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APRIL 2012: COLOR THEORY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Ramla currently serves as a Staff Writer at The Minneapolis Foundation. She is a former producer for the KFAI collaborative project, Muslims in Minnesota, and has written extensively for Mshale and Hiraan Online, with much of her reporting focused on the Somali community in the Twin Cities. Ramla received her B.A. in Global Studies and Political Science with a minor in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota.
Sherine Crooms-Onukwuwe's passion for writing blossomed after falling in love with the 1970's hit film musical, The Wiz. Later realizing that the story was An adaptation initially written for white characters, she began to explore writing as resistance to a Eurocentric context imagining Black experiences. She began exploring Black venacular, thought and expression from the perspective of Black people. She is currently a screenwriter, filmmaker, film critic and wanna-be novelist who strives to conquer the artists inner S self-sabotage.
Wilt Hodges is an emerging writer, born in Indiana and raised in Minnesota; he’s been dazed and confused ever since....His work seeks to explore the personal and intricate spaces between myth, fact and fiction in various untapped voices in the African-American community. He looks forward to moving to New York in the fall to attend Columbia University.
Stephanie Hodges: As young girl growing up the written word was her closest friend. As an adult, it is essential in helping her to maintain her sanity. Stephanie mainly writes poetry and aspires to write a novel in the near future.
Ms. Amoké Kubat, M.Ed has been actively involved in empowering children, youth and families as an educator and artist in North Minneapolis since 1989. Missing Mama: A Trilogy of Loss, Sorrow and Healing, Kubat’s personal memoir, was published by Respondability Inc. in February 2012.Amoké currently lives and teaches in North Minneapolis. She is the founder of YO MAMA: The Mothering Mothers Institute. She is working on a novel titled, “LaLa London.”
Clarence White was a finalist for mnartists.org miniStories flash fiction competition in 2008. He is the principal writer for The Clarence White Blog. He is former bookseller at the Hungry Mind Bookstore. He lives in St. Paul and has an MBA which gets used less frequently than his writing and the love of baseball he shares with his son.
Sheila A. Williams is the author of the book: Diet Poems of a Hungry Black Woman..Other published works include poems in the book entitled: Seeing the World Through the Eyes of Women, an international book of poems written by women from all over the world. Sheila has performed readings all over the Twin Cities area. Currently Sheila is working on her second book entitled: Childhood Stolen. She lives in Minneapolis MN.
Wisdom Young is a writer that is an educator and mother. She holds a Bachelor’s degreein Sociology, LCD and a minor in African/ African American Studies from the University of MN. She currently resides in Minneapolis with her two beautiful children. Wisdom is inspired by God, her people and the power of words. She loves poetry and music. She gets part of her word fix through her literature club, Sista Do-WOP (Sista Do Words of Power). Her favorite poet is Langston Hughes, who said so much with so few words.
MARCH 2012: QUEER VOICES
A former ‘city girl,’ CATHERINE FRIEND lives on a small farm in southeastern Minnesota, where she and her wife Melissa raise sheep and cattle. She writes adult nonfiction, fiction, and children’s books. The Compassionate Carnivore won the Minnesota Book Award in General Nonfiction. Her memoir, Hit by a Farm, was selected by the Minneapolis Star Tribune as one of the best books of 2006. Her children’s picture book, The Perfect Nest, was chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of five best ‘read alouds,’ and was nominated for numerous state reading awards. She was awarded a Loft/McKnight Artist Fellowship for Writers, and her adult adventure novels have won awards from the Golden Crown Literary Society and the Independent Book Publishers Association. Friend has a M.S. in Economics and a B.A. in Economics and Spanish. She does chores, teaches writing workshops, and speaks at libraries, yarn shops and fiber festivals, professional organizations, and schools. She’s discovered that farm chores and snowshoes make Minnesota winters bearable, and is especially proud she’s learned how to take the wool from her sheeps’ backs and knit it into very cool socks.
SCOT "One T" MOORE is a graduate of The University of Wisconsin - River Falls Speech Communications and Theatre Arts Department. Since college, he's spent much of his time acting, directing, and designing for small theatre companies in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area. He has also worked for a number of financial institutions in various specialties in the financial sector. He has been an advocate of LGBT rights for as long as he can remember. Gaymerica is a product of his desire to make an active statement about the Minnesota Legislature's unfortunate decision to promote an amendment that would permanently enshrine bigotry in the Minnesota constitution. Normally, his fiction writing steers clear of making a direct political statement, though. So, Gaymerica was instead designed as a satire to see what the world may look like through the eyes of someone raised in a fascist nation where only very specific expressions of sexuality are allowed.
