Green Roof Poetry brings together some of the Twin Cities’ most dynamic writers for an evening of literary readings on the Walker’s hillside. Bring your blanket, pick up curated picnic snacks and libations at Cardamom, and relax for an evening of fresh-air readings curated by local and national poets.

Galleries are open late and free on Thursday nights from 5–9 pm.

Bio

Tish Jones is a poet, narrative strategist, cultural producer, and educator from Saint Paul with a deep and resounding love for Black people, arts & culture, youth development, and civic engagement. As a performance artist her work has been shared in venues throughout the United States. Her writing can be found in We Are Meant to Rise (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), A Moment of Silence (Tru Ruts and the Playwrights Center, 2020), the Minnesota Humanities Center’s anthology, Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2015), and more.

Green Roof Poetry brings together some of the Twin Cities’ most dynamic writers for an evening of literary readings on the Walker’s hillside. On June 22, All My Relations Arts’ Native Authors Program will offer readings from its writers and mentors. Bring your blanket, pick up curated picnic snacks and libations at Cardamom, and relax for an evening of fresh-air readings curated by local and national poets.

Galleries are open late and free on Thursday nights from 5 to 9 pm.

Please join us this Saturday to celebrate pride and honor the founders of 30 astonishing years of Queer Voices, Andrea Jenkins and John Medeiros! Huge thank you to curators and organizers LM Brimmer and Sherrie Fernandez-Williams and readers Marlin Micah, Roy Guzmán, Junauda Petrus,

Erin Sharkey, and Black Garnet Books! Thank you to the librarians at the Central Library!

The East Side Freedom Library invites you for a reading with David Mura from The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself

Followed by a conversation with David Mura and Shannon Gibney Thursday, April 27th at 7:00pm

**This is a hybrid event for virtual and in-person audiences. In-person registration is limited. Masks are required in the library.

Register here to join this event in person or on Zoom

David Mura’s newest book is The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives. His last book was  A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity and Narrative Craft in Writing. His two memoirs are Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei, a NY Times Notable Book, and Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality and Identity.He co-edited the anthology of MN BIPOC writers, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World. He co-produced, wrote and narrated Armed With Language, the Emmy winning PBS documentary on the Military Intelligence Service Japanese American soldiers who served in WWII.

It's National Poetry Month! To celebrate, join us for a free poetry reading from "Queer Nature" on April 22 from 3 - 5pm at Quatrefoil Library!

“Queer Nature” is an anthology that amplifies and centers LGBTQIA+ voices and perspectives in a collection of contemporary nature poetry. Showcasing over two hundred queer writers from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, Queer Nature offers a new context for and expands upon the canon of nature poetry while also offering new lenses through which to view queerness and the natural world. The anthology is a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award Finalist in LGBTQ+ Anthology

Editor Michael Walsh of the anthology will moderate the reading. Poets from the anthology James Cihlar, KateLynn Hibbard, Su Smallen Love, Rachel Moritz, Juliette Patterson, William Reichard and Morgan Grayce Willow will share their work.

A reception with light refreshments will follow the conversation along with the sale of this book and a book signing.

Celebrating Junauda Petrus' Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers?

Please join Moon Palace Books and Ricardo Levins Morales on Wednesday, April 12th at 7:00pm to celebrate the release of Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers? by Junauda Petrus. 

**This is an in-person event. Masks are required in store. Social Distancing is encouraged.**

Petrus first published and performed this poem after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. With every subsequent police shooting, it has taken on new urgency, culminating in the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, blocks from Junauda's home.
 
In its picture book incarnation, Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers? is a joyously radical vision of community-based safety and mutual aid. It is optimistic, provocative, and ultimately centered in fierce love. Debut picture book artist Kristen Uroda has turned Junauda's vision for a city without precincts into a vibrant and flourishing urban landscape filled with wise and loving grandmothers of all sorts.

Junauda Petrus is a writer, pleasure activist, filmmaker and performance artist, born on Dakota land of Black-Caribbean descent. Her work centers around wildness, queerness, Black-diasporic-futurism, ancestral healing, sweetness, shimmer and liberation. Her debut novel, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them, earned a Coretta Scott King honor. She lives in Minneapolis with her wife and family.

Ricardo Levins Morales is an artist and organizer based in Minneapolis. He uses his art as a form of political medicine to support individual and collective healing from the injuries and ongoing reality of oppression.
 

