Phyllis Becker Book Release Celebration at the Kansas City Museum
2024-08-15 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Kansas City Museum, 3218 Gladstone Blvd, Kansas City, MO, 64123, United States
Kansas City Museum
Riverfront Reading Series
Features
Phyllis Becker
Book Release Celebration
Proof of Existence
Poems by Phyllis Becker
Special Guests:

Gena Bardwell
Angela Hagenbach
Roger Wilder, piano
Steve Rigazzi, bass

Reception and book signing to follow.
The event will be free. Space is limited.
To RSVP, contact Glenn North at gnorth@kansascitymuseum.org

Riverfront Readings with Brian Daldorph and Boyd Bauman
2024-09-13 20:00 - 21:00 | The Writers Place | The Nonprofit Village, 31 W. 31st Street, Kansas City, MO, 64108, United States
Friday, September 13th, 8:00 PM
The Writers Place
Nonprofit Village
31 W 31st Street, KCMO 64108
Please join us for our September 13th reading featuring Brian Daldorph and Boyd Bauman.
Brian Daldorph teaches creative writing, literature, and writing classes in the English department. He has also taught in Japan, Senegal, and England. His two books of poems, The Holocaust and Hiroshima: Poems, and Outcasts, were both published by Mid-America Press. His book Words is a Powerful Thing (UP of Kansas, 2021) is the winner of the 2024 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in Literary Nonfiction. He edits Coal City Review. His poems, stories, articles, and reviews have been widely published. From “Outcast”: On cold nights he wraps himself in his great white beard/and seals gather round him/to keep Jack O’Bones warm.

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.

Suggested donations: $5 non-members, $4 members, $3 students.
All suggested donations go to the artists.

Riverfront Readings Autumn Open Mic: A Phil Miller Scholarship Reading
2024-10-11 19:00 - 21:00 | The Writers Place | The Nonprofit Village, 31 W. 31st Street, Kansas City, MO, 64108, United States
Themes: anything autumnal, or the poetry of Phil Miller. Two poems or one page of prose per reader.
To sign up ahead of time, email carl@riverfrontreadings.com. (You can sign up at the event if slots are still available.)
Philip Miller Memorial Scholarship: All funds from this event are donated to benefit students of Kansas City Kansas Community College.
To donate to the scholarship fund directly, see instructions at:
https://riverfrontreadings.com/phil-miller-scholarship-fund/
“Only autumn stays.
It seeps inside our bones:
its weather lingers.”
— Phil Miller

Glenn North and José Faus
2024-11-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Nerman Museum, Hudson Auditorium, 12345 College Boulevard, Overland Park, KS, 66210, United States
Riverfront Readings, The Johnson County Community College Student Literary Magazine, Mind’s Eye & the Black Student Union co-host a reading featuring Glenn North and José Faus.
Glenn A. North is an award-winning poet, activist, educator, and arts executive based in Kansas City. He is the Director of Inclusive Learning & Creative Impact at the Kansas City Museum. He previously served as the executive director at the Bruce A. Watkins Cultural Center and served at the American Jazz Museum and The Black Archives of Kansas City / Mid-America. He is the author of City of Song, a collection of poems inspired by Kansas City’s rich jazz tradition. He is a Cave Canem fellow, a Callaloo creative writing fellow, and a recipient of the Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Award.

José Faus is a visual artist, writer, performer and independent teacher/mentor with an interest in the role of artists as catalysts for community building. His chapbook This Town Like That was released by Spartan Press. His second book of poetry The Life and Times of Jose Calderon was published by West 39 Press. His children’s book Possum Trot was published by La Resistencia Press. He sits on the boards of the Full Frame Initiative, Board of Governors of UMKC Alumni Association, and serves as President of the Board of Charlotte Street.

Riverfront Readings with Jason Ryberg, Amber Fraley, Jesse Kates
2024-12-13 19:00 - 21:00 | The Writers Place | The Nonprofit Village, 31 W. 31st Street, Kansas City, MO, 64108, United States
Friday, December 13th, 7:00 PM
The Writers Place
Nonprofit Village
31 W 31st Street, KCMO 64108
Please join us for our December 13th reading featuring Jason Ryberg, Amber Fraley, and Jesse Kates.
Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks, and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and countless love letters, never sent. He is an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Fence Post Blues (River Dog Press, 2023). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

Amber Fraley is a native Kansan, journalist, essayist, storyteller, and wife and mom to the two greatest people in the world. She’s the author of the darkly humorous essay collection Kansas GenExistential, the viral essay Gen X Will Not Go Quietly, the new adult novel The Bug Diary, as well as numerous human-interest articles in regional magazines like KANSAS! Growing up in Lawrence and Wichita, Amber spent her formative years with her face in a book or at the mall with her friends. She loves Kansas with all her heart, is frequently awkward in public, and desperately wishes to see a tornado and live to tell the tale.

