On its six stages and various venues, the Kansas City Literary Festival is proud to present some of the finest writers in America today. They cover a wide breadth of genres and fascinating topics for everyone in the family.
Click on one of the Author names on the left to view their Bio and photo.
Jason Aaron
Jason Aaron is a comic book writer whose original works include the Eisner Award nominated Vietnam War mini-series THE OTHER SIDE and the Native American crime series SCALPED, both for Vertigo, the mature readers imprint of DC Comics. He is also currently writing both WOLVERINE and GHOST RIDER for Marvel Comics.
Hadara Bar-Nadav
Adara Bar-Nadav is an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She was educated at William Paterson College (BA), Montclair State University (MA) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Ph.D.). Her first book of poetry, A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (MARGIE/IntuiT House, March 2007), was chosen by Kim Addonizio as the winner of the 2005 MARGIE Book Prize. Her Pushcart-nominated poetry has appeared in such journals as the Beloit Poetry Journal, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, The Journal, Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly and Verse.
Walter Bargen
Missouri's first official poet laureate. Bargen has published 11 books of poetry and expects a 12th to be released this year. His work has been in more than 100 publications, including the American Literary Review, International Quarterly and River Styx. He has also received multiple awards, the most recent being the 2005 William Rockhill Nelson Award for the best poetry book by a Missouri writer and the Chester H. Jones Foundation Poetry Prize in 1997. In addition to writing, Bargen has worked for 20 years at MU as a senior coordinator for the Assessment Resource Center, a department of the College of Education. Despite having a full-time job, Bargen has been able to release four books since 2001.
Phyllis Becker
Phyllis Becker - is a graduate of Howard University and works in human services. She is on the board of The Writer Place in Kansas City and is coordinator of the Riverfront Readings series, which features local and regional writers. Her poems have been published in numerous literary magazines, The Kansas City Star; Fathers: A Collection of Poems (St. Martin's Press); Sacred Stones (Adams Media, F+W Publications); and Chance of a Ghost: An Anthology of Contemporary Ghost Poems (Helicon Nine Editions). Her chapbook, Walking Naked Into Sunday, was published by Wheel of Fire Press. Her poems have also been set to jazz on the compact disc, Poetry of Love, which was produced, recorded and arranged by national jazz vocalist, Angela Hagenbach. Her new book, How I Came to Love Jazz and Other Poems(Helicon Nine Editions) has just been published.
Laura Beith
Laura Huliska Beith grew up in Omaha Nebraska, the oldest of 5 brothers and sisters. She credits her husband and 4 siblings as the inspiration behind her first picture book, The Book of Bad Ideas (although she takes full credit for bad ideas # 134 and 11). She is currently a free-lance illustrator living in Kansas City with her husband, Jeff, and three dogs Roxy, Chloe, and Jake. Several books she illustrated have been included in the Society of Illustrators Original Art show, including Bad Ideas which also received a Marion Vannet Ridgeway honor for its debut in Children's Publishing. She’s a former Hallmark artist.
Michelle Boisseau
Michelle Boisseau is professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She was educated at Ohio University (B.A., M.A.) and the University of Houston (Ph.D.). Her books of poetry include No Private Life (Vanderbilt, 1990), Understory, winner of the Morse Prize, (Northeastern University Press, 1996), Trembling Air (University of Arkansas Press, 2003). She is also co-author of the popular text Writing Poems (Longman), going into its 6th edition. Recent poems have appeared in The Yale Review, Three Penny Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Poetry and elsewhere. Her work has received a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship and two Poetry Society of America Awards.
Mitch Brian
Mitch Brian has written teleplays for all the major networks as well as HBO and FX. He co-authored and wrote episodes for Batman: The Animated Series and co-wrote NBC mini-series, The 70s. He has written feature screenplays for directors Chris Columbus, Oliver Stone, Luis Mandoki and Robert Schwentke as well as for producers including Geena Davis, Mike Medavoy and James Ellroy. His screenplays have dealt with a variety of historical figures including John Brown, Frank Luke, Thomas Jefferson, J. Paul Getty and Lana Turner. His literary adaptations include Far From the Maddening Crowd, Dracula, The Totem, and Seven Days in May. He is a visiting assistant professor at UMKC.
Steven Bridgens
Barri L. Bumgarner
Barri L. Bumgarner's young adult novel, Dregs, tackles the tough issues of bullies, steroids, and what it takes to push a teenager to bring a gun to school. It was the runner up for the Walter Williams Major Work Award in 2007.
Bumgarner has published two other novels: award-winning psychological thriller Slipping, and debut sci-fi thriller, 8 Days, now in its second print-run. Playing the Line—prequel to 8 Days—will be released this Christmas.
Barri teaches at the University of Missouri, while completing her Ph.D. and writing her true-crime book, Shades of Gray: The Steven Rios Story.
Mickey Cesar
Mickey Cesar is a former soldier and sailor who lives in Lawrence, Kan., with an 18-pound tomcat named Alexander Nevsky. His first full-length book, Vanishing Point was released in January 2005. Having completed a Bachelor’s Degree in English following his discharge from the Army, Mickey is pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of Kansas.
J B Cheaney
J. B. Cheaney was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1950. Her favorite subject in school was history, but due to illness she never attended eighth grade. In high school, she had difficulty finding her niche, and says that she was a loner and an outsider. A college dropout, she and her husband were married in 1971, and have lived in six different states and moved 23 times. The mother of two grown children, she began writing after her son graduated from high school. The Playmaker, her first novel, was published in the fall of 2000, and The True Prince in 2002. Her hobbies include singing and needlework. She has written many Shakespeare-related novels among other books for young adults. She also has won many awards for her writing.
Jonathan Chester
Jonathan is one of the world's leading polar photographers and expeditioners. In the course of 35 years of traveling to the world's most wild and remote destinations he has also excelled as an author, film producer, guide and mountaineer. In the past 15 years Jonathan has spent 12 austral summer seasons in Antarctica resulting in numerous books and other media projects including, TerraQuest's ground breaking "web expedition" Virtual Antarctica . Jonathan is a member of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), The North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA) and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Jonathan is an expedition leader, a naturalist and historian on polar tourist cruises. Jonathan has also been lecturing on the Antarctic, the Himalaya and photography for over 20 years. He lives in the Berkeley, Calif., hills with his wife Kirsty Melville and twins Cormac and Katharine.
Mickey Coalwell
Mickey Coalwell is the Library Development Consultant for NEKLS, the Northeast Kansas Library system, located in Lawrence. He has had a lifelong interest in comics and graphic novels, and shamelessly promotes GN collections at library conferences, workshops and other professional gatherings. Aside from comics, Mickey's other passion is classical music. He has reviewed classical concerts for The Kansas City Star since 1996, and is an announcer for KXTR Classical 1660. He has one wife, one daughter and one cat.
Brian Daldorph
Brian Daldorph - teaches English at the University of Kansas. He edits the Coal City Review. His fourth book of poems, From the Inside Out: Sonnets, will be published by Woodley Press later this year. He has also taught in Japan, Senegal, Zambia and England.
Matthew Eck
Matthew Eck enlisted in the Army in 1992 and served in Somalia and Haiti. He has a B.A. in English Literature from Wichita State University and received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. He currently teaches Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Central Missouri. Eck has served in the military in Somalia, and the strongest aspect of this novel is his ability to bring us straight into the devastation, all its sights and sounds whirling around us as they whirl around Stantz and his comrades. The Farther Shore was published 2007. He lives in Kansas City.
