Start your MidAmeriCon II day at the Kansas City Public Library with a presentation by science fiction/fantasy authors Beth Cato and Becky Chambers. Enjoy a free continental breakfast courtesy of HarperCollins, then leave your car in the Library District parking garage and hop on the KC Streetcar to spend the rest of the day at the World Science Fiction Convention (www.midamericon2.org).

Beth Cato is best known for The Clockwork Dagger, for which she was a finalist for the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Her new book, Breath of Earth, will be released on August 23, but copies will be available for purchase at the event. Set in an alternate 1906, Breath of Earth imagines what effects the existence of magic might have on the advancement of technology and the world we all know.

Becky Chambers’ debut novel, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, was nominated for a 2014 Kitschies award and the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. The book will be available for purchase at the event. Chambers tells the story of the eclectic crew of the Wayfarer as it makes its way across the galaxy to the job of a lifetime.