JOSE LUIS NARANJO was born in Caibarien, Villa Clara province, Cuba, on February 11th, 1954. Self taught since chilhood, he was drawn to the world of Literature. He has written several book of poetry and has won awards in Liteary competitions. He received the top awards in the following literary competitions: Juan Francisco Manzano, Aniversary of Regla Liceum, Aniversary of Guines foundation, and Aniversary of San Jose de Las Lajas foundation. Furthermore he was honored at The Mozart Contest, sponsored por the Austrian Embassy in Cuba. His poems have been publishewd in magazines, newspapers and anthologies. Part of his poetry was published in London for Latonia Publishers. He lives in Habana where he writes scripts por radio and TV. In this moment he is finishing a book of poetry and planning on writing his biography.
ANN TWEEDY'S chapbook, Beleaguered Oases, was published by tcCreativePress in 2010, and her poetry has appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Rattle, damselfly press, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly,and elsewhere. Her manuscripts have also been selected as finalists for the Bluelight Press Annual Chapbook Competition, the Robin Becker Chapbook Contest, and the New Sins Press Poetry Book Award, among others. Nature, relationships, and bisexuality are some of the prominent themes in her poetry. Originally from Massachusetts, she recently moved to Minnesota to teach at Hamline University School of Law after having spent most of her adult life on the West Coast. Her poetry can be found at www.anntweedypoetry.com.
DECEMBER 2011: QUEER VOICES
MELANIE HOFFERT grew up on a farm near Wyndmere, North Dakota where she spent her childhood meandering gravel roads, listening to farmers at church potlucks, and daydreaming about impossible love. She has an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University. Her work has received the 2005 Creative Nonfiction Award from The Baltimore Review and the 2010 Creative Nonfiction Award from New Millennium Writings. Her memoir, Prairie Silence, is forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2012. Melanie lives in Minneapolis where—on a daily basis—she plots her escape from all actions that do not feed her soul.
CHRISTINE STARK is an award-winning writer and visual artist. She is also a public speaker and advocate for the sexually abused. Her fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have been published in a variety of periodicals and anthologies, including University of Pennsylvania Law Review; Poetry Motel; Feminist Studies; Birthed From Scorched Hearts: Women Respond to War; On The Issues: The Progressive Woman’s Magazine; Vermillion Literary Magazine; Hawk and Handsaw: the Journal of Creative Sustainability; To Plead Our Own Cause: Narratives of Modern Slavery; Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress; Woman and Earth: An Almanac in Russian and English; and numerous others. She coauthored a peer-reviewed, academic article about domestic violence and trafficking, and she is a coauthor of the groundbreaking research titled “Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota.” She is also a coauthor (with Rebecca Whisnant) of Not for Sale, an international anthology about sexual violence. Her poem, “Momma’s Song”, was recorded by Fred Ho and the Afro Asian Ensemble and released as a double CD/manga titled Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon and Momma’s Song. Her novel, Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation, was released in fall 2011. Christine teaches writing at Metropolitan State University in the Twin Cities.
OLGA TRUJILLO is an attorney, who after 12 years with the United States Department of Justice, left to work with communities on trauma, domestic violence, child abuse, and sexual assault as well as immigration and human trafficking issues. As a consultant she has worked with most national organizations addressing the issues of violence against women and children and, in particular, the co-occurrence of domestic violence and child abuse. A nationally sought speaker, Olga has also appeared in several videos including Cut it Out, a training video on domestic violence for hair stylists, and A Survivor’s Story, a training video based on her personal experience and live presentations. Olga is a recipient of the Bud Cramer Leadership Award given by the National Children’s Alliance for her work to help professionals around the country better understand the impact of violence on children. Olga is also a recipient of a Sunshine Lady Foundation Peace Awards for her work for battered women and their children. Latina Magazine featured Olga in its August 2006 issue for her survival and her work on these issues. Olga lives on a small farm in Wisconsin with her partner and their dogs and cats.
ENRIQUE URUETA'S plays include The Johnson Administration, The Danger of Bleeding Brown, Learn To Be Latina, and Forever Never Comes. His plays have been developed or produced by The Queer Cultural Center, Playwrights Foundation, Lark Play Development Center, Impact Theatre, Golden Thread Productions, Crowded Fire Theater Company, and Stray Cat Theatre. He has received a Theatre Bay Area CASH grant, a Theatre Bay Area New Works Fund award for Forever Never Comes and was selected by Sir David Hare as a runner-up for the 2009 Yale Drama Series prize for The Danger of Bleeding Brown. Learn To Be Latina received Aurora Theatre Company's Global Age Project award, won the inaugural Great Gay Play contest sponsored by Pride Films & Plays, and was named Best Ensemble Comedy of 2010 by the SF Weekly, which also named him Best Up-And-Coming Playwright of 2010. Southern Theatre Magazine identified him as one of "40 Groundbreaking Playwrights" who are "changing the U.S. theatre." He is a proud member of NoPassport, an on-line collective of theatre artists who advocate for cross-cultural theatrical exchange, with an emphasis on US Latina/o and Latin American theatre. BA: The College of William & Mary; MFA: Brown University.
