Lingering Inland

Five years ago, Kit and I began a new chapter in our lives.  We had driven west for four days from Columbia, Missouri across parts of the Midwest where spring was emerging, been snowed on in Wyoming, crossed from plains to mountains, and landed finally in the foothills of the Sierras in Nevada City, CA.  But having lived for thirty years in Missouri, the Midwest never leaves you.  We brought its landscape memories and spirit and literature with us. 

During the 2026 Unbound Book Festival that took place in Columbia from April 16-19, festival goers from around the country had an opportunity to celebrate the Midwest during a panel entitled Lingering Inland:  A Literary Tour of the Midwest.  The book is a collection of stories written across time and place about a region of the country that often leaves people wondering “What and where exactly is this place called the Midwest?”

The book is a literary treasure that evolved during the COVID pandemic from a collaboration between its editor Andy Oler and Tina Casagrand Foss who is the Editor-in-Chief of The New Territory magazine.  Oler describes the series of 16 volumes that came out of their work together in his introduction to this book that brings the earlier Literary Landscapes essays together in one volume.

“Much like the print magazine markets itself to people ‘who believe a sense of belonging in a place is possible no matter where they started,’ the Literary Landscapes series and this book amplify the people and stories of the Midwest.  Accordingly, each volume of Literary Landscapes is organized around a principle of geographical diversity, featuring locations and stories from all over the Midwest and Great Plains, often with quite some distance between them.”

When the book was being organized, Kit received a letter from Andy Oler asking permission to include an essay he had written about William Least Heat-Moon, one of the authors with roots in the Midwest celebrated in the book. Over the course of our thirty years in Missouri, William Lewis Trogdon who writes under the pen name William Least Heat-Moon had become a friend.  The morning in 1999 when he set off on a 103-day nautical journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific in a twenty-two-foot C-Dory boat that he had pulled in a trailer from his home in Columbia, Kit and I were there to wish him Godspeed. 

He named his boat Nikawa which means “river-horse” in the Osage language.  Kit’s essay tells the story of how the boat found a permanent home after his adventure at the Boone County Historical Society on Highway 63 just south of Columbia.  The boat is displayed 24-7 behind a pavilion designed by local architect Nick Peckham.  Kit writes, “This open structure provides easy viewing of the boat (behind plexiglass), a map of Nikawa’s route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and photographs of the craft and its author.  Nikawa, in fact, was now home, resting and lending in stature to all of Boone County.”

Kit and I were a part of the Unbound Book Festival from its creation until we moved back to California.  And although we could not attend this year’s festival, I could not be prouder knowing that Kit is among Lingering Inland’s collection of authors.