Jesse Kates is the songwriter, singer, and guitarist behind pop band The Sexy Accident and a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s creative writing program. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri with his wife Stephanie and sons Tobias and Jonas. Jim Daniels, author of Rowing Inland wrote, “Extra Pith (Spartan Press) is Jesse Kates’ first book of poems, but he writes with the subtlety and assurance of a well-seasoned veteran in this powerful debut collection. Mixing sharp, crisp, imagery with the sonorous wit of his song lyrics, Kates brings the full package to the page. In the daily struggles to balance love, family, marriage, and love again, he is always alert to the subtle emotional shifts that can so easily topple us. When all else is dark, Kates is out there trying to make out the faint glimmers for himself, and for his readers.”
Suggested donations: $5 non-members, $4 members, $3 students
All suggested donations go to the artists.

Riverfront Readings features John Romagna, Maria Vasquez Boyd, and Wayne Courtois
2025-02-07 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom, Kansas City, MO, United States
Please join us for our February 7th Zoom reading featuring John Romagna, Maria Vasquez Boyd, and Wayne Courtois.
To attend, please register for the reading at https://squoom.com/z/rf250707, and you will be provided with the information needed to join the reading.
John Romagna learned to love poetry in high school when a teacher assigned the poetry of Yeats. He began writing after the death of his younger son, Tim, in 2012. Writing helps him stay connected with family, friends and other writers. He lives in Clinton, NJ, with his wife Karen, a landscape and seascape painter. His most recently published poem, “Stories of an Empire,” appears in River Heron Review, Issue 7.1.

Maria Vasquez Boyd is producer/host of Artspeak Radio, a weekly live program on 90.1FM KKFI Kansas City Community Radio. Since 2012, she featured local and world renowned artists, writers, poets, and playwrights. Boyd is a founding member of the Latino Writers Collective, a storyteller, poet, artist, designer, painter, and continues to exhibit her work across the country. Boyd’s poetry book, The Weight of Recognition, was published in 2023. Her poetry can be found in numerous anthologies; Primera Página, Cuentos Del Centro, Duende, Everyday Things, Toasted Cheese, and No One Sees The Irony.
Wayne Courtois is the author of the memoir A Report from Winter, the literary novel Tales My Body Told Me, and the gay erotic novels My Name Is Rand and In the Time of Solution 9. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in many anthologies and journals, including The Greensboro Review, I-70 Review, Chelsea Station, Hibernation and Other Poems by Gay Bards, and Assaracus (poetry) and Jonathan (fiction) from Sibling Rivalry Press. His first poetry collection, The Old Ambassador and Other Poems, was published by Spartan Press in March 2023.

Riverfront Readings Friday, March 14th
2025-03-14 19:00 - 21:00 | The Writers Place | The Nonprofit Village, 31 W. 31st Street, Kansas City, MO, 64108, United States
Please join us for our March 14th reading featuring Angela Carole Brown, Bill Patterson, Jacob Jardel, and Nettie Zan.
Angela Carole Brown received the North Street Book Prize in Literary Fiction in 2018 for her novel Trading Fours. A writer and musician, Angela Carole Brown has published seven books in fiction, poetry, and memoir and has produced eight music recordings in jazz and folk. Most recently, she produced, illustrated, and narrated her children’s-book-turned-film-short, The Richest Girl in the World, recipient of two awards from DigiFest Temecula in 2021 and the Best Multimedia Film award from both the Buddha International Film Festival and the Indo Global International Film Festival. She is currently writing her first play.
William (Bill) Powell Patterson lives with his wife, Paige, in midtown Kansas City. Their daily walks take them to Power and Light, the Plaza, or around Midtown. They travel frequently to visit their four grandchildren, to see other countries and cultures, and for alpine trekking. He is retired from the US Army, the University of Missouri, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. As a senior executive in VA, he oversaw the hospital operations in Kansas, Missouri, and southern Illinois. Currently, he works half-time for a non-profit social services organization performing intakes and managing logistics. Observing everyday life and their walks provide inspiration for writing and for humor. The support of other writers has been and is invaluable.
Born in Guhan (Guam) with roots in California and Oklahoma, Jacob Jardel (he/him) is a CHamoru writer and PhD candidate currently based in Kansas City. He is a member of the Garden Party Collective, through which he published his first chapbook, Full-Blooded CHamaole, in 2024. His work has appeared in The 580 Mixtapes Vol. 1, Fanachu’s Voices of the Diaspora zine, and No. 1 Magazine. When he’s not writing or working, Jacob is usually watching YouTube, pro wrestling, and/or baseball with his partner and his cat.

