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.

Shane Evans

Evans has conceptualized and illustrated numerous children’s books. Many of the books have been featured in the media such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, NBA Inside Stuff, Reading Rainbow and Late Night with David Letterman. Shane has received much acclaim within the children’s literary field for his work on children’s books such as The Way The Door Closes, Shaq and the Beanstalk and Take It To The Hoop Magic Johnson. His accolades range from being honored by First Lady Laura Bush at the 2002 National Book Festival, The Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and The Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Non-Fiction for Children. An amazingly diverse artist who spends most of his time traveling the world to speak to audiences. His work ranges from The Shanna Show and Shane’s Kindergarten Countdown (on The Disney Channel) to Osceola: Memories of a Sharecropper’s Daughter.

Please visit his website at www.shaneevans.com.

Connie Fairbanks

Connie Fairbanks, the author of Scratch That™ Seasonal Menus and Perfect Pairings has had several careers in her lifetime that began in Kansas City. She worked at both Woolf Brothers and Marion Laboratories before embarking on an acting career which eventually took her to Chicago. She is an honors graduate of Emporia State University in Kansas with a major in Business Administration and minors in Piano, Art and Home Economics. Residents of downtown Chicago, Connie and husband, Kirk, live in a loft with an award-winning rooftop garden complete with herbs, Connie's 75 plus cookbooks, her husband's coffee apparatus and wine shipments from California that arrive monthly.

Kelly Fast

Kelly Fast has taught English at Shawnee Mission East High School for the past 10 years. In 2004, he received a NEH grant to study Dante in Siena, and used that grant to start a high school Dante Club. Now in its third year, the extracurricular group comprises 15 high school seniors who meet to discuss classical literature.

Bob Fisher

Born in New York City, and holder of bachelor's and law degrees from Columbia University, Bob Fisher has been a Wall Street lawyer, law professor, solo practitioner, real estate broker, mortgage broker and house parent in a women's college dormitory. He has spent significant amounts of time in a maximum security prison as the founder of a self-help program, in a mental institution as a social work student and in the ERs and ICUs of six hospitals as a volunteer and hospital chaplain. He has chaired the boards of an Audubon chapter, a drug rehabilitation agency, a Christian counseling service, a Kiwanis Club, a Salvation Army Corps and two political organizations. Now retired to birding and the practice of poetry, he lives in Independence, with his wife of 41 years and dotes on his two daughters and new grandson. His poem, “Iraq Homecoming,” appears in the current issue of The Mid-Western Poetry Review.

Matt Fraction

Matt Fraction is the Eisner-nominated comic book writer best known for his Marvel work (including the new Invincible Iron Man series) and the spy-fi action series Casanova, though he has a long list of credits including the graphic novels The Five Fists of Science and Last of the Independents. He is currently at work on a book about the election of 1864, tentatively titled The American. The Pitch named Fraction Kansas City, Missouri's BEST AUTHOR 2007, citing Casanova.

Doug Frost

Doug Frost is a Kansas City author who writes and lectures about wine, beer and spirits. In 1991 he passed the rigorous Master Sommelier examination and two years later became America 's eighth Master of Wine in the American Midwest. He was the second person in history to complete both exams and eight years later he is still one of only three people in the world to have achieved both these remarkable distinctions. His most recent book, On Wine, published by Rizzoli International, was released in the fall of 2001. The Washington Post calls it "fabulous, witty, engaging and wise. Conveys more accumulated wine wisdom than most books 10 times as thick."

Gail Giles

Gail Giles is the author of four young adult novels. Her debut novel, Shattering Glass, was an ALA Best of the Best Book, a Book Sense 76 selection, and a Booklist Top 10 Mystery for Youth selection. The novel is about an high school boy named Simon Glass that is helped to become one of the most popular dogs in school by other students. Her second novel, Dead Girls Don't Write Letters, was an ALA Top 10 Quick pick (2003) and a Book Sense 76 selection. Her third novel, Playing in Traffic, is an epic story about a boy trying to help a gothic girl. She is a former high school teacher who grew up in Texas and now lives there happily with her husband, two dogs and three cats. Gail has one son and two grandsons.

Joel Goldman

Joel Goldman is the author of mysteries and thrillers set in Kansas City. The Last Witness was nominated for an Edgar award and Deadlocked was nominated for a Shamus award, won the Thorpe Menn award for the best book by a Kansas City area author in 2005 and has been optioned for film. His newest book, Shakedown, (April 2008) is the first book in a new series featuring FBI Special Agent Jack Davis. Joel is a fourth generation Kansas Citian. He and his wife live in Leawood with their two dogs, Roxy and Ruby.

