Where We're Calling From

What We Talk About When We Talk About Bathtub

The Bathtub Collective is a group of writers in Kansas.

Although most of the collective's members are students at the University of Kansas, especially in the M.F.A. program, the Bathtub is not affiliated with KU. We exist outside the system, so to speak. We organize community events, send writers into the schools, and stage guerilla poetry readings on public transportation. Often we interact with other M.F.A.-based collectives, because we're highly social, and we like to meet new people. But we're not officially part of KU.

Our Robot Dance Moves

The Lawrence Writers’ Collective aims to unify graduate students within the KU creative writing programs and connect them to writers and artists within the community through words and through beer. We participate in the annual A.W.P. conference, literary festivals,  writers’ exchanges with other M.F.A.-programs, art shows, and reading series featuring local writers. In this way the collective raises public awareness for both the KU M.F.A. program and for the Lawrence writing community. Other important things include our kickass dance moves, especially the ones that reference robots.

Most importantly, the writer’s collective gives writers in Lawrence a common voice and a unified front for action both within and outside of Kansas. Word.

A Brief History of People Who Write in Kansas

Kansas—and the whole midwest region of the U.S.—has a history of writers, and so the collective is proud to write and edit and revise on the Great Plains. Ernest Hemingway, for example, worked for The Kansas City Star as a reporter. That was his first job. William S. Burroughs lived in Kansas from 1981 until his death in 1997. He lived here longer than he lived anywhere else. Other noteworthy writers from Kansas include William Allen White and Gary Zukav.