A LEGISLATIVE COMMEMORATION,  Honoring Mr. Kent Meyers, Assistant Professor of English, at Black Hills State University, in Spearfish, South Dakota.

     WHEREAS,  Kent Meyers has served in the field of education at the collegiate level for eighteen years, sixteen of those years have been devoted to the students at Black Hills State University; and

     WHEREAS,  as an accomplished author Kent Meyers has received esteemed recognition for his writing, including the publication of two books The River Warren and The Witness of Combines and he received good reviews for his books in Publisher's Weekly and others. Mr. Meyers received 1998 honorable mention in the O. Henry Awards for his short story Light in the Crossing, was named 1998 South Dakota Author of the Year by the South Dakota Council of Teachers of English, received a bronze award from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education in Best Article of the Year category in 1998, and was featured in the 1999 spring issue of the South Dakota Review; and

     WHEREAS,  Kent Meyers' past awards and recognition for his authorship include: the Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award for best short story published in Southern Humanities Review in 1997, a nomination for the Pushcart Prize for his work in 1997, being selected by the North Dakota Quarterly in 1997 for his essay Prairieland to be included in an anthology of the Northern Plains. Mr. Meyers works were twice listed as "Distinguished Stories" in the annual Best American Short Stories and received the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1992:

     NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT COMMEMORATED,  by the Seventy-fourth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, that Kent Meyers be honored and recognized for exhibiting great prowess in his skill as an author, his love for life in the Midwest, his great appreciation for belles letres, and his astounding dedication to the honorable profession of English Education, in the State of South Dakota.