Riverfront Readings

Riverfront Readings Saturday, August 16th
2025-08-16 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Chicago) | Flagship Books, 510 N. 6th Street, Kansas City, KS, 66101, United States
Please join us for our August 16th reading featuring Tim Bascom and Danny Alexander.
Tim Bascom is the author of two prize-winning memoirs about years spent in East Africa as a youth. His essays have been selected for the anthologies Best Creative Nonfiction and Best American Travel Writing. His short fiction has appeared in journals such as Zone 3, Front Range Review, and Briar Cliff Review. Bascom directs the Kansas Book Festival.

Danny Alexander is a longtime Kansas City music writer and former associate editor of Dave Marsh’s Rock & Rap Confidential. He’s the author of the book Real Love, No Drama: The Music of Mary J. Blige, and he co-edited a collection of Dave Marsh’s work, Kick Out the Jams: Jibes, Barbs, Tributes, and Rallying Cries from 35 Years of Music Writing.

Riverfront Readings with Aisha Sharif, Melissa Ferrer Civil, Waco Porter
2025-11-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Nerman Museum, Hudson Auditorium, 12345 College Boulevard, Overland Park, KS, 66210, United States
Thursday, November 13th, 7:00 PM
Nerman Museum, Hudson Auditorium
12345 College Blvd.
Overland Park, KS 66210
Riverfront Readings, The Johnson County Community College Student Literary Magazine Mind’s Eye and the Black Student Union co-host a reading featuring Aisha Sharif, Melissa Ferrer Civil, and Waco Porter.
Aisha Sharif is a Cave Canem fellow who earned her MFA at Indiana University, Bloomington, and BA in English at Rhodes College. Her poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Tidal Basin Review, Callaloo, Calyx, Rattle, and other literary journals. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2019 and 2015. Aisha’s first book of poetry, To Keep From Undressing, was published by SparkWheelPress in 2019. Her 2nd book, Black Diamonds, was a finalist for the 2024 HubCity Press BIPOC Series.

Melissa Ferrer Civil (she/they) is a first-gen, Haitian-Cuban, queer poet, organizer, and educator living on Kaw, Otoe, and Osage lands (Kansas City, MO). They are preoccupied with constructing new communication for the manifestation of a home we all hold in our hearts. Melissa’s first chapbook BIRTHING PAINS (Turnsol Editions, 2020, reprinted 2024). Their second chapbook is STENO PAD (Turnsol Editions, 2024). Melissa received a MFA from Randolph College, was a Charlotte Street Studio Resident, Chrysalis Institute Alumni, is the Director of B-REAL (Black Radical Education for Abolition and Liberation) Academy. She is the first Poet Laureate of Kansas City, MO. Melissa is the founder of the abolitionist arts and organizing event series, A Nation In Exile. Website, www.melissaferrerand.com and instagram: @melissaferrerand

Waco Porter: living and writing in KC, I have two books of poetry, Total Eclipse and Bus Stop. I am married with three girls. I am the youngest of four, the only boy: Daddy’s son, mama’s joy. I really like writing poetry; it gives me peace of mind. I like being able to reread something I wrote and get right back in that space. I like being able to hear other people read their poetry, hear their truth or perspective, then feel motivated to write something of my own. Not to be better, just responding to the inspiration of others’ voices.

Riverfront Readings featuring Colleen Maynard and Kevin Ridgeway
2026-02-13 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom, Kansas City, MO, United States
Please join us for our February 13th Zoom reading featuring Colleen Maynard and Kevin Ridgeway.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tBXerDLqRV2JpW-RzQrwIA
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining the meeting.
Colleen Maynard is a visual artist, writer, and arts administrator. Maynard writes poems and short fiction about the overlap of daily modern rituals and geological deep time, regularly resulting in themes of ecological and societal absurdities or careful spells. Her writing has appeared in AGNI, matchbook, Sand Journal, and Wayne State Review. She also makes highly detailed, large-scale drawings of marine invertebrates, prehistoric fossils, and overlooked life forms using analogue drafting tools and collage. Maynard holds double majors from the Kansas City Art Institute. She is a proud founding member and alumna of Throughline, an artist-run space and collective group of artists in Houston, Texas. Maynard is an administrator at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
Kevin Ridgeway‘s books include Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press), Invasion of the Shadow People (Luchador Press) and Death of the Coppertone Girl (Luchador Press). His work has been published in New York Quarterly, Hiram Poetry Review, Slipstream Magazine, Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review and Talking River Review, among others. He lives and writes in Long Beach, California.

