Left Bank Books and welcomes award-winning investigative journalist Kyle Swenson, who will sign and discuss his new book, Good Kids, Bad City: A Story of Race and Wrongful Conviction in America with Midwest Innocence Project Executive Director Tricia Bushnell!

This event is free and open to the public, but proof of purchase of Good Kids, Bad City from Left Bank Books will be required to enter the signing line.

After 39 years – at the age of 60 – Wiley Bridgeman walked out of Cuyahoga County Justice Center in Cleveland, OH, arm-in-arm with his brother Kwame Bridgeman. After a cumulative 106 years serving time for a crime they didn’t commit, the Bridgeman brothers and their best friend, Rickey Jackson, were suddenly free men after their murder conviction was thrown out based on the key witness—after decades—confessing to false testimony. In Good Kids, Bad City, Kyle Swenson tells their stunning story, a story of a Midwestern city’s struggle against larger forces of deindustrialization and corruption, and a story of race in America against a flawed justice system.

Tricia Bushnell is the Executive Director of the Midwest Innocence Project. Prior to coming to Kansas City, she served as clinical faculty at University of Wisconsin Law School. There she supervised students in the direct appeal clinic and in the investigation and litigation of innocence cases involving both DNA and non-DNA evidence. Previously, Bushnell was a fellow with the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, where she represented indigent clients sentenced to death, juveniles sentenced to life without parole, and sexual offenders challenging the collateral consequences of their convictions. She earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Fellow, an received a Bachelor of Arts in German and Political Science from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. She currently serves on the Executive Committee for the Innocence Network and is the former President for the ACLU of Missouri.