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When was the last time your work felt like play?  Cassidy Coles can help guide you on how to connect to your characters, storyline, and self through a series of creative games and exercises at this year’s Writers Conference. Do pencil sports, build a toy to compel you toward your vision, craft a musical playlist for a character, or try your hand at flash fiction to get those synapses firing! You can find Cassidy’s station with the other drop-in activity tables in th

2023 Writers Conference Another year, another conference. We hope you are at home writing and plotting and writing and revising and writing. And then writing some more. If you need another shot in the arm, we’ve impulsively planned a Writers Conference Redux with three of the sessions we saw folks get turned away from for space.Writers Conference ReduxFriday, Dec. 15, 2023Antioch Library -  8700 Shawnee Mission PkwyWriting Your Award-winning Children’s Book with Ron

Our eighth annual Writers Conference will be Thursday, Nov. 17 - Sunday, Nov. 20. In this episode, Readers' Advisory Librarian Helen Hokanson and Adult Services Specialist Lisa Allen talk about our 2022 Writers Conference. How do we choose our faculty? Do we take potential presenter suggestions? How does the in-person experience differ from the virtual version of the past couple of years? We have fun taking a deep dive into these questions and feature readings by au

What do The Godfather Part III, Supernatural fanfiction, and cemeteries have in common? Our faculty presenter L.S. Moore!  L.S. Moore didn’t grow up planning to become a writer. She studied theater (and was an extra in Coppola’s The Godfather Part III.) While traveling around the world and working different jobs, she developed a deep appreciation for cemeteries and their rich histories. She also developed a love of the TV show Supernatural and wrote fanfiction inspi

Mary-Lane Kamberg has been a published author for most of her life: she was published at the young age of seven! She used a toy printing press to create a neighborhood newspaper and sold it for just two cents each. She eventually earned her first dollar for her poetry just two years later at the age of nine. Read on to see our interview with Mary-Lane and more about the Writers Conference!

Claudia Recinos has been filling up notebooks with her writing since she was a kid, but it wasn’t until she was an adult pursuing a PhD in Biochemistry that she finally gave herself permission to choose writing as her career. Claudia Recinos is the author of three novels for young adults; her most recent book Catch Me If I Fall came out in April of this year. She mostly writes “hi-lo” stories (high interest subject, low reading difficulty) for young readers who want

Johnson County Library’s Writers Conference is back in person this year and staff couldn’t be happier!  After two challenging years hosting the conference online, the Library is delighted to welcome writers back to the newly refreshed Central Resource Library Nov. 17-19. Participants will share ideas and inspiration, meet with authors and other creatives and have a chance to network and learn from each other. 

Thank you to everyone who attended the 2022 Writers Conference. It was a blast! If you missed it, you can still watch some of the session recordings at Library OnDemand.   We value your feedback and hearing from you helps ensure we offer programming you value. If you want to share your conference experience with us, please fill out and submit our Attendee Survey.   We would love for you to share your opinion about our Local Writers Programming as well.  

Elle Jackson is a champion of the powerful impact of writing and reading fiction, and she knows fictional stories can be excellent tools to chip away at inequities and destroy barriers. You might remember her interview for The Pitch in 2021, where she shared her experience as the first Black author to be published in Harlequin Historical’s line of romance novels. Jackson primarily writes romance with a historical bent. Her novel A Blues Singer to Redeem Him is set i

Kelly Yarbrough is an artist in Manhattan, KS who mainly works with mixed media drawing. The Great Plains and prairie ecosystems have a special place in her heart, and their inspiration is evident in her work. Kelly has an MFA from Kansas State University.  She is a Regional Field Representative and Art & Environment specialist for the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, a facilitator for Artist INC, a trained Konza Prairie docent, and a 2021TEDx Austin