Riverfront Readings with Colleen Maynard and Kevin Ridgeway.
2026-02-13 19:00 - 20:30 | MO
Friday, February 13th, 7:00 PM
Online event

To attend, please register for the reading here, and you will be provided with the information needed to join the reading.

Riverfront Readings on Zoom featuring Colleen Maynard and Kevin Ridgeway.

Colleen Maynard is a visual artist, writer, and arts administrator. As a lifelong cyclist and pedestrian, her writing and artwork are mired in the slowness of observations from a bicycle, and the analogue mark making composed on a drafting table.
Maynard writes poems and short fiction about the overlap of daily modern rituals and geological deep time, regularly resulting in themes of ecological and societal absurdities or careful spells. Her writing has appeared in places such as AGNI, matchbook, Sand Journal, and Wayne State Review. She also makes highly detailed, large-scale drawings of marine invertebrates, prehistoric fossils, and overlooked life forms using analogue drafting tools and collage. A few laboratories she has collaborated with include the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, the University of Texas Medical Branch Pathology department, and Emporia State University Geology Museum.
Maynard holds double majors from the Kansas City Art Institute. She is a proud founding member and alumna of Throughline, an artist-run space and collective group of artists in Houston, Texas. Maynard is an administrator at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
www.colleenmaynard.com

Kevin Ridgeway’s books include Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press), Invasion of the Shadow People (Luchador Press) and Death of the Coppertone Girl (Luchador Press). His work has been published in New York Quarterly, Hiram Poetry

Riverfront Readings with Franklin K.R. Cline, Alex Tretbar, & Ruth Williams
2026-03-14 15:00 - 17:00 | Flagship Books, 510 N. 6th Street, Kansas City, KS, 66101, United States
Please join us for our March 14th for reading at Flagship Books featuring Franklin K.R. Cline, Alex Tretbar, and Ruth Williams.

Franklin K.R. Cline is the author of SO WHAT (2017) and THE BEATLES’ SECOND ALBUM (2021), both from V.A. Press. You can find his poems in Poetry Magazine, Passages North, FENCE, and elsewhere. An enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, he is an educator in Kansas City, MO, where he lives with Six and Olivia.

Alex Tretbar is the author of multiple chapbooks, including most recently toofarwandered (Tilted House, forthcoming 2026). He works in the Center for Digital and Public Humanities at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, where he is currently studying the archive of early issues of New Letters and assisting with the Kansas City Monuments Coalition. Recent writing has appeared in Annulet, Cleveland Review of Books, Works & Days, and elsewhere. Alongside UMKC students, alumni, and faculty, he teaches creative writing at Chillicothe Correctional Center, a women’s prison in Missouri.

Ruth Williams is the author of a poetry collection, Flatlands (Black Lawrence Press), and two poetry chapbooks, Nursewifery (Jacar Press) and Conveyance (Dancing Girl Press). Currently, Ruth is a Professor of English at William Jewell College.

Riverfront Readings with Silvia Kofler, Gregg Primo Ventello, and Mary Silwance
2026-05-08 19:00 - 20:30 | The Writers Place | The Nonprofit Village, 31 W. 31st Street, Kansas City, MO, 64108, United States
Please join us May 8th for our reading at The Writers Place featuring Silvia Kofler, Gregg Primo Ventello, and Mary Silwance.
Silvia Kofler is a widely published poet, translator, and educator who has read her work in many places like the Yale Club and Poets House in New York City, and at Schokoladen in Berlin, Germany. Her latest book is Castles in the Air, by Spartan Press, 2026. Her book Gambol the World: Eine Weltanschauung, by Spartan Press has been translated into Portuguese by Carlos Ramos and was published by Ghost Editions in Portugal, 2021. Currently, a small collection of her poems is being translated into Armenian at https://vogi-nairi.am/en/.

