Academy Award-winning screenwriter Kevin Willmott is joined by director and screenwriter Mitch Brian and Kansas City author Whitney Terrell for a discussion of Willmott’s filmmaking career, including his work on BlacKkKlansman and other collaborations with director Spike Lee. 

Tickets include dinner, an open bar, and admission to the event. 

Proceeds from this event benefit a collaborative partnership between the Kansas City Public Library and the University of Missouri-Kansas City's MFA Program in Creative Writing, enabling a graduate student to teach writing classes at the Library and assist in planning for a new literary award and city-wide book festival.

For additional information -- including questions about sponsorship opportunities -- contact Peggy Doncevic at 816.701.3612 or PeggyDoncevic@kclibrary.org.

Writers for Readers 2019 is co-presented by the Kansas City Public Library, UMKC's MFA Program in Creative Writing, and the Friends of the Kansas City Public Library. The event is co-chaired by Pete Browne and Julie Walker-Browne and Marilou Joyner and Randy Moore. 

 Kevin Willmott was born in Junction City, Kansas, and is a film director and screenwriter as well as a professor of film and media studies at the University of Kansas. He is known for works focusing on black issues, including writing and directing Ninth Street, C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, and Bunker Hill. His film The Only Good Indian focuses on Native American children at an Indian boarding school. He collaborated with Spike Lee on the movie Chi-Raq, and he shared the 2019 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for BlacKkKlansman.

 Mitch Brian co-created and wrote episodes for television's Batman: The Animated Series and has sold over 25 scripts to major studios, networks, and independent producers. Brian teamed with Willmott to write Shields Green & The Gospel of John Brown, which was sold to Chris Columbus’ 1492 Pictures. The two went on to write the Native American drama Civilized Tribes for 20th Century Fox, as well as biographies of J. Paul Getty for NBC and General George Armstrong Custer for New Line Cinema. They wrote the miniseries The 70's which aired on NBC.

 Whitney Terrell’s most recent novel, The Good Lieutenant was selected as a best book of 2016 by The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and Refinery 29. It was long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. He is also the author of The Huntsman, a New York Times notable book, and The King of Kings County. His nonfiction appears in The New York Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post, Slate, and other publications. He co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast at Lit Hub and teaches in the Department of English at UMKC.