Arts Events

The writers are all prize winners, and books will be available for sale
Saint Paul Poet Laureate Carol Connolly hosts this reading.

7:30 Reading free and open to the public.

 

Mayor Chris Coleman has named Carol Connolly as the city's first poet laureate. She is the author of Payments Due" a collection of poems that has been adapted into a stage play in Los Angeles and Minneapolis. She has worked as a writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune.

An active DFL member, she first became politically involved through the peace movement of the 1960s. Women's rights emerged as the focus of her civic and political activities, which included serving as co-chair of the Minnesota Women's Political Caucus and coordinating the Wonder Woman Foundation, a New York City-based organization which recognized and rewarded women over forty for heroic accomplishments, as well as work with numerous other feminist and women-centered organizations in the Twin Cities area.

She is a former chairwoman of the St. Paul Human Rights Commission, and has served on the Minnesota Racing Commission. In addition to her civic and political activities, Connolly gained attention and acclaim for her literary accomplishments when she began writing poetry in 1976. She presently writes for Minnesota Law & Politics. "SASE Carol Connolly Reading Series" presents public readings by almost 300 writers and poets each year, performing in almost a dozen different venues, reading to over 5,000 audience members. More.

Margot Fortunato Galt blends her North Dakota and Italian-American history in works of poetry and prose. Professor Galt has a Ph.D. in American Studies, University of Minnesota. She teaches courses for the U of M Independent and Distance Learning program, Metro State University, and Hamline University's Graduate Liberal Studies Program. She also teaches at The Loft and The Grand Marais Art Colony. She has published poetry and creative prose about Italian art, family history, and travel including numerous articles on art, and five books of prose and poetry. One of her books is Turning the Feather Around: My Life in Art, an Oral History Memoir of Minnesota Ojibway artist George Morrison (1998). Professor Galt's writing has won grants and awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, The Loft, Jerome Foundation, and the Center for Arts Criticism. Her most recent collection of poems is entitled Between the Houses (2004). MLS seminar: "Memoir, Music and Art in Florence, Italy" (MLS Study Abroad seminar), and "The Documentary Impulse in Film, Photography, History, and Literature."

Marianne Herrmann was born and raised in Winnetka, Illinois. She received a B.A. in Art History and English from Georgetown University, and an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota. She is the recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship in Literature and a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Fellowship for her fiction. Her writing has garnered awards from various literary journals. She has served as an editor of Northern Lit Quarterly, taught creative writing at the University of Minnesota, and lectured in art history at the American School in Florence, Italy. She currently lives in St. Louis Park, Minnesota with her husband and two daughters.

Anne Iverson's second book, "Definite Space," conveys the emotional journey of a step-son's first and second deployment to Baghdad, Iraq. Her "Come Now to the Window" and other poems have been featured on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. Ann's work has also appeared in Water-Stone, Margie: American Journal of Poetry, Oklahoma Review, Talking Stick, and more. As a visual artist, Ann is interested in the visceral connection between the visual image and the poetic line. Ann is the Director of the Arts and Sciences Program at Dunwoody College of Technology. ”

Jim Lenfesty is a writer based in Minneapolis and Mackinac Island. After a career in academia, advertising and journalism as an editorial writer at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where he won several Page One awards for excellence, he has published poetry, reviews and articles plus a book of personal essays, The Urban Coyote: Howlings on a Family, Community and The Search for Peace and Quiet. He is founder of the Ojai Poetry Festival in Ojai, CA, chairs the Literary Witnesses Poetry Series in Minneapolis and teaches at Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island.

Jim Moore is the author of six collections of poetry, including Writing With Tagore Above the Flamina (The Press at Colorado College, 2003), The Long Experience of Love (Milkweed Editions, 1995) and The Freedom of History (Milkweed, 1988), both of which won Minnesota Book Awards; What the Bird Sees (Momentum Press, 1978), and The New Body (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975). His newest collection, Lightning at Dinner (Graywolf Press, 2005), also a Minnesota Book Award winner, is now in its second printing. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Threepenny Review, and The Nation, among others, as well as in several anthologies, including the 2001 Pushcart Prize, Lost Classics (Knopf Canada, 2000), and Carrying the Darkness: The Poetry of the Vietnam War (Avon, 1985). He has also collaborated with choreographer Rannee Ranaswamy on two commissioned works. He was a winner of the 2002 Loft-McKnight Award in poetry, and has twice served as the Edelstein-Keller Distinguished Visiting Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He teaches regularly at Colorado College and in the MFA in Writing program at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and this year, he is serving as a mentor in the Loft Literary Center's mentor program.

Tim Nolan is the chair of Rider Bennet's Litigation Department. Tim received his undergraduate degree in English from the University of Minnesota, a Masters of Fine Arts from Columbia University where he was the managing editor of the literary magazine Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the Minnesota State Bar Association and the Defense Research Institute. Tim is a frequent lecturer, and he was named a "Super Lawyer" by Minnesota Law & Politics in 2005 and 2006. Tim’s poetry has been published in the national publications The Nation, Ploughshares and Poetry East. He lives in south Minneapolis with his wife Kate and three children – Elizabeth, Maeve, and Frank.

Jude Nutter was born in North Yorkshire, England, and grew up in northern Germany. Her poems have appeared in numerous international journals and anthologies and have received several awards and grants. Her first book-length collection, Pictures of the Afterlife (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), was published in 2002. Her second collection, The Curator of Silence (University of Notre Dame Press), won the Ernest Sandeen Prize from the University of Notre Dame and was awarded the 2007 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. Her third collection, I Wish I Had A Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman, is forthcoming. She is a Loft Master Track advisor.

Frank Kroncke is one of the "Minnesota8," whose 1971 trials for raiding Selective Service Draft Boards is the inspiration for the PWH project. He will read poems written for the Minnesota 8 by John Berryman, Millie Beneke (a Minnesota 8 mother), and others.

 

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