAS (University Press of Kansas, 2018). Frazier also received the Midwest Book Award, the Hamlin Garland Prize, and the Ferguson Book Award. Since the last wild bison found refuge on the back of a nickel, the public image of natural Kansas has progressed from Great American Desert to dust bowl to flyover country. But look a little harder Frazier suggests, and you can find the last places where tenacious stretches of prairie, forest, and wetland cheat death and incubate the DNA of lost, wild America.

3:15 pm — Max McCoy is the author of four original Indiana Jones adventures for Lucasfilms, a Western Writers of America Spur Award winner, and is a multiple Kansas Notable Book Award winner, most recently in 2019 for ELEVATIONS: A PERSONAL EXPLORATION OF THE ARKANSAS RIVER (University Press of Kansas, 2018). Additionally, ELEVATIONS was named Best Cultural West Book of 2018 by True West magazine and winner of the National Outdoor Book Award in 2018.

4:15 pm — Kevin Rabas, Kansas Poet Laureate Emeritus, chairs the Department of English, Modern Languages, and Journalism at Emporia State University. He has written eleven books, including Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner LISA’S FLYING ELECTRIC PIANO (Woodley Press, 2009). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize six times. Rabas’s plays have been produced across Kansas and on both coasts.

Join us for our special Museum After Hours program series, 6:30 p.m. Fridays.  The program is free. Admission to the museum is half-price from 5 to 6:30 p.m.; the Museum Store is open until 6:30 p.m.

August 9, 2019 – “Elevations:  A Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River” — Kansas Museum of History, Topeka, Kansas

https://www.kshs.org/p/museum-after-hours/19702

Join Max McCoy for a 742 mile journey searching for the unique story of the upper Arkansas River.  Going by kayak when he can—by Jeep, on foot, or by other means when he has to—McCoy navigated the Arkansas River as it revealed its nature and tested his own.  The upper Arkansas River courses through the heart of America from its headwaters near the Continental Divide above Leadville, Colorado, to Arkansas City, just above the Kansas-Oklahoma border. It is a flowing repository of human history and traveling on it was a life-changing experience.  Author Max McCoy is an award-winning novelist, a professor of journalism at Emporia State University, and the director of ESU’s Center for Great Plains Studies.

WRITING ABOUT NATURE

Sunday, April 7, 2019 — Woodneath Story Center, Mid-Continent Public Library, 8900 NE Flintlock Rd, Kansas City, Missouri; 2 to 4 pm.

In observance of the 70th anniversary of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, I’ll discuss ways to approach writing about nature. I’ll also talk a little about the history of the 1855 mansion, part of which is under restoration and has been incorporated into the library center, as a way to conduct place research. Then, I’ll lead participants (weather permitting) on a short walk around the Woodneath grounds to put to use the techniques we’ve explored.