Presenting Authors

Fine Arts Stage, 1:00-1:45pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
American Identity in Crisis weaves together the remarkable stories of the making of an activist in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, and the fight against the onerous rules that are being used to keep vulnerable populations from participating in American life. Kat Calvin takes us on a cross-country tour as she and her team uncover one of the biggest secrets in America and learn how to solve it, talking to veterans, the unhoused, and senior citizens along the way. Told in a voice that is strong and vulnerable, funny and fearless, confident and self-deprecating, American Identity in Crisis is a defense of human dignity and everyone’s right to have access to the pursuit of happiness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kat Calvin is the founder and executive director of Spread The Vote + Project ID and the cofounder and CEO of the Project ID Action Fund. A lawyer, activist, and social entrepreneur, she has built a national organization that helps Americans obtain the IDs they need for jobs, housing, life—and in some states, the voting booth. Kat and her work have been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Essence, Glamour, and Marie Claire, and on NPR, PBS, BET, and many other outlets. She has been a guest commentator on MSNBC, CNN, Headline News, Sirius XM, and more, as well as a frequent keynote speaker and a sought-after voice for her expertise and opinions on politics, voting, ID-related issues, and more.

Fine Arts Stage, 2:00-2:45pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
In poems bursting with narrative power, Disease of Kings explores the tender yet volatile friendship between two young scammers living off the fat of society. Here are stories of an odd couple who scrounge, con, hustle, and steal, alternately proud of their ability to fabricate a life at the margins and ashamed of their own laziness and greed. Rich with a specificity of voices, these poems locate themselves in a midwestern city at once gritty with reality and achingly anonymous. With plainspoken language and tremendous tonal range, Anders Carlson-Wee leads us into the heart of one friendship’s uneasy domesticity―a purgatory where, in this poet’s vision, it is possible for loss to lead to hope, lack to fulfillment, and shame to gratitude.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anders Carlson-Wee is the author of The Low Passions, a New York Public Library Book Group Selection, and Dynamite, winner of the Frost Place Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Harvard Review, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other publications. Raised by Lutheran pastor parents in Moorhead, MN and currently living in other parts Midwest, Anders Carlson-Wee is a winner of the Poetry International Prize and a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers, Bread Loaf, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, among others.

Fine Arts Stage, 10:00-10:45am
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ABOUT THE BOOK
With Amazon’s growing power in both bookselling and publishing, considering where and how we get our books is more important now than ever. From the relationship between bookselling and white supremacy, to censorship and the spread of misinformation, to the consolidation of the publishing industry, veteran bookseller and writer Josh Cook turns a generous yet critical eye to an industry at the heart of American culture, sharing tips and techniques for becoming a better reader and, of course, recommending great books along the way.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Josh Cook is a bookseller and co-owner at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has worked since 2004. He is also author of the critically acclaimed postmodern detective novel An Exaggerated Murder, and his fiction, criticism, and poetry have appeared in numerous leading literary publications. He grew up in Lewiston, Maine and lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Fine Arts Stage, 1:00-1:45pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
A fast-paced, rollicking account of how the GOP since the 1950s has constantly encouraged and exploited extremism and paranoia to gain power, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy offers readers a brisk, can-you-believe-it journey through the netherworld of far-right irrationality and the Republican Party’s interactions with the darkest forces of America—which culminated in Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the White House. Acclaimed journalist David Corn here reveals the hidden history of how the Party of Lincoln forged alliances with extremists, racists, and conspiracy-mongers and fueled fear, anger, and resentment to win elections— and how this led to the GOP becoming a personality cult that bolsters the most bizarre and craziest excesses of the right.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Corn is a veteran Washington journalist and political commentator. Also the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine and an analyst for MSNBC, he is the author or co-author of four New York Times bestsellers, including the #1 bestseller Russian Roulette, Showdown, and Hubris, and the author of the novel Deep Background.

Fine Arts Stage, 10:00-10:45am
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Through lyrical, funny, heart-wrenching essays, Peter Coviello considers pieces of culture across a fantastic range, setting them inside the vivid scenes of friendship, dispute, romance, talk, and loss, where they enter our lives. Alongside him, we reencounter movies like The Shining, shows like The Sopranos; videos; poems; novels by Sam Lipsyte, Sally Rooney, and Paula Fox; as well as songs by Joni Mitchell, Gladys Knight, Steely Dan, Pavement, and the much-mourned saint of Minneapolis, Prince. Navigating an overwhelming feeling that Coviello calls “endstrickenness,” he asks what it means to love things in calamitous times, when so much seems to be shambling toward collapse. Is There God after Prince? shows us what twenty-first-century criticism can be, and how it might speak to us, in a time of ruin, in an age of “Last Things.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Coviello is the author of five previous books, including Tomorrow’s Parties, a finalist for a 2013 Lambda Award in LGBT Studies; Long Players, a memoir selected as one of Artforum’s Ten Best Books of 2018; and Make Yourselves Gods. His essays have appeared in Frieze, Chicago Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Raritan, Elle, and Believer, among other publications. He is professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he specializes in American literature and queer theory.

