Join us for the inaugural Writers for Readers event! 

You are invited to the inaugural Writers for Readers event, an evening celebrating the power of expression through creative writing and reading. Sponsors and attendees will meet and mingle during a reception and seated dinner, and enjoy a program featuring acclaimed authors Edmund White and Michael Carroll.

Edmund White is the author of more than 26 books, including novels, memoirs and biographies. He will be speaking about Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris, which describes his 15-year sojourn as an expatriate in the City of Lights. His biography of Jean Genet won the National Book Award in 1994 and his memoir City Boy was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2010. His trio of autobiographic novels, A Boy’s Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room is Empty (1988), and The Farewell Symphony (1997) are internationally renowned. Currently a Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University, he has won a Guggenheim Award and is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters. He will appear with his husband, the writer Michael Carroll, whose short story collection
Little Reef won the Sue Kaufman Prize for first fiction in 2015.

The Impact

Proceeds benefit Writers for Readers, a collaborative partnership between Literacy Kansas City and UMKC’s Creative Writing Program. This innovative program will employ Creative Writing graduate students to create, implement, and teach creative writing to teens and adults enrolled in Literacy Kansas City’s Ticket to Read programs throughout the metro.
Literacy Kansas City offers reading, basic writing, math, and digital literacy instruction to the 225,000 teens and adults in our community who are functionally illiterate. 
Writers for Readers will give these same students the opportunity to learn creative writing and express themselves in new, exciting and more imaginative ways.

Tickets & Sponsorship Packages

PLEASE NOTE: All full tables have been sold for this event.  Individual tickets remain available for sale, and of course, non-attending sponsorships are welcome.

Sponsorship levels range from $5,000 - $500 with a variety of valuable benefits. Event tickets are $50 or $25 for students. Click to view the full list of sponsorship benefits and the sponsorship form here.