NOVEMBER 2011: SOUNDS OF (R)EVOLUTION
SIERRA DEMULDER is a two-time National Poetry Slam Champion and the author of The Bones Below published in 2010 by Write Bloody Publishing. Her forthcoming book New Shoes on a Dead Horse will be release January 2012. When not writing or performing poetry, she enjoys making full use of public transportation and waxing on and on about feminism.
KHARY JACKSON is a performance poet, playwright, dancer and musician. A Detroit native, he currently resides in the Twin Cities where he serves as a teaching artist and writer. He has written 12 full length plays, one of which (Water) was produced in 2009 at Ink and Pulp Theatre in Chicago. He has been a recipient of several grants, including the 2010 Artist Initiative Grant for poetry from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the 2009 VERVE Spoken Word Grant from Intermedia Arts, and the Many Voices Residency from the Playwrights' Center, in 2005-06 and 2007-08. As a performance poet, he has enjoyed great success in national competition, ranking nationally in 2007, 2008 and 2009, as well as winning the National Poetry Slam with the St Paul team in 2009 and 2010. But few of us really care about all that. He's a little weird, but rest assured, there's a method to the way he stares into your house.
MICHAEL LEE is a Minneapolis poet, performer, fiction writer, and youth worker. Michael recently placed ninth at the 2011 Individual World Poetry Slam, and is a recipient of the 2011 Verve Grant for Spoken Word Artists, which he will use to travel to Norway and create a body of work concerning cultural reclamation. Since 2010 Michael has reached Final Stage twice at collegiate nationals (CUPSI) representing The University of Minnesota placing third in the country in 2010 and then fourth in 2011. During the 2011 tournament he was selected as the “Best Individual Poet”. Michael won the 2011 Great Plains Poetry Pile Up, was the youngest finalist for the 2010 LOFT Literary Centers' Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose, and was the 2011 Minneapolis grand slam champion. Michael performs and conducts poetry workshops at rehabs, homeless shelters, youth programs, colleges and high schools. He is currently a youth counselor at Avenues For Homeless Youth, a homeless shelter located in Minneapolis where he learns far more than he teaches; he is blessed to be able to conduct bi-weekly poetry workshops and share his passion with others willing and excited to share their talents and stories. Michael is constantly filling up with hot water. His fingers are faucets. His mouth is a faucet. He believes everyone’s ears and eyes are tubs and that he must travel the world emptying himself so others are full and all are well.
TOU SAIKO LEE is a spoken word artist, mentor, hip hop emcee and community organizer residing in St. Paul, Minnesota. He teams up with his grandmother Youa Chang who does the traditional Hmong art of kwv txhiaj (Hmong Poetry Chanting) to form the group "Fresh Traditions." Mr. SaiKo Lee has Shamanistic roots from his grandmother and grandfather who are spiritual healers and believes in ghosts. Lee received the Jerome Foundation Travel Grant in 2008 and is a 2009 Intermedia Arts VERVE grant recipient. He organizes an annual Hip Hop event that includes a huge b-boy jam in July called Boom Bap Village to coincide with the Hmong Sports tournaments. In 2008 he was featured in an online video documentary in the New York Times called "Hmong Hip Hop Heritage."
MANKWE NDOSI (Twin Cities/Chicago) works in voice, word and improvisation, expanding vocabularies of song. She collaborates with musicians, dancers, MC's, and artists of all kinds. In addition to her own solo productions and creations, Ms. Ndosi's first 15 years include work with Nicole Mitchell, Atmosphere, Zach Bagaason, Sharon Bridgforth, Laurie Carlos, Ananya Dance Theater, Sonic Healing Ministries, and Douglas R. Ewart - including national and international engagements. She is former Director of the CIA (Center for Independent Artists, Mpls, MN). She has received support from the American Composer's Forum, McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.
Twin Cities Native, Chicago transplant, Lyricist, Poet, Producer, all around artist and one hell of a cook. This award winning hip hopper captivates crowds with imagination, intellect and substance, but doesn't give up any fun in the meanwhile. SEE MORE's style is clever, funky and soulful. Speaking on subjects from Ancient pyramids to Dia de Los Muertos and Intergalactic Robot love stories, SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE leaves the listener with something to think about, over lush musical soundscapes.
