Riverfront Readings

Riverfront Readings with Colleen Maynard and Kevin Ridgeway.
2026-02-13 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Chicago) | 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.
