This past February, she retired early from nursing after 38 years in the profession “to move her love of writing from a back burner to the front of the stove.” Her most recent poetry collection, “A Net Full of Hope,” was published in January and readers have dubbed her “the Maya of the Midwest.” She is the 2015 winner of the Topeka ArtsConnect Arty Award in Literature. She has had well-received performances of her poetry in many venues in Kansas Missouri and Nebraska. A Net Full of Hope