Award-winning essayist and poet Taylor Brorby discusses his new memoir Boys and Oil, recounting the uneasiness of being gay in a rugged land of coal mining and fracking in rural North Dakota. An environmentalist, he uses the destruction of large swaths of the West as a metaphor for the distress of his youth.

Learn about the past, present, and future of vision loss during the premiere of the podcast and video series Foresight, produced by Kansas City’s Alphapointe. After a partial screening of Foresight, KSHB-TV reporter Rae Daniel moderates a panel discussion featuring Paterson (joining online), KCATA CEO and president Robbie Makinen, and crisis communications consultant David Westbrook about the challenges and successes of living with vision loss.

David Mills and Kayla Westra, co-authors of Great Wartime Escapes and Rescues, assess the historical accuracy of the classic 1963 film The Great Escape – the latest installment of the Library’s Hollywood vs. History series in partnership with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

Sociologist, criminologist, and social worker Reuben Jonathan Miller assesses the causes and ramifications of mass incarceration in the U.S. in a discussion of his book Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration. He is joined in the conversation by the Library’s Anne Kniggendorf.