SAYMOUKDA ‘mooks’ VONGSAY is a Lao American poet and playwright whose passion is arts advocacy. Her work has been published by Altra Magazine, The Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, St. Paul Almanac, Lao American Magazine, and Bakka Literary Journal, to name a few. Vongsay pens the series Pushing the Pen, published weekly in the Asian American Press, interviewing literary artists from across the nation. She has taught and performed spoken word poetry from the Midwest to the East and West coasts, as well as in Italy and Japan. She is a co-founding member of the Unit Collective of Emerging Playwrights of Color and an active participant with Pillsbury House Theater’s Chicago Avenue Project. She is a 2011 Jerome Foundation/Mu Performing Arts' New Eyes Theater Fellow, winner of the 2010 Alfred C. Carey Prize in Spoken Word Poetry (NY), and an advisory board member of the 2010 MPLS Asian Film Festival. As the Arts and Culture Programs Coordinator with the State Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans, she is responsible for allocating funds from the Legacy Amendment to benefit the APIA community and is a Board Member of the Asian Pacific Endowment Fund/Saint Paul Foundation. She is currently writing the full-length play, Kung Fu Zombies vs Cannibals, a commission by Mu Performing Arts. Vongsay is pursuing an interdisciplinary Masters degree in Public Policy, Sociology, and Creative Writing at the U of MN. Get to know her at www.refugenius.com
SEPTEMBER 2011: QUEER VOICES
ELLIE KRUG —writer, lawyer, human. Ellen Krug holds degrees from Coe College and Boston College Law School. She practiced law in Massachusetts and Iowa, and at one time founded and oversaw a law firm specializing in trial work. In 2009, Ellen transitioned from male to female. She then became the only Iowa attorney, and one of the few nationally, to try lawsuits in both genders. As a consequence of her transition, Ellen better appreciates how society treats women differently from men. She is a frequent speaker on the life lessons learned as she traveled on her gender journey. Ellen lives in Minneapolis, where she is a freelance writer for two publications, including Lavender Magazine. She is presently completing her memoir, which will be published in 2012.
ELLEN LANKSY was born in Minneapolis and grew up in Overland Park, Kansas. Her short fiction has appeared in print and online journals, and her novella Harmonic Convergence was published in the first Evergreen Chronicles national novella contest. Golden Jeep is her first novel.
EDMOND MANNING is the author of King Perry, a novel currently in submission to Dreamspinner Press. Within this real-world fairy tale, a San Francisco investment, Perry Mangin, finds himself the recipient of an exotic invitation from a vacationing tourist: spend one weekend with me and I will restore your kingship and help you remember the man you were always meant to be. Perry’s surreal, exhausting journey through beloved San Francisco bruises free his caged heart, forcing Perry to transform a devastating childhood grief into something raw and unexpected: primal, radiant love. To read the first four chapters, see Postcard Moments from the novel, or to sign up for notification of publication, visit www.kingperry.com.
KAROLYN REDOUTE has an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University-Bloomington. Prayers of the Shaman is her first publication in book form, and the poems she will be reading come from that collection. She grew up in Detroit, but currently lives in Minneapolis and works at the U of M as an advisor and teacher.
JUNE 2011: QUEER VOICES
KIMBERLY BROWN is a 2010 Loft Mentor Series winner. She has been a Loft Mentor Series finalist and received honorable mention in the “Dogs and the Women Who Love Them” essay contest in 2009. Her poetry has appeared in What Have You Lost? and Seeds from a Silent Tree. She has written bridge collapse advocacy pieces, which appeared in publications such as the Star Tribune, tcdailyplanet.net,and mn2020.org. A writer of both poetry and creative nonfiction, she is working on a memoir partially based on surviving the 35W bridge collapse. She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a creative writing minor and currently works as a technical writer. She lives in Minneapolis with her wife, Rachel Anderson.
By day, TRISHA COLLOPY teaches journalism students how to avoid burying their ledes. By night, she scribbles furiously in her writing notebook. Collopy has worked with young writers through the Intermedia Arts Wings program and through The Lab (formerly The Poetry Lab) in the St. Paul Public Schools. She has written freelance Fringe reviews and stories about spoken word for the Pioneer Press. She is currently a student in the MFA program at Hamline University and a writing teacher at local colleges. She writes about nuns, the Jazz Age, nuns, Montana, nuns, the queer community and nuns.
LUCAS DE LIMA, born in Brazil and raised across the Americas, lives in Minneapolis. He has poems and reviews published or forthcoming in Scrivener Creative Review, Mudfish, Rain Taxi, ABJECTIVE, and Action! Yes. A graduate of McGill University and recipient of the Peterson Memorial Prize, he is writing a book about somatic memory while pursuing an MFA at the University of Minnesota. You can read his thoughts on art, the body, and animality at the multi-author blog Montevidayo.com.
C.M. HARRIS
KRISTIN JOHNSON grew up Minnesota and received her bachelor’s from Gustavus Adolphus College and her master’s from Metroopolitan State University, where she now teaches. She writes for children and adults and has been published in several journals. Kristin has won the Loose-leaf Poetry Award, The Loft's Shabo Award for picture books, the Mystery Writers of America Helen McCloy Award, and she's been a finalist in the Loft's Mentor Series contest. She hopes to sell her most recent children’s novel currently titled The Secret of Cross Kennel. She says of the book: “I hope the book will draw attention to puppy mills and the war in Iraq and the need to help veterans of all of our wars.”
WILLIAM REICHARD is a writer, editor, and educator. His fourth collection of poems, Sin Eater, was published by Mid-List Press in April 2010. His previous collections include This Brightness (2007) and How To (2004) both from Mid-List Press, and An Alchemy in the Bones (1999) from New Rivers Press. Reichard has published a chapbook, To Be Quietly Spoken, with Frith Press, and he revised and edited the award-winning memoir, The Evening Crowd at Kirmser's: A Gay Life in the 1940's, by the late Ricardo Brown, published by the University of Minnesota Press. Reichard’s anthology, American Tensions: Literature of Social Justice, will be released by New Village Press in Spring 2011.