Fine Arts Stage, 11:00-11:45am
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ABOUT THE BOOK
In Anya Johanna DeNiro’s playful and aching short novel, an unnamed trans woman is on an epic journey to find her place in the world. As she tries to keep on good terms with her ex-wife and build a strong relationship with her son, she finds friends, real and imaginary, to support her. She wrestles with anxieties and fears and the everyday violence of the world around her. OKPsyche is a fever pitched and intense odyssey through the real and imagined worries, fears, and weirdness of trans adulthood, parenthood, and selfhood in the contemporary world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anya Johanna DeNiro is a trans woman and writer living in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and received a BA in English from the College of Wooster and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia. Her novella City of a Thousand Feelings was published by Aqueduct Press in 2020 and was on the Honor Roll for the Otherwise Award. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues, including One Story, Catapult, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Santa Monica Review, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. Her work has been a finalist for the Crawford Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her novel OKPsyche is forthcoming from Small Beer Press in September 2023.

12:00pm, Fine Arts Stage.
More info here.

ABOUT THE BOOK
In The Puppets of Spelhorst, five puppets confront circumstances beyond their control with patience, cunning, and high spirits. Shut up in a trunk by a taciturn old sea captain with a secret, the friends—a king, a wolf, a girl, a boy, and an owl—bicker, boast, and comfort one another in the dark. Individually, they dream of song and light, freedom and flight, purpose and glory, but they all agree they are part of a larger story, bound each to each by chance, bonded by the heart’s mysteries. Illustrated by Julie Morstad, this riveting tale—the first in a new series—will introduce readers to the wonder of a land called Norendy, the latest creation from the boundless imagination of Kate DiCamillo.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kate DiCamillo considers herself “an enormously lucky person: I get to tell stories for a living.” One of the most beloved authors of children’s fiction, she has published over 25 books, has won the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, the Mark Twain Award, and the E. B. White Award (among many others), and has served as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Several of her books have been adapted as films, most recently The Magician’s Elephant, which was a Netflix animated original. Kate DiCamillo’s books’ themes of hope and belief amid impossible circumstances and their messages of shared humanity and connectedness have resonated with readers of all ages around the world.

Fine Arts Stage, 4:00-4:45pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Graphic Literature gives readers unprecedented insight into the techniques of 28 of today’s most innovative creators of poetry comics, graphic narratives, and image-text hybrids. With original craft essays, corresponding exercises, and full-color examples of their work, each contributor offers reflection and instruction informed by their own methods. From mark-making and page composition to deeper renderings of place, character, and voice, this much-needed guide to the field of graphic literature illuminates and demystifies the process of creating image+text work. This is a book for writers who want to make graphic narratives and literary collage, illustrators and comics artists exploring new approaches to storytelling, teachers encouraging their students to work with hybrid forms, and anyone curious about what one contributor calls “comics magic.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Dodd Lee is the author of eleven books of poems, including Animalities (Four Way Books, 2014) and Unlucky Animals, which includes 60 pages of original poems, Ashbery erasure poems, dictionary sonnets, and over sixty collages. He is also a collage artist, painter, and photographer. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of 42 Miles Press and a Professor of Creative Writing at Indiana University South Bend, where he teaches classes on poetry, fiction, publishing, and editing, as well as visual art.

Fine Arts Stage, 4:00-4:45pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Graphic Literature gives readers unprecedented insight into the techniques of 28 of today’s most innovative creators of poetry comics, graphic narratives, and image-text hybrids. With original craft essays, corresponding exercises, and full-color examples of their work, each contributor offers reflection and instruction informed by their own methods. From mark-making and page composition to deeper renderings of place, character, and voice, this much-needed guide to the field of graphic literature illuminates and demystifies the process of creating image+text work. This is a book for writers who want to make graphic narratives and literary collage, illustrators and comics artists exploring new approaches to storytelling, teachers encouraging their students to work with hybrid forms, and anyone curious about what one contributor calls “comics magic.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelcey Ervick is the author of the graphic memoir The Keeper: Soccer, Me, and the Law That Changed Women's Lives (Avery, 2022). Her previous award-winning books are The Bitter Life of Božena Němcová, a text+image biographical collage, and two works of fiction, Liliane’s Balcony and For Sale by Owner. Her comics have been published widely, including in The Washington Post, The Believer, and Lit Hub, and two featured comics series of hers have appeared in The Rumpus. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati and is a professor of English at Indiana University South Bend, where she teaches creative writing, comics, and literary collage.

