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When my writing career started more than 30 years ago, I spent months establishing a freelance career. After long days of teaching and coaching, I stayed up late at night, crafting query letters and sending them via snail mail, hoping to get a bite from local publications ... or a big break with a national news outlet. It seems amazing, considering it was in the dark ages - er, I mean pre-internet times. It was hard work, but I was determined to form partnerships with trusted publications and...

JARROD McCARTNEY RED CLOUD - It's not unusual to catch sight of a celebrity in Red Cloud, population 962, especially during the annual Willa Cather conference. First Lady Laura Bush has appeared here. So has writer Maya Angelou, Golden Globe-winning actor Paul Giamatti and a drumbeat of talk show hosts, TV stars, novelists and artists. And yet a tiny, energetic, elderly woman often stole the celebrity spotlight, holding court about the life and times of Nebraska's famed novelist. Antonette...

GRAND ISLAND - The question rolled around in Laban Njuguna's mind long before he took action. Coffee? Really? Upend his life to sell Kenyan coffee? In Nebraska? He daydreamed about the idea as he hauled grain for farmers in the Grand Island area. It spilled out in long late-night conversations with his wife, Cora. Friends and family grew coffee in his native Kenya. He lived in the United States, the largest consumer of coffee in the world. Njuguna's logical side told him that he knew nothing...

Retired social studies teacher Laura Nelson is used to seeing her small town send its children, and its dollars, off to bigger cities. "We tend to go that way," to Lincoln and the Omaha metro, where her nieces and many former students live and shop. But lately, from her seat at the cafe table where she meets friends most mornings for coffee and an omelette, she's witnessed a reversal of fortune. City folks are spending their money in her hometown. "The cafe has managed to bring them up here,"...

It's early summer and a Lakota woman stares into the trees, deep past the leaves and their shadows, her dark eyes misting up. Norma LeRoy tries to understand why a school secretary cut her two little girls' hair without her consent in the spring of 2020. The secretary was checking for lice, LeRoy was told - lice the mother said they never found. LeRoy feels like few in this remote region of Cherry County understand what they took. It's why the 36-year-old Rosebud Sioux has to turn away from her...