Winter Prairie Woman

Winter Prairie Woman is a sensitive story about memory, farming, and a woman on the prairie in the middle west of the United States in the Twentieth Century. Originally published by the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in a limited, hand-printed edition, Meridel LeSueur described the process: "This is a collective book. This means it is not a performance by one author in a room alone. Like a tree it was made by a communal movement of root, stem, flower and seed by a group of creators together summoning a communal work. The Minnesota Center for Book Arts summoned me to write a book for a series about winter. It excited me to summon my memory and feeling about winter and the image of the prairie woman came to me. I had never been excited by being asked by a group of skilled workers to make something together. It was as if they called forth in me some part of a communal creation of various skills and creative love. I began to compose something called forth by other creators with skill and love. The editors felt the same, editing my final script and working with the designer of the book on sentences, structure and form, each keeping alive together my wording and form but giving it further expertise. This glowed in us as knowledge and warmth. The illustrator entered into the growing form with the designer, the setting of type, even the making of paper. It began to take form in the creative energy of us all. Printer, proof reader, binder (hand sewn) it became a creation of us all. It did not even have the so-called author's name on the front page. The author and editor were thanked for their part in the whole creation. We all met to celebrate the book of our mutual skill and love." The limited edition soon sold out, and there grew a demand for the book. Midwest Villages & Voices reprinted it by offset press to give it wider circulation, yet preserving the spirit of the book, including new illustrations by Sandy Spieler. As LeSueur said, "It is a book for the hand of the reader who now becomes a part of the collective, receiving the maturity and beauty of the book made by us all."