Fine Arts Stage, 4:00-4:45pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Graphic Literature gives readers unprecedented insight into the techniques of 28 of today’s most innovative creators of poetry comics, graphic narratives, and image-text hybrids. With original craft essays, corresponding exercises, and full-color examples of their work, each contributor offers reflection and instruction informed by their own methods. From mark-making and page composition to deeper renderings of place, character, and voice, this much-needed guide to the field of graphic literature illuminates and demystifies the process of creating image+text work. This is a book for writers who want to make graphic narratives and literary collage, illustrators and comics artists exploring new approaches to storytelling, teachers encouraging their students to work with hybrid forms, and anyone curious about what one contributor calls “comics magic.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Naoko Fujimoto was born and raised in Nagoya, Japan and studied at Nanzan Junior College. She was an exchange student and received a B.A. and M.A. from Indiana University. Her poetry collections include We Face The Tremendous Meat On The Teppan, winner of C&R Press Summer Tide Pool Chapbook Award, Where I Was Born, (Willow Books, 2019), and Glyph:Graphic Poetry=Trans. Sensory (Tupelo Press, 2021). A RHINO associate and Tupelo Quarterly translation editor, she is a Bread Loaf Translation scholarship recipient and the 2023 Visiting Teaching Artist at the Poetry Foundation.

Fine Arts Stage, 3:00-3:45pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
For the curious and imaginative Moji, there is no better place to grow up than the lush garden of her grandparents in Tehran. However, as she sits with her sister underneath the grapevines, listening to their grandfather recount the enchanting stories of One Thousand and One Nights, revolution is brewing in her homeland. In The House of Sun Street, readers experience the 1979 Iranian revolution through the eyes of a young girl, Moji, and her family during a time of concussive political and social change. Along with these seismic shifts, there are also the universal perils of love, sexuality, and adolescence. Is Moji able to pull through? Will her family come to her rescue? And just like Scheherazade, will the power of stories help her prevail?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mojgan Ghazirad is a medical doctor and currently works as an assistant professor of pediatrics at The George Washington University. She holds an MFA in creative writing and has published three collections of short stories in Farsi in Iran and Europe: A Lover in White Jacket in 2012 in Iran, Turquoise Dream in 2014 in Germany, and her last collection In the Solitude of Suitcases in 2016 in the UK. Her essays have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Idaho Review, Longreads, The Common, Bombay Review, and Assignment. She lives with her family in Great Falls, Virginia.

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ABOUT THE BOOK
A preeminent voice in contemporary literature, Major Jackson offers steady miracles of vision and celebrations of language in rapturous, sophisticated poems. With selections from five acclaimed volumes—including his Cave Canem Poetry Prize-winning debut, Leaving Saturn (2002), the NAACP Image Award finalist Hoops (2006), and his vulnerable, philosophical latest, The Absurd Man (2020)—along with three dozen new poems, Razzle Dazzle traces the evolution of Jackson’s transformative imagination and fierce music. Whether addressing racial conflict and the ongoing struggle for human dignity in America, bearing witness to the plight of refugees, or grieving the contradictory nature of humankind, these dexterous poems proclaim the remarkable power of renewal, justice, and accountability.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Major Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (Norton). His debut Leaving Saturn (2002) won a Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems, and his edited volumes include Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama, and Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. He is also the author of A Beat Beyond: The Selected Prose of Major Jackson. Jackson is a recipient of numerous prizes and fellowships, including a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. His poems and essays have been published in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, Orion Magazine, Paris Review, and many other distinguished journals, and he serves as Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review. He currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University.

Fine Arts Stage, 11:00-11:45am
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ABOUT THE BOOK
The Privilege of the Happy Ending collects Kij Johnson’s speculative fiction from the last decade. The stories explore gender, animals, and the nature of stories, and range in form from classically told tales to deeply experimental works. The collection includes “The Apartment Dweller's Bestiary” which was reprinted in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and two World Fantasy Award winners, “The Privilege of the Happy Ending” and “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe,” as well as a dozen more stories including two never-before published works.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kij Johnson writes speculative and experimental fiction, and has won the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards (among others). She also writes gaming material, puzzles, and nonfiction. She teaches creative writing, novel development, and science fiction and fantasy, for her own Novel Architects group, the Ad Astra Institute, and various universities. For many years, she was the associate director for the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction.