NICOLE SMITH is an artist, educator, community activist, youth advocate….. A native of Saint Paul, Nicole attributes her love of all things creative (theatre, writing, spoken word – just the ability to “express yo self!”) to her experience at Central High School. “I went into this building as a 14 year old traveling through the labyrinth of hallways, feeling like a car driving aimlessly along the educational system resembling tangled highways and byways. It wasn’t until I found myself parked in the classroom of Jan Mandell, when I realized that I had a voice that mattered…a voice that had power…a voice worth hearing…I walked out of that building 4 years later realizing that I was traveling a road that I didn’t want to get off of…” Nicole went on to study theatre at the University of Minnesota; she now works at Pillsbury House Theatre, serves on various Youth Serving and Arts Based Advisory Boards and teaches theatre arts, creative writing/poetry and arts literacy at Elementary, Middle and Senior level schools throughout the Metro Area.
CHRISTINE STARK is an award-winning writer and visual artist of European and American Indian ancestry whose work has been published in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including The Florida Review; Feminist Studies; Poetry Motel; Hawk and Handsaw: the Journal of Creative Sustainability; Birthed From Scorched Hearts; To Plead Our Own Cause: Narratives of Modern Slavery; and Primavera. She is a co-editor of Not for Sale, an international anthology on sexual violence. Her poem, “Momma’s Song,” will be released as a CD in collaboration with musician Fred Ho in 2011. She is a 2009 Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2010 Loft Mentorship winner. Christine teaches writing at Metropolitan State University and lives in Minneapolis with her partner, April.
CHRISTINE TUHY is an emerging writer studying poetry and creative nonfiction at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. Her writing explores a variety of themes, including femininity, sexuality, culture, and violence. She is a member of the Loft Literary Center and the owner of Amigas Realty. She resides with her son in South Minneapolis.
MAY 2011: SOUNDS OF (R)EVOLUTION
KHARY is a performance poet, playwright, dancer and musician. A Detroit native, he currently resides in the Twin Cities where he serves as a teaching artist and writer. He has written 12 full length plays, one of which (Water) was produced in 2009 at Ink and Pulp Theatre in Chicago. He has been a recipient of several grants, including the 2010 Artist Initiative Grant for poetry from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the 2009 VERVE Grant, and the Many Voices Residency from the Playwrights' Center, in 2005-06 and 2007-08. As a performance poet, he has enjoyed great success in national competition, ranking nationally in 2007, 2008 and 2009, as well as winning the National Poetry Slam with the St Paul team in 2009 and 2010. But few of us really care about all that. He's a little weird, but rest assured, there's a method to the way he stares into your house.
A Twin Cities native, TISH JONES is a Spokenword artist, educator, and organizer. Currently working as an artist in residence at Pillsbury House Theatre and Plymouth Christian Youth Center, Jones is no stranger to the power of community and collaboration. A recipient of the MN Verve Grant in 2009 as well as the Urban Griot award for Female Spokenword Artist of the year, she is also the founder of a developing non profit, TruArtSpeaks that's focus is to inspire and create social and personal change in and through hip hop and the arts.
ED BOK LEE was raised in South Korea, North Dakota and Minnesota. Lee has shared his work in journals, anthologies, and on stages across North America, Europe and Asia, as well as on public radio and TV, including MTV. His second book, Whorled, will be published by Coffee House Press in fall 2011.
MADIBA2013 [Muh•Dee•Buh 20•13] A product of two halves coming together to form a whole, Madiba2013 invites the innovative performance duet of E.G. Bailey and Sha Cage, who have auspiciously adopted the South African leader Nelson Mandela's widely known nickname. Bailey and Cage respectively from Liberia and Mississippi represent the diasporic legacy of the continent of Africa and the American South. Theirs is a performance collaboration blending and bending words, layered voices and cacophonous rhythms reminiscent of Sekou Sundiata mixed with Jessica Care Moore. While Bailey and Cage offer the vocal component of the group; twentythirteen contributes what has been called a 'monstrous sound'. With Bryan Berry on guitar, Khalil Brewington on drum and Chris Cox on trombone, the trio skillfully mold a musical framework around the lyrics to provide a provocative and connective experience. Cox and Berry draw from years of experimenting with the respected Junkyard Empire band while Brewington has played with well known bands such as Black Blondie and Hyder Ali. Bailey and Cage each nationally recognized spoken word performance artists and founders of numerous collectives, organizations, and radio shows have traveled widely to areas such as England, Canada, New York, Philadelphia and more, performing their work that largely centers around topics of identity, freedom, cultural celebration, and home. To witness Madiba2013 is to observe a refreshing spin on the art form of rhythmic performance poetry layered with jazz, rock, and blues inspired music.
