meet the author

CW Cooke is a comic book writer living in the Kansas City area who has been working in comics since 2007. He has been published by Action Lab, Big Dog Ink, Viper, Bluewater, Arcana, and Devil’s Due Entertainment with his creator-owned series Solitary. He is a featured writer for Project-Nerd Publishing with two new series, Clock Puncher and Barrens, both scheduled for release in early 2016. He has successfully Kickstarted his series Solitary and helped successfully Kickstart the series Barrens.

Cooke, along with Sean Demory and Scott Novosel, will share their experiences successfully using

Alan Proctor is a poetry editor for Kansas City Voices and a former humor columnist, tree surgeon, fundraiser, and college administrator. He serves on the board of The Writers Placebased in Kansas City. Proctor will share his work at the September Thomas Zvi Wilson Readings series.

Tuesday, Sept 20
6 p.m.
Central Resource Library

In anticipation of the reading, Proctor shares some thoughts about writing:

Tell us about yourself. How did you get started writing?

I wrote my first poem when I was eight years old. It was a sing-song and plodding piece to convince my mother to stop smoking

Arlin Buyert is a local poet who was born and raised on an Iowa farm near Sioux Center where he graduated from high school. Arlin was formally educated at Macalester College and The University of Minnesota and worked as an admissions officer at Macalester before entering the Navy in 1966. Arlin was a Naval aviator, corporate executive, cattle rancher and is now retired and lives in Leawood, Kansas with his wife Kristen Kvam. Arlin has facilitated the poetry program at Lansing Prison for the past four years. (Editors note: We posted an interview with Buyert earlier this year regarding Arts in

Lisa Mangum has worked with books ever since elementary school, when she volunteered at the school library during recess. She worked for five years at Waldenbooks while she attended the University of Utah, graduating with honors with a degree in English. She has worked in the publishing industry since 1997. In 2014 she was named the Managing Editor for Shadow Mountain. As an editor, she has worked with several New York Times best-selling authors, including Ally Condie, James Dashner, and Jason F. Wright. While fiction is her first love, she also has experience working with nonfiction projects

Juliet Kincaid taught writing for thirty-five years, including twenty-five years at Johnson County Community College. Now that she’s retired from teaching, Juliet devotes much of her time to writing and publishing fiction such as January Jinx and Fatal February, historical mysteries set in Kansas City, a place that could get downright deadly a hundred years or so ago. Why does Juliet write? you might ask. Simple answer: It makes her happy. She also enjoys teaching others how to write, especially novels.

Kincaid will teach Novel Basics at our 2016 Writers Conference.

Introduce yourself. Where

Kristin Huston works as a writer, freelance proofreader, and teacher. But it wasn't always this way. It wasn't until after law school that Huston realized there was no way she could ever practice law and went on to grad school, earning a PhD in English and History. She finally gave in to the yearning to write, and now spends her days scribbling quirky stories for adults and teens with elements of the creepy, fantastic, and unexplainable. Girls who take no prisoners, and the boys who love them, rock her world. She lives in Kansas City, although she loves to travel to warmer climates. Her

The Read Local committee is very pleased to announce Victoria Fries has won our Bear Witness contest in the open category for her piece "Racism in America." The piece garnered passionate discussion; the universal message, which can be applied to any dehumanized and disenfranchised group, lends power to the topic and we appreciate the call for unity. Structurally, we like the repeated thread of standing tall.

We read it aloud several times, and when we found the right reader, with the right tone, voice, and passion, we knew we had found our winner. It's power is definitely as a performance

March 5th, 1995 marks an important date for Scott Novosel. As a college senior, he achieved his life-long dream and played his first game as a walk-on for the Kansas Jayhawks. In a SI.com article, Novosel “says he has been trying to turn his life into an inspirational story for kids since that day . . .”

And once again, Novosel succeeds! His graphic novel Fieldhouse is a charmer, but I disagree that it’s just for kids. It’s great for all ages and about so much more than basketball.

Novosel turned to Kickstarter to publish his book which allowed him to produce a quality product with full

Brian Daldorph teaches creative writing, literature, and writing classes in the English department at The University of Kansas and poetry at the Douglas County Jail in Lawrence, KS. He has also taught in Japan, Senegal, and England. He has published several poetry collections and is founder and editor of Coal City Review. His poems, stories, articles, and reviews have been widely published. He scores very well on Rate My Professors and I suggest not reading the comments unless you want to add taking his poetry course to your bucket list.

Daldorph, with others, will be reading the work of Thom

Jo McDougall will read her poetry at Johnson County Library on Tuesday June 21st at 6pm. Poetry and Prose is presented by the Writers Place and Johnson County Library.

When did you first start writing poetry? Do you remember what provided your first inspiration?
I think I wrote my first poem when I was 11 or 12. My mother had read stories and poems to me on a regular basis when I was a young child, so I had those images and rhythms in my head. I gave the poem to my dad, and he framed it and put it on his desk. I've been writing ever since.

