Paul Kirkman is the author of The Battle of Westport: Missouri's Great Confederate Raid (The History Press, 2011), Forgotten Tales of Kansas City (The History Press, 2012) and Missouri Outlaws (The History Press, 2018) and coauthor of Lockdown: Outlaws, Lawmen, and Frontier Justice in Jackson County, Missouri (with David Jackson, Jackson County Historical Society, 2012). Paul has a BA in history from Columbia College and is a speaker with Show Me Missouri: Conversations about Missouri's Past, Present and Future, a speakers' bureau program jointly organized and managed by the Missouri Humanities Council and the State Historical Society of Missouri. He lives in Independence, Missouri, with his wife, Shawn, and his daughter, Shannon.