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Artspeak Radio, Wednesday, March 18, 2026, 9am -10am CST, 90.1fm KKFI Kansas City Community Radio, streaming live audio www.kkfi.org
Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd talks with writer Linzi Garcia and Robert Honan, Chief CIL Services Officer, The Whole Person.
ROBERT HONAN, Chief CIL Services Officer The Whole Person (TWP) is a non-profit, consumer-controlled Center for Independent Living (CIL), led and supported by individuals with significant disabilities, including board members, staff, and volunteers.
Founded in 1978, with widespread grass-roots support, strong consumer control, and a diverse, professional staff. We are a passionate voice of empowerment and advocacy for all persons with disabilities. For 45+ years, we have been a leader in representing people with disabilities in the greater Kansas City area.
TWP connects people with disabilities to resources, supports independent choice, and advocates for community change.
For 45+ years, TWP’s advocacy, alongside local partners, has led to:
• More curb ramps across the metro area
• Increased accessibility in businesses, programs, and facilities
• Greater visibility of people with disabilities in the community
• Improved transportation options
• Enhanced media coverage and attitudes toward disability issues
We support individuals with physical, sensory, and mental disabilities through free programs for those with significant disabilities. We serve the following counties in Missouri: Cass, Clay, Jackson and Platte. We serve the following counties in Kansas: Johnson, Leavenworth and Wyandotte.
Social Media profiles:
www.facebook.com/TheWholePerson
www.instagram.com/thewholeperson
www.threads.com/@thewholeperson
www.linkedin.com/company/the-whole-person/
www.youtube.com/TheWholePersonVideos
www.tiktok.com/@thewholeperson
The Whole Podcast (Spotify)
LINZI GARCIA comes from a beautiful family of Rocky Mountain artists. She moved to Kansas a decade ago to earn degrees from Bethany College and Emporia State University. She stayed in Emporia and now serves as the publicist and poetry editor for Meadowlark Press, and the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for House of Morrow. She is the author of Thank You (Spartan Press, 2018) and Cravings (Meadowlark Press, 2025) and the co-author of Live a Great Story (Analog Submission Press, 2019) and While Away: Travel Poems (Spartan Press, 2022). Linzi is a recipient of a NextGen Under 30 Kansas Award.
Pay attention: Linzi Garcia knows the recipe for a good poem—honesty, longing, and a bit of blood. In Cravings, Garcia boldly embraces the messiness of life, love, and growing older, day by day. The characters in Garcia’s poems are all flawed, and the better for it. They swallow their sins, break bread together, and toast to creation. Some of these poems are as sweet and warm as fresh-baked cookies at 2 a.m., while others turn up the heat. But never enough to burn you. Just enough to leave you hungry for more.
What readers are saying:
Cravings is a book of many hungers—of the foods desired at 2:00 a.m., of the places that are rich with memories, of the loves that are a holiday and of the loves that last and become a home. Linzi is talented at distilling so many moments to their most intimate details. She witnesses and listens at intersections, in bars, to police scanners and offers tender snapshots of moments that might otherwise have been overlooked. The world asks us to pay attention and these poems say yes.
—Traci Brimhall, Poet Laureate of Kansas (2023-26), Love Prodigal |