What inspires you to write poetry now?
Reading

The Read Local committee is very pleased to announce Jemshed Khan has won our Bear Witness poetry contest for his poem "#48689." Entries included an impressive variety of poetic forms, including haiku and sonnet, making the selection very difficult. In the end, we selected "#48689" as, like the numbers in the title, it tattooed itself on our minds. The haunting imagery and vivid description lends the poem personal immediacy and requires remembrance. The person #48689, bearing witness as both executioner and innocent victim, gives us chills and the poem deserves repeated readings.

Jemshed

As we anticipate the chance to read Allie, First at Last, the just-released second middle-grade novel from Shawnee resident Angela Cervantes, we're reminded that Gaby, Lost and Found, her debut effort a couple of years ago, was much lauded and won multiple awards. To help pass the time until our hold on her new book comes available, we asked the native Kansan (and KU graduate) a few questions.

​What do you want those unfamiliar with you and your work to know first and foremost?

For me, it’s an honor to write books for children. I love that I’ve written books that can affect a young person’s

The Read Local Committee is pleased to announce Debra Callaway has won our Faster, Higher, Stronger Essay Contest with her essay For the Love of Game. We love the way Deb addresses the different responses to competition within her own family.

Debra Callaway earned a masters degree in Art Education, and went on to teach English to teens in an alternative classroom for the next 30 years. Actually, the two subjects are not as disparate as some might think. She found many similarities. Her favorite part of teaching 9th grade English was creative writing. Now she's retired and paints all day

Of course Steve Loe has been able to put out two books in the past two years since all he does is write every day from dawn until dusk. Well, that and raise four kids. Oh, and he's also the principal of Shawnee Mission West High School. So where he finds the time we don't know, but he does. After years of perseverance, Loe published his first title last year and the second just followed.

In The Glimpsing Book, a group of young teens that has been strangely drawn together attempts to figure out the powerful mystery of the magical book that seems to have the answers to all their questions, a

Michael Harty will read his poetry at Johnson County Library on Tuesday April 19th at 6pm. Poetry and Prose is presented by the Writers Place and Johnson County Library.

If you could begin the interview, what question would you ask yourself?

I’d ask myself, how does it happen that you started writing poetry when you were old enough for Social Security? And I would answer that it didn’t exactly happen that way. I always had a yen to write poems, sometimes dabbled more or less, but it wasn’t until I reached a pretty advanced age that I decided to get serious about it. One thing that

On Tuesday, February 16th at 6:00 p.m. The Writers Place and the Johnson County Library will present Poetry and Prose, a poetry reading by inmates and former inmates incarcerated at Lansing Prison. Arlin Buyert has facilitated the poetry program at Lansing Prison for the past four years. It is sponsored by Arts in Prison, Inc. which also features The East Hill Singers, theatre and yoga programs for inmates.

Arlin Buyert was born and raised on an Iowa farm near Sioux Center where he graduated from high school. Arlin was formally educated at Macalester College and The University of Minnesota

Kansas Citian Christine Taylor-Butler has written more than 75 books for children. Emerging from her background in engineering, many of them are science books for early readers. Some are for slightly older readers or delve into other topics. Recently she released her first novel for teens, The Lost Tribes, to positive reviews, and she has been named to numerous best-of and award lists for her various titles.

Taylor-Butler has gained valuable insight into writing and publishing from her career, and is happy to share what she has learned in response to our questions.

Your website says that

The Read Local Committee is pleased to announce Anna Francesca has won our Faster, Higher, Stronger Poetry Contest with her poem Citius, Altius Fortius. We love the poem, especially so close to this time of new year's resolutions, for Francesca's focus on herself and her own strength. The act of always looking forward reminded us a little of Matthew McConaughey's 2014 Oscar acceptance speech in which he declares his hero to be his own future self. We also love the poem's construction with consistent use of natural and mathematical elements throughout. And we especially love Francesca's

The Local Writers committee is pleased to announce Karin L. Frank has won our #IHeartU poetry contest with her entry Solace. We love the poem's progression from start to last lines, and the contrast between young and old. We enjoyed the sophisticated vocabulary punctuating strong imagery, and the poem is especially pleasing when read aloud. Try it! We're excited to hear Frank's reading of her own work at our April 9th 2nd Saturday event. Tell us what you like about Solace in the comments.

Karin L. Frank's poems have been published or are forthcoming in the Rockhurst Review, Taj Mahal Review

Roderick Townley is a local author of novels for young readers and poetry for all. His stories, though diverse in their settings and plots, might overall be described as elegant fantasies that balance whimsical and unsettling elements while exploring the nature of magic, dreams, reality, memories, identity, and stories. Townley worked as a journalist in New York before moving to Kansas in 1990 with his wife, poet Wyatt Townley. He has been honored with the Governor's Arts Award, Thorpe Menn Award, Peregrine Prize for Short Fiction, Master Artist Fellowship, Fulbright Award, Academy of American

We're so excited to share the Open Category winner of our #IHeartU contest: Heather McKenzie, for her work When Pluto was a Planet. We fell in love with its inventive and adept use of language as well as its creative imagery. Tell us what you love about When Pluto was a Planet in the comments!