Our featured faculty member is ERIN SHARKEY, author of the collection of essays titled, A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing From Soil to Stars.

This event (a collaborative effort of The Hamline Center for Justice and Law, the Hamline Library, and the Creative Writing Programs) is a reading and conversation around writing, research, and the Hamline archives available for this kind of work. A limited number of books will also be available for sale.

Light beverages and treats will be served. This event is free and open to the public.

BREAKOUT: 2022 Prison Writing Awards Celebration in collaboration with PEN America at The Hook and Ladder Theater & Lounge (3010 Minnehaha Ave) in Minneapolis!

5pm-7pm CT: Social Hour

7pm-8pm CT: Reading

Award-winning work by C. Fausto, Davi, Glitter Squirrel, and Zeke. With special guest Dallas, and poets Roy Guzmán and Gwen Westerman, MN Poet Laureate.

This is a free, in-person event. Masks are highly encouraged to keep everyone safe. All are welcome.

We hope you'll join us for this very special event to celebrate the power of writing and community.

Please register here

Please join three Minnesota poets in conversation as they engage poetry as a process of presence, absence, and coming into being. There will be poetry as myth, vengeance, sigil-work, and hex-craft.

This hybrid event will take place in person at the Best Buy Theater in Northrop, or via livestream. Those attending in person are invited to a reception following the program at Northrop. 

Minneapolis has a bloody, unacknowledged heritage. On the shore of Lake Harriet, Ojibwe warriors killed a Dakota man, triggering two retaliatory massacres. Ten years later, pioneer settlers roved the land of Minneapolis in gangs for protection from other pioneer gangs. When a lynch mob hanged a violent criminal across the street from Central High School, they left his corpse dangling for hours. Rioting Riversiders toppled a streetcar and attacked the driver... Author Ron de Beaulieu uncovers the dark, sinister history beneath the city.

Be sure to reserve a spot. Free. tickets

This Eventbrite registration is for the in-person event at Minneapolis College. If you are unable to attend in-person, it will also be available virtually. Register here for the zoom webinar.

Minneapolis College English professor Shannon Gibney releases her new book in a book launch event with the Minnesota State community on Tuesday, January 24, at 6:30 pm.

Gibney will read from her memoir/novel The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be (Dutton, 2023), and engage in discussion about it with Write Like Us mentor and poet LM Brimmer, followed by Q & A with the audience.

Part memoir, part speculative fiction, The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee.

Books will be available for sale and signing by the author at the event, but you also purchase in advance at Penguin Random House

This event is co-sponsored by Minneapolis College and Write Like Us, and is free and open to the public.

Write Like Us is an equity-based creative writing program at five Twin Cities metro-area community colleges: Anoka-Ramsey Community College, Century College, Minneapolis Community and Technical College, Normandale Community College, and North Hennepin Community College. Write Like Us centers and celebrates the work of BIPOC writers and writing students, fostering literary mentorship and leadership as it builds a platform for shared stories, voices, and lived experiences. For more information about Write Like Us and our other author events, see Write Like Us.

ABOUT SHANNON GIBNEY

Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color and Dream Country, young adult novels that won Minnesota Book Awards, as well as the forthcoming picture book Sam and the Incredible African and American Food Fight. She co-authored the picture book Where We Come From, and is a co-editor of What God Is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss by and for Native Women and Women of Color, and the forthcoming anthology When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology. Gibney teaches writing in the English department at Minneapolis College, where she is also the campus steward for the Write Like Us program.

ABOUT LM BRIMMER (Moderator)

LM Brimmer is an artist & educator living on Dakota land in Minneapolis, MN. Co-editor of the anthology Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose and Pride (MNHS Press 2019), their essays and poetry have appeared in The Alliance of Adoption Studies and Culture Journal, The Public Art Review, La Raza Comíca, Impossible Archetype, Gasher Journal, The B'K', Quarterly West, Voicemail Poems   elsewhere. They attend the low-residency MFA program at Randolph College.  lisamariebrimmer.com

In 1966, Minnesota poet and writer Robert Bly co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War and was an opposition leader among writers. His wife Ruth Bly is carrying on the tradition with a new cause at heart—the environment. A talented group of local poets and musicians is inviting everyone to gather at ASI to honor all of creation in spoken word and song.