Prairie Gold

The American Midwest provides the ideal landscape for literature exploring the intricate evolution of American ideology and culture from the earliest frontiersmen and settlers to present day citizens. In celebration of this region's inherent importance to American identity, Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland presents a myriad of Midwestern-focused literature in three sections of literary styles: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry with introductions contributed by admired and award-winning Midwestern authors: Dean Bakopoulos, Debra Marquart, and Iowa State Poet Laureate, Mary Swander. With an extensive roster of sixty-eight highly talented writers, this anthology presents an eclectic mix of short stories, flash fiction, lyric essays, autobiographies, and formal and experimental poems that delve into the nuances of Midwestern identity. Each writer herein investigates, challenges, and redefines the varied perceptions of the Midwest, and, most importantly, their literary art invites us to gaze with renewed appreciation on the environmental beauty, nourishing agriculture, and innovative and creative people of the American Heartland.

As a recent transplant to the Midwest from the Southwest, I gobbled up the poems, stories, and essays in this anthology as if they were farmers market produce fresh, sweet, ripe, spicier than you expect, good for you yet deliciously decadent. These authors, some lauded veterans, many emerging, all of them stunning in their talent brood vividly, comically, mournfully, complexly on what it means to be from, to live in, and to leave the Midwest. This wondrous, energizing anthology evokes what it feels like to be rooted in and to write out of a specific sense of place and why such an endeavor matters in an age of globalization. Prairie Gold fills me with gratitude for the literary variety and richness of my new home. --K. L. Cook, author, Love Songs for the Quarantined and Last Call

Once again, Ice Cube Press steps up to the plate and hits home to us a book of creative writing fiction, essays, and poems that help us to hear the heartbeat of the American prairie. The selections, mostly by up-and-coming writers, provide a feast of words, ideas, and feelings not to be missed. --Jonathan Andelson, Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for Prairie Studies, Grinnell College

For those who think that between New York and California there's nothing but three time zones, this anthology fills in a full continent's worth of great writing. In the heart of the heart of the country, the word is etched a little deeper, the colors fade and spark with tan internal luminosity, and the poems and stories in PRAIRIE GOLD speak in a defining vernacular of Real Life, Real People, Real Literature. --Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, Bowery Arts & Science, Co-Director, Endangered Language Alliance

Once again, Ice Cube Press steps up to the plate and hits home to us a book of creative writing fiction, essays, and poems that help us to hear the heartbeat of the American prairie. The selections, mostly by up-and-coming writers, provide a feast of words, ideas, and feelings not to be missed. --Jonathan Andelson, Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for Prairie Studies, Grinnell College

For those who think that between New York and California there's nothing but three time zones, this anthology fills in a full continent's worth of great writing. In the heart of the heart of the country, the word is etched a little deeper, the colors fade and spark with tan internal luminosity, and the poems and stories in PRAIRIE GOLD speak in a defining vernacular of Real Life, Real People, Real Literature. --Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, Bowery Arts & Science, Co-Director, Endangered Language Alliance