A multimedia designer by day and photographer by weekend, Heather is usually the creator of visuals that connect in context with another's words. She is the publisher of a free interactive book app for iPads called Notions + Our Curious Culture of Consumption, an award winning app Kirkus Reviews named

The Read Local committee is pleased to announce Elizabeth Uppman has won Johnson County Library’s #IHeartU Essay contest with her entry Lucia's War. Uppman's essay was chosen for its response to the theme of love, and the juxtaposition of "war" in the title with Lucia's ultimate triumph. We also love the evolution of Lucia's attack, how her "storming the beaches of Normandy" approach slowly transitions to a blunt and irrefutable request.

Elizabeth Uppman is a freelance writer whose personal essays have appeared in Good Housekeeping, Tango magazine, salon.com, Brain, Child magazine, and

The Local Writers committee is pleased to announce Celeste Seay has won Johnson County Library’s #IHeartU short story contest with her entry A Good Fit. Seay’s story was chosen for its response to the theme of love and the quality of description. Of her writing she says:

I grew up among five siblings in a military family. Always the new kid, I retreated into books to find a way to belong. I learned to read when I was four, and the stories I read in books sparked stories in my head, so telling myself stories became the way I was comforted in the world. Writing down my perceptions is still the

From trapping and trading along the Missouri River to commerce at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, Civil War conflicts and dominance at the stockyards, Kansas City continues to be a major player in our country's history. The Shawnee Indian Missionis one of Kansas City's many historical treasures etched with story and a captivating history of its own.

Local historian and author Joe Vaughan will share the Mission's rich history, describe the life of its controversial founder, Thomas Johnson, and illustrate how he and the Mission influenced the region.

Sunday, October 11
2

I don’t know who said “a writer writes” first (most believe it was Billy Crystal in Throw Momma From the Train), but I know who has said it the most - Celeste Seay.

Proving her point, Seay possesses a large body of marvelous work, mostly unshared beyond the privileged few. We’re fortunate to have Seay as a member of the Johnson County Library Creative Writing Group, where she produces amazing stories in response to assignments from The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises That Transform Your Fiction by Brian Kiteley.

Seay shares some thoughts on writing, as well as her response to #75

Linda Rodriquez has always wanted to be a writer. As for so many of us, life doesn't always give us what we want. At least not right away. Luckily for mystery and poetry readers, Linda has found her voice and created a successful writing life. You can hear Linda read at the Thomas Zvi Wilson Reading Series, co-sponsored by Johnson County Library and The Writers Place.

Thursday, July 21
6 - 8:30 p.m.
Oak Park Library

In anticipation of her reading, we asked Linda to share some thoughts on writing. We hope you'll find her as engaging as we do!

Poetry and mystery seem like an unusual

We are counting the days until we celebrate the launch of Claire Caterer's book The Wand and the Sea... with Claire Caterer herself!

Thursday, June 25
6 - 7:30 p.m.
Lackman Library

Claire was kind enough to give us a sneak peak and I know you will find her as charming as I do!

What are you working on now that The Wand and the Sea is finished?

I’ve got two things going at the moment. I’m outlining the third book in the series, titled (for now) The Spell & the Stone, and I’m also finishing up the manuscript of another, unrelated story for middle-grade readers that I’m very excited about

It’s no secret that the landscape of publishing is rapidly evolving. With thousands of new books joining the marketplace every day, millions of bloggers vying for readers, and the ease of sharing words, how do writers connect with readers? In an environment where readers are either pigeonholed into selecting from an infinitesimal best-seller list, or bombarded with choice, how can one writer rise to the surface and capture the readers who will come back looking for more of the same?

There is no easy answer to this question, but with a little creativity and hard work, some authors can carve a

In one of my favorite books about writing, The Memoir Project, Marion Roach Smith says “[writing] is serious work. And it cannot be reduced to generic writing exercises and prefabricated prompts.” While reading, I was immediately offended, for I lead a prompt-based creative writing group. And my writers, as I like to call the members, produce wonderful work.

Mike O’Leary has been a long-time member of the Creative Writing Group and has agreed to share some of his stories here. We're working through the exercises in The 3 A.M. Epiphanyby Brian Kiteley. Mike chose "Evil" and "Goodness", two

Kansas City is blessed to be called home by many wonderful writers and creators. Thus, it is no surprise that three of our own are included in the collection Listen to Your Mother. In 2010, Ann Imig, through stage performances by writers in her community, gave voice to “the realities of mothers and mothering, of non-moms and caretakers, of sons and daughters … with stories so urgent they press from the hearts of people to the page and then to the LTYM Stage, a small selection which return again to the page.” It is no exaggeration to say the stories are urgent.

But don’t let the title fool you