This collection contains audiovisual recordings of events held at the River City Reunion, a cultural gathering held in Lawrence, Kansas from September 7-13, 1987. Over the course of the conference, noted writers, film auteurs, musicians, and publishers spoke on their work and Midwestern contributions to the arts, particularly from the Kansas region. Events during the Reunion included book signings, film showings, art exhibitions, poetry readings and musical performances, industry discussion boards, lectures, and open-mike performances. Professor George Wedge of the Department of English, University of Kansas; Bill Rich of Fresh Sounds, Inc., a Lawrence-based entertainment promoter; and James Grauerholz, personal secretary to author William S. Burroughs, helped to organize the event. The recordings on u-matic tapes were created by Mark Kaplan and Mark Kaplan Productions to create a documentary on the River City Reunion and primarily feature the performances and presentations held at the event. Participants included Beat figures and a variety of writers, musicians, and performers, many of whom associated with the counterculture. Featured event participants include Gene Bernofsky, Jello Biafra, Barrack Bird, Stan Brakhage, William Burroughs, Donald Byrd, Jim Carroll, Robert Creeley, Andrei Codrescu, Brad Denton, Diane di Prima, Ed Dorn, Marianne Faithfull, Allen Ginsberg, John Giorno, James E. Gunn, John Kessel, Timothy Leary, Bradley Lenz, Leonard Magruder, Michael McClure, James McCrary, Lerory McDermott, John Moritz, David Ohle, Frankie Edie Kerouac Parker, Wayne Propst, Danny Sugerman, and Anne Waldman.

With footage of the conference, the recordings also feature behind-the-scene interviews with visiting performers, B-roll footage of the University of Kansas (KU) campus and Lawrence, and "person on the street" interviews with visitors and KU students. Also included, though unrelated to the River City Reunion, are tapes of William Burroughs's last public reading in February 1995 at a bookstore on Massachusetts Street in Lawrence, Kansas as well as miscellaneous Mark Kaplan Productions footage recorded on the same tapes as conference footage. Finally, several release forms associated with the audiovisual materials are also included with the collection.

Most tapes and their containers include some basic descriptive labeling that has been transcribed in quotations by KSRL processors. Spelling errors on these labels have been kept and denotated with [sic]. Any descriptive information added by KSRL processors is described in brackets. To increase ease of access to the collection, KSRL processors have also organized the collection first by each day of the River City Reunion and then by conference events, interview, and B-Roll footage. Audiovisual recordings not attached to the River City Reunion have been placed at the end of the collection.