Lee Grafton

Lee Grafton is a Kansas City-based poet who has been reading live since 1994. He has participated in poetry readings and poetry slams in Atlanta, Denver, Tucson, Arizona, San Francisco and, of course, his hometown of Kansas City. Lee has been published in FrictionMagazine, Outburn Magazine, Poetry Magazine as well as the University of Northern Arizona's Thin Air.

Tina Hacker

Tina Hacker has had her poetry appear in a wide assortment of literary magazines such as Bellowing Ark, Blue Unicorn, Piedmont Literary Review, The Lyric, I-70 Review, Kansas City Voices, Potpourri and Mid-America Poetry Review as well as The Kansas City Star and in two anthologies: Show +Tell and Missouri Poets. Tina is a 2008 Pushcart Prize nominee and was a finalist in the 2001 New Letters poetry competition and the 2007 George F Wedge poetry contest. She won an Honorable Mention in the 2007 Missouri Writers’ Guild Winter Contest and a 2006 Byline Magazine contest. She is the recipient of the 1984 Matrix Honor Award given by Women in Communications, Inc. During her long career at Hallmark Cards, Inc., Tina won three Omni awards and the top prize in a regional newsletter contest. She wrote several children’s books for Hallmark such as Frosty the Snowman and the Snow Ghost, The Super Shoes Fun Book, and The Search for the Silver Dragon. She currently serves as co-president of The Writers Place board of directors.

Chuck Haddix

Chuck Haddix is the director of the Marr Sound Archives, a collection of 300,000 historic sound recordings housed in the Miller Nichols Library at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Haddix hosts the "Fish Fry" a popular radio program featuring the finest in blues, soul, rhythm and blues, jumpin’ jive and zydeco on KCUR FM 89.3, Kansas City's public radio station, Friday and Saturday nights from 8 p.m. to midnight. Over the years, Haddix has contributed to a wide variety of theatrical, recording, video and film projects including "Cronkite Remembers" a biography of Walter Cronkite, Robert Altman's "Kansas City" and Merchant-Ivory's "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge." His articles have appeared in Down Beat and Living Blues Magazine. He recently, co-authored with Frank Driggs, a history of Kansas City jazz, Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop-A History for Oxford University Press.

Ron Hansen

Ron Hansen is the bestselling author of the novel Atticus (a finalist for the National Book Award), Hitler’s Niece, Mariette in Ecstasy, Desperadoes and Isn’t It Romantic, as well as a collection of short stories, a collection of essays, and a book for children. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and made into a film by the same title starring Brad Pitt. His new book, Exiles (due out May 13) is to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in northern California. He teaches at Santa Clara University.

Jeffrey Hantover

Jeffrey Hantover was born and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. He graduated from Harvard College, attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government and received a Masters in Sociology of Education and PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago. He taught sociology at Vanderbilt University, was the director of a national social service agency in New York, and held senior positions in labor rights compliance for a major American clothing company. Jeffrey lived in Hong Kong for twelve years where he wrote on Asian art and culture. It was while in Hong Kong that he began work on The Jewel Trader of Pegu. He now lives in New York with his wife Mee-Seen Loong. He is currently working on another novel.

Please visit his website at www.jeffreyhantover.com.

Valerie Hemingway

Valerie Hemingway is the author of Running with the Bulls, about Ernest Hemingway and his family. In 1959, Valerie Hemingway (then Valerie Danby-Smith), an aspiring young Irish writer, became Hemingway's secretary and traveled with him and his wife, Mary, throughout Spain and France. She also lived with the couple during the tumultuous final months in Cuba.

Following Ernest Hemingway's death, Valerie Hemingway worked for the Hemingway Estate, gathering all of the author's papers and organizing them for presentation to the Kennedy Library. She came by the Hemingway name by marrying—and later divorcing—Gregory, Ernest Hemingway's youngest son.

Christie Hodgen

Christie Hodgen is an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He was educated at the University of Virginia (B.A.), Indiana University (M.F.A.) and the University of Missouri-Columbia (Ph.D.). Her novel, Hello, I Must Be Going (Norton 2006), was featured in Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers series. Her collection of short stories, A Jeweler’s Eye for Flaw (University of Massachusetts Press 2003) won the AWP Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Georgia Review, Quarterly West, New Stories from the South and Scribner’s Best of the Fiction Workshops. Her awards include a Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and the Faulkner Society Medal for the Novella.

Trudie Homan

Trudie Homan - is a poet and writer. Recently retired from a career in accounting, which included work with the (former) Missouri Repertory Theatre. She now divides her time between Kansas City and Chicago enjoying both being a granny and pursuing her various artistic interests. Her poem “Cell Soap” was recently featured in The Kansas City Star.