Middle West Press

Middle West Press Middle West Press LLC is an Iowa-based veteran-owned indie micro-press & editorial services provider

06/10/2026

CHRONIC NITRATE POLLUTION, NOT DROUGHT, PROMPTED OUTDOOR WATERING BAN
Nitrate pollution has remained above legal limits since the beginning of the year. Des Moines Water Works runs extra equipment to reduce the nitrates.

But the utility company can only treat a certain amount of gallons per day. So an outdoor watering ban has been announced to reduce the use of water.

The established limit for nitrates in drinking water is 10mg/L. That standard is set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Nitrates must be reduced below that level before it can be delivered as tap water to homes and businesses.

In Des Moines, water comes from two rivers, the Raccoon and the Des Moines. They have had nitrate levels above the established limit nearly every day this year.

This week, for example, the Raccoon has been registering at more than 13mg/L, according to the US Geological Survey. The Des Moines River has been above 10mg/L this week.

Photo from Iowa Public Radio

06/10/2026

Former FTP & FTRS Publication Assistant, Tomiisin Ilesanmi is putting together a new literary anthology based on the theme of migration. Deadline is July 1. Feel free to email questions if you are interested in being involved.

06/09/2026

The Qwerty Quarterly is looking for new voices!

It is the official publication of Qwertyfest MKE, a 3-day festival celebrating the invention of the typewriter in Milwaukee 150+years ago.

Submission details:

They are looking for poems 25 lines or shorter of any style, on any topic. (Although they love poems about typewriters or with a mention of typewriters.) Submissions are open year round and can be sent to [email protected]

Their next issue, #13, will be released in August 2026. The issue will have an anti-AI theme, so they are favoring poems that express this sentiment. Deadline is July 15th. Pay is $25 and a copy of the zine.

Qwertyfest MKE
qwertyfest_mke

06/08/2026

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On June 7, 1893, Ernest Beaumont Schoedsack, co-director of the 1933 film King Kong, was born in Council Bluffs. He brought a cameraman’s eye trained in war and remote landscapes to some of the most influential adventure and fantasy films of the twentieth century.

Schoedsack entered film work in the silent era, joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps as a cameraman during World War I, and learned to shoot under the practical constraints and dangers of the Western Front. After the Armistice, he remained in Europe, working on war relief efforts in Poland and developing a documentary sensibility that led him to expeditions that pushed cameras into jungles, deserts, and borderlands far from studio sets.

In the 1920s, he joined forces with Merian C. Cooper, another veteran and traveler, at a moment when American audiences were hungry for “true” views of distant places and when nonfiction feature films could still play alongside narrative dramas. Their collaborations produced a string of films that blended ethnographic ambition with staged drama, including Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927) and The Most Dangerous Game (1932).

These experiments culminated in King Kong in 1933, co-directed by Schoedsack and Cooper, with a screenplay crafted in part from their shared experiences, producing an iconic film that combined stop-motion effects, studio craftsmanship, and documentary-inspired framing in ways that changed the vocabulary of fantasy cinema. Though Schoedsack’s eyesight declined in later years, he continued working into the 1940s on films that explored science fiction and spectacle, including Dr. Cyclops (1940), one of the earliest live-action features filmed in Technicolor.

06/08/2026

THIS DES MOINES NATIVE CARRIED A CAMERA RATHER THAN A GUN TO D-DAY INVASION
June 6 is the 81st anniversary of the D-Day invasion (1944).
Among those who died during the Allied battle at Normandy was a Des Moines native who carried a camera rather than a gun.

Bede Irvin, 33, was a photographer for the Associated Press. He is one of more than 9,000 Americans (including over 180 Iowans) buried in a cemetery near the site of the invasion.

You can find out more in this story by Valerie Komor for the Associated Press: https://apnews.com/article/dday-wwii-france-normandy-media-fd4cb6c41e48b2624c3bb85b024bb332?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share

06/07/2026

Join us tonight at 7pm at Pulpit Rock Brewing in Decorah for an evening of conversation with author and small business advocate, , and Decorah middle school and high school librarian, Shannon Horton. There will also be a Q&A session followed by a book signing. Everyone is invited to this free event sponsored by the Oneota Valley Literary Foundation, with support from Pulpit Rock Brewing and Dragonfly Books.

Danny Caine is the author most recently of How to Defend Books and Why: Book Bans and How We Fight Them, as well as Jewish American Dream, winner of the inaugural Sarabande Chapbook Prize. He’s also written four poetry collections as well as the books How to Protect Bookstores and Why and How to Resist Amazon and Why. He’s a former owner of the Raven Book Store, winner of Publishers Weekly’s 2022 Bookstore of the Year award. His poetry has appeared in The Slowdown, LitHub, DIAGRAM, HAD, and Barrelhouse. He lives in Ohio.

Shannon Horton has been a teacher librarian for over 20 years and holds a Master of Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin. She is currently the middle and high school librarian for Decorah Public Schools and wants nothing more than for her students to enjoy reading and find truth online.

If you find that you can’t make it to the event but would still like to purchase any books from this author talk, give Dragonfly Books a call at 563-382-4275. Our staff will be glad to reserve a book, have it autographed for you, and shipped out as needed.

06/07/2026

Yay!! Passports and Bingo cards are ready for the Tour!!

Thank you to our sponsor, Prints Copy Center, for making these for us!! ✨💛

Address

Johnston, IA

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Middle West Press posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category