Nettie Zan is a poet, artist, and communitarian living on the cusp of where the Ozarks meet the Glaciated Plains. They are interested in primitivist living and art, spiritual connection to the natural world, and creating artwork through trance states. They are a professional meditation teacher and the Collectivist Resident at InterUrban ArtHouse. Nettie recently returned from a five-day intensive workshop at the Marina Abramovic Institute in Greece. They have been widely published over the years, in both novels and poetry books. Their most recent collection, a shame to point at the moon and see only the finger, is a collection of persona poems. You can follow them on nettiez.substack.com or on IG @listenmore.
Suggested donations: $5 non-members, $4 members, $3 students
All suggested donations go to the artists.

Riverfront Readings Sunday, April 13th
2025-04-13 15:00 - 16:30 | Flagship Books, 510 N. 6th Street, Kansas City, KS, 66101, United States
Please join us for our April 13th reading featuring Susan Carman, Bob Sykora, and Patricia Cleary Miller.
Susan Carman is a Pushcart Prize nominee and former poetry editor for Kansas City Voices. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications, most recently in 1-70 Review, Kansas City Voices, and the anthology Of Our Own Accord. Retired from a career working with vulnerable populations, she now teaches English to new immigrants.

Bob Sykora is the author of the chapbook / Was Talking About Love-You Are Talking About Geography (Nostrovia! 2016) and the collection Utopians in Love (Game Over Books 2025). A graduate of the UMass Boston MFA program, he teaches at community college, edits with Garden Party Collective, co-hosts The Line Break podcast and curates the KC Poetry Calendar.

Patricia Cleary Miller taught literature and creative writing at Rockhurst University for three decades. She founded and edited The Rockhurst Review, and chaired the English Department and the Humanities Division. Her poetry collections, with BkMk Press, are Starting a Swan Dive, Can You Smell the Rain? and Warmer Than Yesterday, and, with Helicon Nine, the chapbook Dresden. She was a founding board member of The Writers Place and served as president.

Riverfront Readings Friday, June 13th
2025-06-13 19:00 - 20:30 | The Writers Place | The Nonprofit Village, 31 W. 31st Street, Kansas City, MO, 64108, United States
Please join us for our June 13th reading featuring Effy Winter, Pat Lawson, Kathy Allen, and Carl Bettis.
Effy Winter is an American poet and scholar specializing in literary studies with a concentration on the lives and work of German writer Assia Wevill and English poet Ted Hughes. She has published her poetry in numerous publications and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2022, she began pursuing her academic work in England, dividing her time between London and West Yorkshire, where she studies confessional poetry at The Ted Hughes Arvon Centre for Creative Writing.

Pat Lawson’s fiction has appeared in many journals, including New Letters, Nimrod, The Dalhousie Review, and Big Muddy. A collection of her stories, Odd Ducks, was published by BkMk Press in 2020, and a collection of poems, The Little Book of Me (Spartan Press) was published in 2021. Odd Ducks won the Byron Caldwell Smith Award for Fiction by a Kansas Author (Center for Humanities at K.U.) She likes to read, garden, walk her dog, and see her grandkids.

Kathy Allen is a long-time Kansas City, Kansas resident, and a Kansas City, Kansas Community College and Kansas University graduate. After leaving many customer service jobs, she is now working as a home health aide. She has a chapbook, End of Front St., and has poems in several publications, including the anthology In the Red: In the Black (Helicon Nine Editions). Kathy is a member of the Diversifiers and Collaborators writers’ groups.

Carl Bettis is a writer and software engineer in Kansas City, Missouri. He co-founded the literary magazines The Same and Thorny Locust. His work has been published there and in other periodicals, including 1-70 Review, The Pink Hydra, Chewers by Masticadores, Moonday Mag, and Bright Flash Literary Review. His work has also appeared in the anthologies Chance of a Ghost, Quick Shivers from the Midwest, In the Red: In the Black, and the 365 Days anthologies. Carl and his imaginary friends hang out in the fictional town of Bedrieger Junction, and their Humid Light blog can be found at bedriegerjunction.com.
Suggested donations: $5 non-members, $4 members, $3 students
All suggested donations go to the artists.

Riverfront Readings Saturday, August 16th
2025-08-16 15:00 - 17:00 | 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.
