Duane L. Herrmann

Duane L. Herrmann, grew up on a farm in eastern Kansas and lives near Topeka. He holds degrees in Education and History from Fort Hays Kansas State University and has been adjunct faculty of Allen County Community College.

He was the 1989 recipient of the Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship and his history book, By Thy strengthening Grace, won the Ferguson Kansas History Award in 2007. In addition, his poetry has won the Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship and other prizes from the Kansas State Poetry society and Kansas Authors Club. He is included in American Poets of the 1990's, Kansas Poets Trail, and the Map of Kansas Literature. He has edited several poetry anthologies. His work has been published, quoted or cited in print and online in more than a dozen countries in at least half a dozen languages with more translations in process. His work appears in two dozen anthologies of essays, memoirs, poetry, childrens stories, and fiction.

In addition to the history book, his history chapbooks include: A Brief History of the Baha'i History of Samarkand, Early Baha'is of Enterprise, the Baha'i Faith in Kansas since 1897. A literary chapbook is: Hidden Mysteries in the Poetry of Robert Hayden.

He has seven full-length collections of poetry published: Prairies of Possibilities, Ichnographical: 173, Praise the King of Glory, Gedichte aus Prairies of Possibilities, Family Plowing, Remnants of a Life, and No Known Address. Chapbooks of poems include: Whispers Shouting Glory, Fragrance of Grace, Sweet Scented Streams, and Wind and Will. Individual poems have appeared in, among others: Anthology of Forests, Barking Sycamores, Burningword, Dass Blatt, Deronda Review, Dreamers Creative Writing, East & West Literary Quarterly, Inscape, Jumbled part II, Kansas Rhymer, Little Balkans Review, Manifest West, Midwest Quarterly, New Horizons, Orison, The Passionate Few, Perspectives, Phoenix Sound, Potpourri, San Francisco Peace and Hope, Spiritual Mothering Journal, Soul Lit, Sunflower Petals, These Trees, Tiny Seed, Topeka Genealogical Society Quarterly, Vitamin ZZZ, Voices Israel, Wagon Magazine, World Order, Write ON! Many websites/blogs have also posted his poetry, prose and histories.

His books are in such libraries as: New York Public Library, Princeton, Harvard Divinity School, British Library, Oxford, Cambridge, Trinity College, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Sweden, Staatbibliothek Bamberg, Universitatsbibliothek Tubingen, Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire Strasbourg, Hebrew University, International Baha'i Library and others.

This, and more, despite dyslexia, ADHD, clyclothymia and PTSD. As a child, giving up was never an option. He learned to continue the struggle.