MAILBOX Readers share thoughts on the summer issue K-STATER MAGAZINE
K- STATER The magazine for K-State Alumni
Association members
SUMMER 2021
Summer 2021• Vol. 70, No. 4
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Sw�t HALE
I just wanted to send a note to say well done on the summer K-Stater. The magazine, and the Alumni Association, hold a very special place in my heart, and I’m grateful you have continued to produce such a high quality publication. Keep up the good work and… Go Cats! Shelly Prichard ’86 Wichita, Kansas
YOUR LETTERS AND PHOTOS ARE WELCOME By mail: K-Stater magazine K-State Alumni Association 100 Alumni Center 1720 Anderson Ave. Manhattan, KS 66506-1001
Email: k-stater@k-state.com Online: k-state.com/k-stater /KStateAlumniAssociation @KStateAlumni
Shirley Taff Wilson
Tim, never had the chance to tell you how much I enjoyed the K-Stater for summer... the article on Morgan Huelsman ’15 was incredible! J. Steven Smethers ’76, ’85 Director, A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications
K-Stater magazine has depth, breadth and more Tim, I want to tell you how much I enjoy K-Stater magazine. Its depth, breadth, awards and celebrations, stories, features, personality and historical pieces, baby births and in memoriam come together beautifully. Much for everyone. It’s one of the few publications that I read from the cover to the last page because I want to. I enjoy it and learn a lot from it. It’s that powerful. Keep it coming. Jim Shaffer ’69 Annapolis, Maryland
Thank you for telling story of Bryn Greenwood ’92, ’95 Dear Tim, Thank you for the story about Bryn Greenwood’s fiction. It was wonderful to see a fellow K-State English alumna (and native Kansan) featured. Bryn ’92, ’95 was a classmate of mine in graduate school, and I have enjoyed folll lowing her career and reading her novels. A Story to Te Her work depicts people who are difficult or alienated from what most would call normal life, but readers come to see them for the redeemable and lovable people they can be if given a sliver of a chance. Here’s to the misfits! Thanks for including the piece. I hope to see more about the artistic products of K-Staters in these pages in future issues. Sarah Caldwell Hancock ’94, ’96 Westmoreland, Kansas ventional life wood’s uncon Author Bryn Green PHOTOS COURTESY
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at K-State. mechanic The New her storytelling discovered d to write. author who Times bestselling she learne autobiography a New York ’92, ’95 is story before veiled to the red her first ly recalls the thinly wood autho resemblance too young author vague a striking Bryn Green ’95 was bestselling character that bore wood ’92, a York Times Because Green family with y ’90. of an alien from the Flintstones. older sister, Libert her Great Gazoo dictated the tale to to write, she
Bryn Greenwood
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her to quit. Things enabled industry places Ugly and Wonderful publishing ry fairy nature of the author’s followThe fickle as a contempora on a best-selling keenly felt while is described nine distinct a lot of pressure set in Kansas, deftly juggles pressure Greenwood she completed in nal love story the first moment up book. It’s which tale. In it, Greenwood say that from Reckless Oath, tell the unconventio waitress with a there were “I can honestly working on narrators to were and that I a nearly six-foot-tall in sex work to from her what books write books, 14 months. between Zee, engages I understood works mostly got paid to in rescue occasionally there who For now, Greenwoodhome with her two do,” Greenwood man who speaks bad hip who people out wanted to an autistic home Lawrence be a knight 4-year-old was what I by, and Gentry, in her gutted himself to couch in her knew that your average camped out I want get and believes can imagine nearby. She this is what itself was formerly Middle English said. “If you to say ‘Yes, own pups it. The house cheap” protector. confidence from Greenwood’s as she renovated it an “incredibly — and Zee’s having the the which made book borrows my life.’” and certainly Kansas, in Again, the similar desperate a drug house, to do with to Greenwood about taking in rural Hugoton, she dropped She’s suffers She grew up purchase according her family history. life. She’s written ends meet, she also state, where to to make projects. corner of the and like Zee, fitting given older sister injury seems different measures her southwest an few to a follow pain due into work on school to time,” she says. sell currently at out of high The acceleration frustration from chronic mother is a hoarder. are you breath all the University. culture that “I hold my Sometimes Greenwood’s Kansas State by Greenwood’s circles of our and this is really unsteady. chunk of money and fueled partly curriculum basis, there’s “Within certain “Publishing college was g high school get a nice big father’s on a day-to-day But what if you watching and there.’ dealing unchallengin years a book not struggling with an her drug amusement said. ‘I’ve got a couple get to a point where of horror and need to escape ” Greenwood you think, I’ll partly by a evasion. class titillation like Hoarders on TV, doesn’t sell? next year, I I have trial for tax creative writing the next book something a book in the of hoarders. very public in her first job.’” there were I haven’t sold from a family emeritus, where It was at K-State so bad that I’ll think, ‘If “But I come another secretarial got for professor that look hoarding Nyberg, to think mechanic I’ll have to relatives whose I don’t want taught by Ben to guess a storytelling After in the house. exists only discovered of her novels. dead animals society that Greenwood segment of become a hallmark about something who are better there’s a whole for people that would to write a story get out of amusement instructed be fodder for I hope readers asking students , Nyberg then That’s what the same experienced and rewrite off financially. personal they flip the perspective protagonist. author, Greenwood my writing.” his class to as the a bestselling the antagonist this person, Though she’s story with in the realities thing to recast toward, grounded “It’s a challenging her stays firmly grudging thoughtsstory,” After earning may still have your of the present. whom you the hero of chose to remain make them because that’s master’s, she pursuing and suddenly great exercise rather than person’s said. “It’s a one class just a working Greenwood She took It’s not ever academia. the world. a career in of Kansas the way of and the University All the Ugly that she position at story.” secretary so breakout novel, St. Martin’s Greenwood’s in 2016 by as a department focusing on firsther off hours Things, published could spend Wonderful a dozen different hical, as a more than She worked autobiograp her writing. Press, employs . Though not 13 years secretary for person perspectivesthemes mirror Greenwood’s novel’s who’s a drug until the success some of the — a father illness, an of All the own life experiences l home life, mental Though the dealer, a dysfunctionawith an older man. involved bestseller list, adolescent York Times on the New controversy. book landed was not without people who its reception from of hate mail “I get a lot the face disappear off wish I would book because my of the earth uneasy,” made them said. “But Greenwood I literally experiencedAnd things. a lot of these tell me that when people these things reading about le and uncomfortab made them think not have to It’s they’d rather it’s a dismissal. you about them, want to know saying, ‘I don’t stories telling these exist.’ But not make my experiences doesn’t magically Reckless go away.” book, The also Her most recent in 2019 and published Oath We Made,
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Story on Mr. K-State brings back memories My mom, Shirley Taff Wilson, is the smiling face with the K on her cheerleading sweater and adored Ernie. She cheered for the 1951 Wildcats at the national championship game. She spoke highly of Ernie Barrett right up until she passed away about four years ago. I wish someone could let him know how much she adored him. Keep up the terrific K-Stater and thank you! Alice Wilson Wilhelmus ’80 Kansas City, Missouri
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Editor’s note: Thank you all for sharing your thoughts about the K-Stater. We love to hear what you have to say. Please continue to reach out with your thoughts about the magazine. We’d love to see more letters to the editor!
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