Maple Leaf Festival ready for 46th run

Baldwin will be host to the 46th annual Maple Leaf Festival next weekend.

The festival includes more than 300 arts and crafts booths, food vendors, live country and bluegrass music and the oldest quilt show in Kansas.

A parade will march through the downtown at 11 a.m. Saturday, and the historical “Ballad of Black Jack” musical will be performed all weekend in Rice Auditorium on the Baker University campus.

A group of costumed children, above, were part of a previous year’s parade during the festival.

The festival and parking are free.

For more information, call (785) 594-7564.

County

Local writing contest to honor area authors

The Lawrence Arts Center and Raven Bookstore are sponsoring the 2003 Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award.

Since 1996, the award has honored new and emerging writers in Lawrence and Douglas County. The competition also is meant to promote awareness of Langston Hughes and his life in Lawrence.

Awards of $500 each are given for poetry and prose fiction.

To be considered for the award, writers must live in Douglas County, be 21 or older, and not have published a book-length volume of poetry or prose.

The application deadline is Nov. 15. Applications can be completed at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H.

Winners will be notified by mail and announced on Feb. 1, Hughes’ birthday.

Kansas University

Former U.S. ambassador to Russia set to speak

A former U.S. ambassador to Russia will speak next week at Kansas University.

James Collins, ambassador from 1997 to 2001, will speak on “Contemporary Issues of American-Russian Relations” at 7 p.m. Monday in the Centennial Room of the Kansas Union. His talk is sponsored by the KU Center for Russian and East European Studies.

Collins also has served as a member of the Senior Foreign Service, ambassador-at-large and deputy chief of mission for the U.S. embassy in Moscow during the fall of the Soviet Union.