Big Read

Signature Event
Thursday, May 1, 2025 6:30pm
Online
In Person
Writer and director David Wayne Reed revives Shelf Life, his popular show-and-tell storytelling series, for Big Read 2025. The event – focusing on soma, or the body – features five new stories from Reed, Big Read featured author Rebekah Taussig, musician and amputee advocate Billy Brimblecom, poet Canese Jarboe, and vi...
Signature Event
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 7:00pm
Online
In Person
Rebekah Taussig discusses her book Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary, Resilient, Disabled Body. The author, who lost the use of her legs as a toddler, talks about the public consequences of ignoring differences in ability; everyone, she says, lives in a body with limitations, so conversations about accessibilit...
Exhibition
April 15, 2025 - July 6, 2025
John Buice, known as Johnny B, was a beloved, long-term resident artist at Imagine That!, an arts-based day program for individuals with developmental disabilities. Using collage as his primary medium, he layered topical references to make poignant – and hilarious – statements about religion, geography, and politics. T...
Signature Event
Friday, April 4, 2025 5:30pm
In Person
Kansas Citian Rebekah Taussig reads her new children’s book, We Are the Scrappy Ones, an ode to those who navigate a world that isn’t designed with them in mind. The book says that the variation among the community of different bodies is part of what makes it so strong. Contribute to a collaborative art project inspire...
Signature Event
Wednesday, May 25, 2022 6:00pm
Online
In Person
Indigenous artists featured in the Library exhibition The Heart Is a Fist talk about their inspirations and techniques in a panel discussion moderated by Kreshaun McKinney, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art’s director of learning and engagement. The program and exhibition are part of the Library’s Big Read 2022....
Signature Event
Thursday, May 5, 2022 6:00pm
In Person
Participants from Glenn North’s May 1 poetry workshop take the stage to share their work. The readings draw heavily from U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s themes of memory, homeland, tribal history, and Native rights in her book An American Sunrise, the centerpiece of the Libr...
Signature Event
Sunday, May 1, 2022 1:00pm
In Person
Amid the Library’s Big Read 2022, a two-month celebration of reading and poetry, Kansas City poet Glenn North conducts a multi-generational workshop for those wanting to try their hand at verse and those looking to hone their poetry-writing skills. The session draws heavily from U.S. P...
Signature Event
Saturday, April 23, 2022 1:30pm
In Person
An elderly Native American couple make their last journey together – to Wewoka, capital of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. Frankie is dying and intent on seeing his estranged daughter and a grandchild he has never met. Irene, whom he left years earlier, has chosen to be a loving companion on the trip. Their poi...
Signature Event
Saturday, April 16, 2022 1:30pm
In Person
Written and directed by Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby, Rhymes for Young Ghouls offers an unflinching fictional account of Indigenous agency in the face of the horrors of Canada’s Indian residential schools. The 2013 drama (R, 88 min.) continues a series of film screenings in conjunctio...