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Topeka also has many state and federal officies and is home to the Santa Fe Railway, which has now merged into the Burlington Northern Railway System. Union Pacific track also run through this northeast Kansas city.
Thomas Fox Averill is Writer in Residence at Washburn University and is involved with their Center for Kansas Studies. Poet Amy Fleury taught poetry writing for ten years at Washburn University.
Kansas Authors Club, a continually-active statewide organization, was founded here in 1902. Early members included newspaper men Edgar Howe, Frank Pitts MacLennan, Thomas Brower Peacock, and William Allen White. Other members included Topekans Margaret Hill McCarter, Eugene Fitch Ware, Senator Arthur Capper, Reverend Charles M. Sheldon, Dr. Karl A. Menninger and Kansas humorist Max Yoho. Writer and storyteller Debra Stufflebean makes her home in the state capital as well.
Home of the Menninger Clinic, Topeka has a small body of psychiatric literature by such writers as Flo Menninger, Karl Menninger, Carol Ascher, William Gibson (see drama overview) and Harriet Lerner.
African-American poet Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, and the prolific African-American poet Kevin Young lived here from childhood through his graduation from Topeka West High School.