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Local teen organizes book and art festival for young adults

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Here on Kansas City Live, we like to share organizations that are working to make Kansas City a better place, we call it Kind KC.

15-year-old Emery Uhlig founded LitUp Festival, she’s joined by Community Program Manager, Dylan Little. LitUp is a book and art festival that’s not only specifically for teenagers, it was founded by a teenager. Emery has been working for the past year to plan this free event!

 

LitUp will feature bestselling authors and award-winning poets and illustrators, including:

  • Ishmael Beah, who wrote A Long Way Goneabout his life as a boy soldier in Sierra Leone
  • The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Amy Ellis Nutt, who wrote Becoming Nicole, which is about a transgender girl and her twin brother
  • Amanda Gorman, the first ever Youth Poet Laureate of the United States and a student at Harvard University
  • David Muhammad, a rapper known as BrothaNewz, member of the U.S. karate team and teacher at Shawnee Mission East