Carrie Westlake Whitney served as the first full-time director of the Library from 1881 to 1910. A trailblazer in the library industry and dubbed the “Mother of the Kansas City Public Library,” she advocated for children’s services and free access to books and other offerings.

As part of the Library’s 150th anniversary celebrations, the Central Library invited patrons to submit fan fiction about Whitney – science fiction/fantasy, poetry, romance, or historical fiction.

Join us at Central Library’s 20th anniversary drop-in happy hour on Friday, April 19, when Teresa Bolton, director of operations, shares some of the entries.

Jason Roe, the Library’s digital history specialist, revealed some of Whitney’s story in his March 14, 2024, talk, including getting pushed out of the Library leadership role by the Kansas City school board. The president stated: “I think a man should be selected.”

Roe also mentioned Whitney’s roommate/partner for more than 40 years, Frances Bishop, who served as the second librarian during much of Whitney’s tenure as head librarian.

That’s a relationship that several fan fiction writers explored.

Some fan fiction highlights include a submission by the Kirkwood Public Library in Kirkwood, Missouri. Reference librarians each contributed a line to “Carrie Westlake Whitney: A Poem”:

A woman with a determined purpose, books were her business
Subscriptions not needed, all city residents now readin’.
Giving the citizens assistance, a place to believe in
Forty years with her "best friend" livin

Providing her opinions and her great vision
She exponentially grew the materials she was given
Delighting the young, the old, and devourers of the written
But, alas, a woman could just be a fill-in

Cristina Deptula, a publicist who visited the Library in February during the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference, was inspired to write “a crossover fanfiction" drawing from Amazon's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes: A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes, and Toshikazu Kawaguchi's Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

In Deptula’s 10,000-word story called “To Right the Annals of History,” Whitney is the heroine who “helps reconnect the narrator with her grandfather and inspires them to come around and do the right thing.”

Anna Woiwood, the Library’s philanthropy research and data specialist, and patron Margo P. Solo, also found inspiration in Whitney and Bishop’s relationship.

Solo’s “The Unconventional Life of Carrie Westlake Whitney,” is set in spring 1897 inside the Library, just months before a new location opens. Whitney is in her office, gearing up for a storytime. She walks through the Library, interacting with patrons and staff members, including Bishop: “Fannie held on to Carrie’s words as they floated into her ear like a song of hope and renewal. No one saw her in the same way that Carrie did.”

Woiwood’s story, “July 21, 1910,” takes place at the home the two women shared. Whitney reflects on her time at the Library, regretting that it’s ending. The story concludes as “Carrie sank into Frances’s waiting arms. It was then, and only then, that she felt the tears, hot and heavy, falling down her cheeks, dampening the fabric of Frances’s nightgown.”

To celebrate Central Library’s 20th anniversary at 14 W. 10th Street, the public is invited to an all-ages drop-in happy hour from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on April 19, 2024, with refreshments, crafts for families, a scavenger hunt with prizes, and dancing to music provided by a quartet from the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra. RSVP