KYLE "GUANTE" TRAN MYHRE is a hip hop artist, two-time National Poetry Slam champion, social justice activist and educator. He’s been featured in URB Magazine’s “Next 1000” list, City Pages’ “Artists of the Year” list, CMJ and the Progressive, and has shared bills with Talib Kweli, Atmosphere, Dead Prez, Sage Francis, Brother Ali, Mr. Lif, P.O.S. and many more of the top names in indie hip hop. Apart from these artistic endeavors, Guante also freelances as a music writer, curates the Hip Hop Against Homophobia concert series, facilitates writing and performance workshops for youth and serves as arts coordinator of the Canvas, a Saint Paul teen arts center. See www.guante.info for more information.
RODRIGO SANCHEZ-CHAVARRIA is a writer and spoken word poet of Peruvian heritage heavily involved with Palabristas, a local Latin@ poets collective. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and an involved activist in the Latin@ community. He writes about fatherhood, the duality of two cultures in English, Spanglish and Spanish, and issues pertaining to his community and life experiences. He has performed with Yellow Rage, Los Nativos, Chicano Messengers of the Spoken Word and Big Quarters. He also takes the power of his work to local high schools, colleges, and universities, both in the Metro Area and in Greater Minnesota, in which he engages in conversation with students in regards to the art of spoken word and how they can use it as tool of liberation. He released a spoken word CD in 2006 titled “Desconocidos” with the collaboration of other local poets and is featured in the Palabristas Chapbook titled “Outside the Lines.” His most recent publication is the “Writing Life” Chapbook, in collaboration with photographer, Andrew MacDonald, with support from a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant.
JAKE VIRDEN is a poet, performer, youth worker, educator and community organizer. In his 25th year as a resident of N.E. Minneapolis- and 6th year performing in the Twin Cities- Jake writes to cool his anger, to wrestle with tension, to enter into dialogue, to share stories, to build relationships and to get more free. You can catch Jake every other Tuesday from 6-8pm at the Heritage Park Open Mic through the rest of the year.
My name is KEVIN YANG and I am a First-Year at Hamline University. I was born and raised in South Minneapolis for the first 11 years of my life. I've since moved to Brooklyn Park and now I am back in St. Paul for school. Moving from community to community has influenced not only my writing but also my life by introducing me to people and experiences across the spectrum. I feel that the power of art, specifically spoken word, is that it has the ability to break socio-economic barriers and offer an open forum for the voices of anyone to step upon. This open communication between art and activism is something I am always striving to promote and enact.
APRIL 2011: COLOR THEORY FOR THE 21st CENTURY
CARLA-ELAINE JOHNSON graduated in 2007 with her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Minnesota. She is currently finishing her first book, Butterfly to Bull: A Latebloomer's Spiritual Memoir, a midlife coming-of-age narrative that blends childhood faith, adult realism and coming out as an African-American lesbian. Her work has appeared in the anthology, Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical, Dislocate, and in the Talking Volumes Book Club Guide Series. A 2010-2011 recipient of The Givens Foundation For African American Literature's Givens Black Writers Collaborative Retreat Program, Johnson teaches in Minneapolis.
NAHID KHAN writes poetry and short stories when the inspiration strikes, and is a member of a writer's group for people with family roots in the Arab or Muslim worlds. Otherwise, she is a Ph.D candidate majoring in Mass Communication at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, with graduate minors in Religious Studies and Museum Studies. Her research focuses on news coverage of American Muslims. She has served as a teaching assistant and lab instructor for courses in Journalism and Religious Studies, and this year was the graduate assistant for the conference and workshops for the NEH-funded project "Shared Cultural Spaces: Islam and the West in the Arts and Sciences" at the U of M. She is a member of both the Faculty and Student Council and the Collections Council of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. She completed an internship with the Museum Guide Programs department at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts where she has been a Collection in Focus guide since 2004, and is a board member of Mizna, the Twin Cities-based Arab-American arts organization. Before coming to Minnesota in 1995, she was a staff writer for the Moscow-Pullman Daily News (Idaho and Washington). She received her B.A. from Purdue University, majoring in Mass Communication-Journalism and minoring in Library and Information Science.
RUSH MERCHANT III I am a writer, composer, musician, and visual artist. I like to call myself a “Mid-western southern boy” because I was born in south Minneapolis and primarily raised here; however, I spent a lot of my summers in Fairmont, West Virginia, a place I also claim as my home. I write mostly poems, prose, and song lyrics and have been for the last 10 years. I’ve read my work on stage on both sides of the river in the Twin Cities, also in New York, Wisconsin, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. My work is featured primarily on independent, self-produced recordings, most recently on my 2009 recording, Creation. I am currently working on Volumes, the title of my next recording, and my first ever book of poems.
