Here is an excerpt concerning Ruth Suckow: "Interest in Ruth Suckow has been stirred by the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association, a group of Iowans, including Leedice Ann McAnnelly Kissane, the author of a 1969 Twayne volume on Suckow. This interest is focused on Earlville, Suckow's Iowa home for many summers, and the location of her apiary which financed her early writing. The Association meets at least once a year, and is presently planning to celebrate the centenary of Suckow's birth in 1992. The Earlville town library is "The Ruth Suckow Memorial Library"; its home is in a new building completed in 1990. Recent Suckow studies are Ferner Nuhn's "The Orchard Apiary: Ruth Suckow in Earlville," in The Iowan (Summer, 1972) and Margaret S. Omircanin's Ruth Suckow: A Critical Study of Her Fiction (1972). Presently Matts Vasta, a Swedish scholar, is at work on a study of Suckow's fiction. The University of Iowa Press has published a collection of Suckow's stories in A Ruth Suckow Omnibus (1989) and reprinted The Folks in 1992. Frank Paluka's bibliographical essay listing Suckow letters at The University of Iowa appeared in the first two numbers of Books at Iowa (October, 1964 and April, 1965)."
Rural Lit RALLY -- Focus on Ruth Suckow & Ferner Nuhn, Fall 2012
Rural Lit is a project that is jointly sponsored by Buena Vista University and Buffalo State College. We were given an opportunity to work with them on a project, and it was both enjoyable and very beneficial for my Hawkeye students. I was contacted by Cynthia Anthony, Special Projects Assistant to the Dean, School of Education, at Buffalo State College. Dr. Paul Theobald became the Dean, School of Education, at Buena Vista University in July, 2012. Cynthia worked with him on Rural Lit. <http://www.rurallitrally.org>.
As Cynthia explained, "It's a website devoted to promoting and preserving rural literature. Although we are relatively new, we have been very successful to date. One of our proudest moments came when we were chosen by Lucy Hudson and Mary Snow to be the recipients of the papers of Lois Phillips Hudson, author of The Bones of Plenty. To reflect Dr. Theobald's new position at BVU, the Rural Lit RALLY website will be focusing on Iowan authors over the next few months. What that means is that we will be doing book reviews and featured author pieces on Iowan authors and their works. One of those that we will be profiling is Ruth Suckow; we even plan to hold an open blog discussion on her book, Country People."
This was really exciting! They linked to our website, and I worked with them with my Hawkeye students in my Introduction to Literature class. A group of Rural Lit Rally members joined us in a special Facebook discussion of the short story, "A Rural Community." My students were very intrigued with the idea of discussing a story from the 1920s with a group of people scattered around the midwest and beyond. It made an impression on them, and at the end of the semester, I got a lot of positive feedback.
Dr. Theobald, his wife, and I were asked to be on Iowa Public Radio and talked about the project with Charity Nebbe