Welcome to the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association (RSMA) Website
This Year's Annual Meeting of the RSMA, Saturday, September 14, 2024
Hearst Center for the Arts
Social Hour at 9:00
Business meeting at 9:30 am
Noon, Harvest Picnic on the Hearst Center's Patio
Three Hymns and a meal catered by HyVee. (Please sign up. The cost will be $15 and include an old-fashioned fried chicken meal. For dessert, a slice of Centennial cake. Bottled water.
1:00-2:00, Program. Mary Swander, former Iowa Poet Laureate, has accepted our invitation to give the Keynote Address at our Centennial Celebration of the 1924 publication of Ruth's first novel, Country People.
Following that, we will host a panel, Country People on Country People.
Our panel will include five farmers, young and old, male and female, for a variety of perspectives on rural life and their responses to the Suckow novel Country People.
10 – 2:25: Break (coffee, lemonade, Centennial cake, restrooms)
2:25 – 3:25: Panel “Country People on Country People” [reponses of current Iowa farmers to the novel: how does it hold up?]:
Kate Edwards -- Wild Woods Farm, Solon
Larry Harris and Denise O'Brien -- Rolling Acres Farm, Atlantic, Iowa
Lorna Easton -- Our Association member! Has lived her whole life on a farm near Hawarden, Ruth Suckow's birth home in northwest Iowa
Sean Dengler -- a young farmer who commutes from Urbandale to help his parents continue the family farm between Traer and Dysart; Sean is also a newspaper columnist and podcaster
Association members Barbara Morrison and Bill Douglas found us most of these fine people who will be sharing their thoughts. Huge thanks!
3:30 – 3:45 – Award Ceremony, Suckow $1,000 Iowa Student Scholarship & $500 Teacher Award (including 5-minute student summary of the winning essay; the winner's name won't be revealed until this moment; however, I will tell you that the winning essay is titled "August and Emma Kaetterhenry: A Marriage Reexamined")
3:45: Thanks to all for coming and an invitation to come to next year’s Centennial Celebration of Odyssey of a Nice Girl
4:00: The Hearst Center for the Arts closes--so we must be gone by then.
1931 Publicity Photo of Ruth Suckow
An informal photo of Ruth, enjoying the outdoors in Minnesota, 1932.
Ruth and Ferner with a writer friend, and a cat. (undated)
This website is dedicated to the work of noted Iowa author Ruth Suckow and her husband Ferner Nuhn. She was a famous writer with Iowa roots; this website was created by the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association (RSMA) to celebrate her literary legacy, and to help readers find information about her life and work--as well as provide access to some of her short stories.
To read more about their remarkable relationship, go to the page Ruth and Ferner.
Harvest Picnic, Sept. 14
The menu includes fried chicken, buttered corn, green onion and egg potato salad, hickory house baked beans, bread and butter pickles, artisan bread, and the choice of vanilla or chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream. We will have bottles of water and lemonade. Cost is $15.00.
Centennial Edition, Country People
You can purchase your own copy at our Annual meeting.
Xpressions
Like our cool Country People tote bag with a zipper? You can get this plus t-shirts and more at our web store! Thanks, Steph!
Orders due by Sunday night, August 25th.
The Suckow Traveling Exhibit
The Ruth Suckow Memorial Association, with the support of Humanities Iowa, is pleased to announce the creation of a Traveling Exhibit celebrating the life and work of Iowa novelist and short story writer Ruth Suckow who lived from 1892 to 1960.
We are launching the Traveling Exhibit on January 1, 2024, as part of the Centennial Celebration of Suckow’s first novel, Country People. Host sites have been scheduled for 2024 and we are now scheduling for 2025.
Officers for 2023-2024
President: Barbara Lounsberry
Vice President: Jim Schaap
Secretary: Sue Hummel
Treasurer: Carol Watson
Webmaster: Cherie Dargan
Listen to "A Start in Life," narrated by Jim Schaap of Dordt College.
Or read it here, Ruth Suckow Memorial Association - A Start in Life
A Start In Life 7.11.mp3Read Suckow's Stories On Iowa Digital Heritage
RSMA President Barbara Lounsberry worked hard to get Ruth Suckow's stories on the Iowa Digital Heritage website. The first set of stories is about Iowa women's lives. There are now nineteen short stories plus her novelette, "A Part of the Institution" in all, thanks to the hard work of one of our members, Roy Kenagy. Thanks, Roy!
Follow the link below to go to the website.
Then click on "People and Biographies."
The Ruth Suckow Short Story Collection is on page 7--if you want to take a look or to direct others to these stories. Once you see the story, scroll down and you can read the description and other information. If you then click on the red box, by the page at the top, the story will come up and there is a "pop up" button in the right-hand corner. If you click on that, it makes the story even bigger and easier to read and to print out.
RSMA Founder Ferner Nuhn is on Wikipedia.
We have posted pictures of some of his artwork: Figures of the 30s.
Please check out the page on Ferner (Resources on Ferner Nuhn) as well as Mentions to discover what other websites are saying about Suckow & RSMA (Links to Posts on Blogs), Writing about Suckow (for another chance to read Marsha's poem on Suckow), and RSMA News (for updates about projects and events).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferner_Nuhn
We have replicated the Wikipedia entry on our site--on the page about Ferner. Written by webmaster Cherie Dargan, it draws from the hard work of several writers and historians in our group from the past, including Dorothy Grant.
In addition, the Ruth Suckow website may look the same, but we were approved for Google Apps for Non-Profits in 2013, which gives us a larger web space.
Ferner's Art is now here! Check out his sketches of fellow participants at some of the Writer's Workshops he and Ruth attended at Yaddo and MacDowell Colony, retreats established to give writers and artists a place to spend time creating their work. He called this collection of paintings "Figures of the 30s."
Find a reference to Suckow, a new photo, or have information about one of Ruth or Ferner's relatives?
Please contact Cherie, webmaster, at cheriedargan@gmail.com.
Want to contact us? Want to become a member? Click here for information!
Some people find us through the Wikipedia article on Ruth Suckow; however, if you haven't seen it yet, here it is. The article was written by Michael Dargan, the original webmaster for the first Suckow website.
You can LIKE us on Facebook! Search for the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association.
RSMA President Barbara Lounsberry doing research at the Special Collections.
Almost every summer before Covid-19, Barbara, Mike and I traveled to the University of Iowa to visit the Special Collections area, do research, and frequently take materials that had been donated. They have a sizeable Ruth Suckow collection there, thanks to the work of Ferner Nuhn and Georgia.
Ruth Suckow loved cats, and there are numerous photographs with her holding a cat. This one was sent to The Iowan magazine.