J. OTIS' poetry, essays and articles have appeared in two books of his original work: THEOLOGY (Traffic Street Press) and My Tongue Has No Bone (Porter Publishing) and numerous anthologies, newspapers and magazines included recently in: Barefoot In The Mountains, Views From The Loft and his work will be featured in an upcoming anthology of poems from Downstairs Press. As of this biography he was recording a new CD project titled BALM! with TruRuts. His words have already been recorded and released on several CDs: Twin Towers with Chastity Brown on TruRuts/Speak Easy Records, The 2nd Annual Chicago Calling, The Ghost Dog Tour with Stir Trio and Forward Energy, his own DVD titled News as Abstract Truth, Unsentimental with Rene Ford, THIS CAT IS OUT, in association with The New Day Blues Band, independently produced THEOLOGY: Love & Revolution and TruRuts/Speakeasy Record’s Words Will Heal The Wound. J. Otis Powell! is a performance artist who has worked on stages around the Twin Cities for more than twenty years. Venues for his original work include: Pangea World Theater, Pillsbury House Theater, Walker Art Center, Intermedia Arts, Studio 6A, Illusion Theater, Penumbra Theater, Center for Independent Arts, Loft Literary Center, The Playwright Center, Avalon Theater at Heart of the Beast, Mix Blood Theater, Bedlam Theater, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Cowles Auditorium, Weisman Art Gallery and the Ted Mann Auditorium at the UofM. J. Otis Powell! is a founding curator for Bridges - a performance arts program with Pangea World Theater. He has been a recipient of a Loft Creative Nonfiction Award, a Jerome Travel and Study Grant, Jerome Mid Career Artists Grants and Intermedia Arts’ Interdisciplinary McKnight Fellowship. He was a founding producer of Write On Radio!, the Twin Cities literary connection, at KFAI-FM while working as Communities’ Liaison and Program Director for Interdisciplinary Collaborations at The Loft Literary Center. For more information go to: Myspace.com/jotispowell, http://truruts.bandcamp.com/album/theology-love-revolution-2 and http://www.linkedin.com/in/opwll
MARCH 2011: QUEER VOICES
KIMBERLY BROWN is a 2010 Loft Mentor Series winner. She has been a Loft Mentor Series finalist and received honorable mention in the “Dogs and the Women Who Love Them” essay contest in 2009. Her poetry has appeared in What Have You Lost? and Seeds from a Silent Tree. She has written bridge collapse advocacy pieces, which appeared in publications such as the Star Tribune, tcdailyplanet.net,and mn2020.org. A writer of both poetry and creative nonfiction, she is working on a memoir partially based on surviving the 35W bridge collapse. She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a creative writing minor and currently works as a technical writer. She lives in Minneapolis with her wife, Rachel Anderson.
LUCAS DE LIMA, born in Brazil and raised across the Americas, lives in Minneapolis. He has poems and reviews published or forthcoming in Scrivener Creative Review, Mudfish, Rain Taxi, ABJECTIVE, and Action! Yes. A graduate of McGill University and recipient of the Peterson Memorial Prize, he is writing a book about somatic memory while pursuing an MFA at the University of Minnesota. You can read his thoughts on art, the body, and animality at the multi-author blog Montevidayo.com.
STUART MERRILL
CHRISTINE TUHY is an emerging writer studying poetry and creative nonfiction at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. Her writing explores a variety of themes, including femininity, sexuality, culture, and violence. She is a member of the Loft Literary Center and the owner of Amigas Realty. She resides with her son in South Minneapolis.
FEBRUARY 2011: SOUNDS OF (R)EVOLUTION
JAY THOMAS BAD HEART BULL is from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota and Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota respectively. He is the son of a soldier and nurse and was raised throughout the Dakota's. He is a graduate of Oglala Lakota College in South Dakota and received his B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 2003. After graduating he held various positions working for American Indians in the metropolitan area. He has taught Lakota language in St. Paul, worked in after-school programs serving American Indian youth in Minneapolis, managed an American Indian-specific Food Shelf, served as a social service Program Coordinator and oversaw a Mentorship Project for youth in south Minneapolis. He currently serves as the Vice President of the Little Earth of United Tribes community in South Minneapolis-the only American Indian-specific housing development in the country. He is also a burgeoning poet, writer, and avid golfer.
COLLEEN CASEY uses language and other arts to bring about positive transformation. As Program Manager with the English Learning Center, in Minneapolis’s Phillips neighborhood, she helps adult immigrants build their voices in English. She has worked with Adult Basic Education and ESL for over a decade and, before that, cut her teeth in arts administration and arts in education with the History Theater and In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater. She holds a BA in art history and is slowly completing an initial teacher license in English Language and Communications Arts. Colleen grew up in the Twin Cities area and is of European-American and Mdewakantan Dakota heritages. She participates in the Loft-sponsored TGI Frybread.community writing group and was a mentee in the Loft’s Native Inroads writing mentorship in 2009.
