This story was first published in the April edition of Kansas City Magazine.

A night of show-and-tell for grownups goes a long way toward cracking open a whole community of stories. That’s particularly true when it’s paired with the Big Read, the Kansas City Public Library’s big invitation for people to share their thoughts and experiences.

“We want to get the community to come together by talking about reading,” says Kaite Stover, the Library’s director of readers’ services. “We like to think of this as bookish joy.”

A free reading and public engagement initiative, the Big Read kicked off in March and runs through May 23. In addition to the show-and-tell, called Shelf Life, watch for writing classes, film screenings, book groups and a community-wide read of Kansas City author Rebekah Taussig’s memoir Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary, Resilient, Disabled Body.

Big Read’s Shelf Life takes place on May 1 at 6:30 p.m. in the Truman Forum Auditorium on the Plaza Branch’s lower level. This marks the event’s return – at least for one night – after a hiatus.

Created in 2016 by writer and director David Wayne Reed, Shelf Life had a five-year run at the Crossroads bar and grill, the Brick. Reed describes the series as “a church without a church, where people can find community.”

Past Shelf Life events focused on themes such as winning, home, time, protest, or unwanted gifts. Participants took the stage with props like cowboy boots, a smashed violin, and a vintage typewriter. Storytellers shared “their unedited stories in their own voices,” says Reed, host of the series. “When we share our stories, it invites other people to.”

For Big Read, Shelf Life’s theme is “soma,” defined as the body of an organism. “Bodies, and how we live in our bodies,” Reed says, “and how our bodies carry us through this world,” which ties in perfectly with Big Read’s community-wide read of Taussig’s book.

A Kansas City author and disability advocate, Taussig shares her story of undergoing cancer treatment as a toddler that left her paralyzed from the waist down. “I'm hopeful that this book can invite so many more folks to share their own stories and spark much-needed discussions around disability and access,” Taussig says.

Other storytellers will include poet Canese Jarboe, visual artist Kathy Liao, and drummer Billy Brimblecom, who serves as executive director of Steps of Faith Foundation, a nonprofit that provides prosthetic care for amputees.

“I’m kind of like, if David Wayne Reed is asking me to do anything, the answer is ‘yes,’” says Brimblecom, who lost his left leg to Ewing’s Sarcoma 20 years ago. This will be his second time on Shelf Life. Previously, he brought one of his first prosthetics and placed it on a shelf as he told his story, and he’s likely to bring one again.

“Since the early days of even wearing a prosthetic leg, it’s not something that I’ve tried to hide,” he says. “So, it’s a little bit like a kind of armor having it on.”

Reed will tell his own “soma” story at Shelf Life and examine “my own rate of decay as I age, how we maintain our bodies, and acceptance of our bodies as we move through this life.”

Over the years, Reed says he’s noticed a shift in the storytellers’ posture during Shelf Life events. After they tell their stories, they “stand a little taller,” he says.

Shelf Life: A Big Read Storytelling Event, May 1, 6:30 p.m. (reception starts at 6 p.m.) in the Truman Forum Auditorium (lower level) at the Library’s Plaza Branch, 4801 Main Street, Kansas City, Missouri. RSVP here.