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Festival Receives 2025 TopArts Grant

The Kansas Book Festival was awarded on May 16 a 2025 TopArts grant of $2500 from ArtsConnect in Topeka. A big thanks to ArtsConnect for backing not only the Kansas Book Festival but authors Lisa LaRue-Baker and Annette Billings. To see more about other 2025 grantees, go to the following link: https://artstopeka.org/toparts?mc_cid=c19bc7d9fe&mc_eid=98fbefb491

90 Attend Friends of the Festival Sneak Peek

It was great to have 90 Friends of the Kansas Book Festival come to our first-ever Sneak-Peek event on April 10, 2025, where we raised $6000 for the Festival. Attendees snacked and conversed while listening to jazz from an ensemble put together by our former poet laureate, Kevin Rabas. They entered our book-raffles and bid […]

2024 Keynote Speech Available Online

If you were not able to come to the 2024 Kansas Book Festival and if you would like to hear the talk by our keynoter, NYTimes Bestselling Crime Writer Sara Paretsky, then click here. She regales the audience with personal stories about her early life in Lawrence and the recent loss of her husband, describing […]

Festival gives $8500 to needy Kansas libraries

For the past13 years, the Kansas Book Festival has granted funding to Kansas libraries that are under-resourced, distributing $114,000 in assistance, often for school libraries and youth sections at community libraries. 19 applications were received this year, and the Festival will distribute $8500, funding three book requests and one technology request.  The 2024 grant recipients […]

Library Grant Applications are Invited

Over the last 12 years, the Kansas Book Festival has accepted grant applications from needy Kansas public and school libraries, either for books or reading-related technology, and we are open again for applications, with a deadline of April 24, 2024. The Festival typically awards at least two grants of no more than $2000 for book […]

Paper Plains Literary Festival, Inc. Dissolves,
Transferring over $11,000 in Assets to the Kansas Book Festival

LAWRENCE – Paper Plains Literary Festival, Inc., a nonprofit committed to showcasing the diverse literary landscape of the Midwest through a variety of free programs for all ages, has officially dissolved, transferring $11,736.08 in remaining assets to the Kansas Book Festival. Paper Plains Literary Festival, Inc. was founded in 2019 with the goal of hosting […]