JANUARY 2011: COLOR THEORY FOR THE 21st CENTURY
STEPHANI MAARI BOOKER, originally from Michigan and currently living in Minneapolis, is an editor of the African American newspaper Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder and holds an MFA from Hamline University of St. Paul, MN. Her creative work has been published most recently in the online journals Blithe House Quarterly and Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette, the collection 60 Seconds to Shine: 221 One-minute Monologues For Women (Monologue Audition Series, Volume 2) edited by John Capecci and Irene Ziegler Aston (Smith & Kraus Inc., 2006), and the anthology Longing, Lust, and Love: Black Lesbian Stories edited by Shonia L. Brown (Nghosi Books, 2007). Visit Stephani's website for more information about her work: www.mnartists.org/Stephani_Booker.
SHANNON GIBNEY is a writer, educator, and activist in Minneapolis. Upcoming publications include an article on Octavia Butler in THE BLACK IMAGINATION, SCIENCE FICTION, AND FUTURISM anthology, and her young adult novel HANK AARON'S DAUGHTER. She teaches at MCTC, and lives in the Powderhorn neighborhood with her husband, son, and dog.
ROBERT KARIMI is an interdisciplinary playwright/poet/multimedia 
humorist, & storycook from the SF Bay Area. A Creative Capital recipient, a National Poetry Slam Champion, a Def Poetry Jam poet, and creator of the critically acclaimed works: Self (the remix), Farid Mercury and the live comedy cooking experience: The Cooking Show con Karimi y Comrades, his performances have fed audiences across the Americas in theatres, grocery stores, backyards, and off Broadway. A UCLA graduate, he has received awards from the NEA, Verve Grant, MSAB, MAP, and others. In 2009, he represented the city of Los Angeles at la Feria del Libro Internacional in Guadalajara, Mexico. In 2010-2011 he will be artist in residence at Intermedia developing his new project Diabetes of Democracy, a Cooking Show focusing on type 2 diabetes in communities of color and beyond.
MADAME MIMI discovered the Art of Spoken Word through the African oral tradition, where proverbial talk is a high quality. In African societies, she finds her deepest roots in the Lunda tribe. Madame Mimi first started writing her poems in French as a teenager than later in English. Her father inspired her to play the guitar and she was influenced by artists such as Tracy Chapman, Billy Holiday, Zap Mama, Les Nubians. Growing up in France she admired Jacques Brel and Edith Piaffe as well. Madame Mimi marked her performance debut in the mid-nineties. She imposed herself as an avant-garde multi-talented artist in Land of the Lakes. Hip-Hop came to her life in the mid-80s; she was residing in Sarcelles, France then. This new vibe had a great influence on her and many young Africans living in the H.L.M’s (urban projects of Parisian suburbs) who were looking to express their fight for identity. In Minneapolis, she co-founded a spoken word venue called DA Initiation (1998-2003) with MC TruthMaze, a platform that would give artistic exposure to artists of color. Madame Mimi is multilingual and her voice and melodies are unique to most. She takes pleasure into playing with words and sounds in her own particular way and makes no apologies for defining linguistic through music in her terms.
SAYMOUKDA VONGSAY is a queer Lao American poet and playwright who's taken risks, often incorporating surrealism and speculative literature with hip hop and a no holds barred approached to Lao American history. She's a co-founding member of The Unit Collective of Emerging Playwrights of Color, author of No Regrets, Chair of the 2010 National Lao American Writers Summit, inaugural winner of the 2010 Alfred C. Carey Prize in Spoken Word from New York, recipient of a Loft Literary Center scholarship to attend Robert McKee's Story Seminar, advisory board member of the 2010 MPLS Asian Film Festival, and was recently recognized by the Lao Professionals of Illinois for her literary accomplishments. Vongsay continues to work actively to support the work of Lao women writers and artists across the country to celebrate heritage, diversity, and community development. Get to know her at www.refugenius.com
LORI YOUNG-WILLIAMS’ writing focuses on family/family relationships. She is currently completing a MLS degree at the University of Minnesota focusing on the migration of Black families from the South to the North, in particular the migration her father’s family made from South Carolina to Philadelphia. 1992, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Human Relationships with an emphasis of family relationships. She comes from a working class family that believes in laughter, crying, and praying when times are good, or when times are bad. Lori has been published in Interrace magazine, the Turtle River Press, the National Library of Poetry, Quill Books, Dust & Fireand other anthologies. Also, she has self- published two chapbooks. She has read in various bookstores, coffee shops, and spoken word events in the Twin Cities, including several collaborative readings with Sherry Quan Lee, Chinese Black White Women Got the Beat. Lori was a participant for the Givens Black Writers Retreat, 2008 with mentors Sonja Sanchez and Carolyn Holbrook. Lori has taught a writing workshop in early spring 2009 called Women of Color: Writing our Stories. She has also taught two other workshops, with Sherry Quan Lee. One about women writing their stories at the University of MN October 2009 and the other for a poetry group in Mankato October 2010. Lori is in the process of editing her final project for her masters and will have a reading at Intermedia Arts on March 26th, 2011.
DECEMBER 2010: QUEER VOICES
KIMBERLY J. BROWN is a 2010 Loft Mentor Series winner. She