Gregg Primo Ventello’s essays appeared in Carolina Quarterly, Chicago Quarterly Review, and New Letters, and are recognized as “Notable” in Robert Atwan’s Best American Essays of 2013, 2018, and 2022. His op-eds appeared in the Japan Times, the St Louis Post-Dispatch, the Kansas City Star, and McClatchy newspapers across the U.S. He teaches at Kansas City Kansas Community College.

Mary Silwance sees the imagination as emancipatory medicine uniting us with ourselves, others, and Earth. Born in Egypt, Mary lives in Kansas City and is the mother of three daughters. She currently works in Adult Education. She also conducts workshops on writing and spiritual ecology and is on Kansas City Voices’ editorial team. Mary is the co-editor of an anthology of women’s embodied experiences titled Of Our Own Accord. She co-created Poetry Jam, a festival for poetic voices, and has recently published her first poetry collection, We Remember Ourselves. Her full portfolio, including writing, presentations, and workshops, is at https://www.marysilwance.com. You can connect with Mary on FB and IG.

Riverfront Readings with Victoria Garton, Serina Allison Hearn, and Boyd Bauman
2026-06-13 15:00 - 16:30 | Flagship Books, 510 N. 6th Street, Kansas City, KS, 66101, United States
Please join us June 13th for our reading at Flagship Books featuring Victoria Garton, Serina Allison Hearn, and Boyd Bauman.
Victoria Garton’s 4th book, Light Through a Cat’s Ear, came out in 2025 from Kelsay Books and is available there and on Amazon. Its three sections, Natura, Important Arguments, and Changing of the Gods, feature themes she’s explored since first publishing in 1978: our relationships to nature, the inner self, and higher powers. Her poetry has appeared in many journals including I-70 Review, Thorny Locust, Coal City Review, and previous Writers Place Yearbooks. She lives on a ranch in Nevada, MO, and is retired from teaching composition and literature for Crowder College.

Serina Allison Hearn is a Trinidadian-born poet, essayist, preservationist, and environmental activist based between Trinidad and Lawrence, Kansas. She is the author of Dreaming the Bronze Girl and Atlas of Our Birth, with essays published in Wired868 and the Trinidad and Tobago Express. Her work explores place, memory, ecology, exile, and inheritance. She is the founder and curator of the Garden with Wings, a butterfly and pollinator garden at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Port of Spain, Trinidad. In Lawrence, she provides Victorian homes for KU students and creates pollinator gardens that link historic preservation with ecological restoration.

Boyd Bauman grew up on a small ranch south of Bern, Kansas, his dad the storyteller and mom the family scribe. His books of poetry are Cleave and Scheherazade Plays the Chestnut Tree Café, and his children’s book is The Heights of Love. After stints in New York, Colorado, Alaska, Japan, and Vietnam, Boyd now is a librarian and writer in Kansas City. Visit at boydbauman.weebly.com.

Riverfront Readings with Catherine Strayhall and Brandon Whitehead
2026-08-14 19:00 - 20:00 | The Writers Place | The Nonprofit Village, 31 W. 31st Street, Kansas City, MO, 64108, United States
Please join us August 14th for our reading at The Writers Place featuring Catherine Strayhall and Brandon Whitehead.
Friday, August 14, 7:00 PM
The Writers Place
The Nonprofit Village
31 W. 31st Street
Kansas City MO 64108

Catherine Strayhall is a 2025 Kansas Notable Book author whose work has appeared in KANSAS! magazine, Gleam, the Kansas City Star, and on Kansas Public Radio’s show Prairie Journal. She has been featured several times in the online publication Poets Reading the News, where she went on to serve as an associate editor. Catherine works in libraries, and you can often find her reading poetry in the Crossroads or on Strawberry Hill. Her award-winning collection, Dress Me Like a Prizefighter, is available from Spartan Press.

Brandon Whitehead has one poetry collection “Thieves, Pharaohs & Mexican Daredevils”, and one short story collection “Outpost 4423”. He is also the host for the Speakeasy @ Swordfish Tom’s.
