Raki Kopernik, Damion Searls, and Christopher Tradowsky

Saturday, November 8, 2025
10:30am, Riverview Room (located upstairs from the Book Fair)

Three writers celebrating first novels kick off the 2025 Minnesota Author Showcase with verve!

About the Authors

Raki Kopernik, a first generation American, queer, Jewish writer, is the author of The Things You Left and The Memory House, both Minnesota Book Award finalists. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and has been shortlisted and nominated for several other awards, including the Pushcart Prize for Fiction and the Pen Faulkner Award in Fiction. She teaches creative writing at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and at Augsburg University.

Damion Searls is a renowned translator of the fiction of Nobel Laureate Jon Fosse and dozens of other modern classics from German, French, Norwegian, and Dutch. A Guggenheim, Cullman Center, and two-time NEA fellow, he is also the author of the nonfiction books The Inkblots and The Philosophy of Translation and the poetry chapbook The Mariner’s Mirror.

Christopher Tradowsky is a writer, artist, and art historian. He was awarded the 2023 J. Michael Samuel Prize from the Lambda Literary Foundation. Midnight at the Cinema Palace is his first book. He lives in St. Paul.