Writers for Readers returns with a special lineup featuring celebrated author Alexander Chee and the announcement of the winner of the second annual Maya Angelou Book Award. Proceeds from this fundraising event go in part to support the award and benefit an ongoing partnership between the Kansas City Public Library and UMKC's MFA Program in Creative Writing, enabling graduate students to teach writing classes at the Library.
 

In a special Library event, Kansas City’s Bach Aria Soloists and performers with the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival meld scenes spotlighting some of Shakespeare’s most formidable women with the music of trailblazing female composers – from Italy’s Barbara Strozzi to Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, the first woman to compose an opera in France.

Drawing from some two decades of interviews and conversations, chronicled in his recently released book John “Buck” O’Neil: The Rookie, His Words, His Voice, author and baseball historian Phil S. Dixon discusses the Kansas City and Negro Leagues icon – from O’Neil’s upbringing in Florida to his career in baseball as a player, manager, and scout.

Six days before the pivotal midterm elections of 2022, The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman examines one of the most complicated and controversial figures in our nation’s history in a discussion of her new blockbuster book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.