Fine Arts Stage, 2:00-2:45pm
More info here

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adrian Matejka is the author of The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books, 2003) which won the New York / New England Award and Mixology (Penguin, 2009), a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series. His third collection, The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013), was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was also a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Recent volumes include Map to the Stars (Penguin in 2017), a Funkadelic-inspired mixed media chapbook Standing on the Verge & Maggot Brain (Third Man Books, 2021), and Somebody Else Sold the World (Penguin, 2021), a finalist for the UNT 2022 Rilke Prize and the 2022 Indiana Authors Award. His graphic novel Last On His Feet: Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century, with art by Youssef Daoudi, was published in February 2023 by Liveright. Matejka served as Poet Laureate of the state of Indiana in 2018-19, and currently lives in Chicago; in 2022 he was selected to become Editor of the venerable Poetry magazine.

Fine Arts Stage, 3:00-3:45pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
Chicago, 1916. Doreen O’Dare is fourteen years old when she hops a Hollywood-bound train with her beloved Irish grandmother. Within a decade, her trademark bob and insouciant charm make her the preeminent movie flapper of the Jazz Age. But her success story masks one of relentless ambition, tragedy, and the secrets of a dangerous marriage. Her professional life in flux, Doreen pours her wealth and creative energy into a singular achievement: the construction of a one-ton miniature Fairy Castle, the likes of which the world has never seen. So begins Doreen’s public tour to lift the nation’s spirits during the Great Depression―and a personal journey worth remembering. A sweeping journey from the dawn of the motion picture era through turbulent twentieth-century America, From Dust to Stardust is a breathtaking novel about one determined woman navigating change, challenging the price of fame, and sharing the gift of real magic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a collective of poets and their vintage typewriters who compose poetry on demand. Her most recent books include the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. Her poetry collection Where Are the Snows won the 2021 X. J. Kennedy Prize and was published by Texas Review Press in fall of 2022. She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Prize from Poetry magazine and the Adam Morgan Literary Citizen Award from the Chicago Review of Books, and her criticism appears in the New York Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Brooklyn Rail, Chicago magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches English and creative writing at DePaul University.

Fine Arts Stage, 3:00-3:45pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
No one knows Margo’s real name—her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of premature deaths in her wake. That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. When a tragic incident in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo’s mysterious past, Patricia can’t resist digging deeper—even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming and sends both women hurtling toward disaster. Chilling, incisive, and darkly humorous, How Can I Help You is a propulsive work of psychological suspense that asks how far we might go to justify our most monstrous desire.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Sims is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Looker, now in development for television with eOne and Emily Mortimer’s King Bee Productions. An award-winning poet, Sims has published four poetry collections; her essays and poems have appeared in The New Republic, Boston Review, Conjunctions, Electric Lit, Gulf Coast, and more. She and her family live in New Jersey, where she works part-time as a reference librarian and hosts the library’s lecture series.

Fine Arts Stage, 2:00-2:45pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
A medical emergency, a road trip, a breakup, and a paean to the power of creative process—Poem Bitten by a Man is for everyone who has tried against the odds to make a life in art, whether they succeeded or not. Using somatic language captured through a notebook practice, Brian Teare recontextualizes the work of Agnes Martin, Jasper Johns, and others via art criticism, psychoanalysis, biography, queer theory, and historical document to honor writers, artists, and thinkers who sustain us when nothing else does.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
2020 Guggenheim Fellow, Brian Teare is the author of eight chapbooks and six critically acclaimed books, including Companion Grasses, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award, and Doomstead Days, winner of the Four Quartets Prize and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle, Kingsley Tufts, and Lambda Literary Awards. His most recent publications are a pair of book-length ekphrastic projects exploring queer abstraction, chronic illness, and collage: the 2022 Nightboat reissue of The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven, and the fall 2023 publication of Poem Bitten by a Man. He’s currently an Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia. An editorial board member of Poetry Daily, he lives in Charlottesville, where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
2:15-3:00pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
There is a saying in Cambodia: Music is the soul of a nation. Perhaps no one embodied that spirit more than Ros Serey Sothea, a young woman who would forever change the landscape of Cambodian music as the Queen with the Golden Voice. From humble rice farmer to nationally recognized singer, Sothea captured the hearts of the Khmer people, her signature angelic voice soaring over genres from traditional ballads to psychedelic rock and beyond. Sothea's singing career continued to flourish even when she served as one of the country's first female paratroopers during the Cambodian civil war, but when the Khmer Rouge seized control and brought Cambodia's golden age into a dark era of silence, Sothea’s fate became unknown. Accompanied by an interactive soundtrack and developed alongside the surviving family who knew her, The Golden Voice tells the story of Sothea’s amazing life.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Kat Baumann is an illustrator from Southern Minnesota. She grew up in a family of musicians, and as a kid she spent most of her time singing show tunes in her room and drawing her favorite manga characters. After graduating with a BFA in Studio Art, she interned at Helioscope Studio in Portland and began working as a freelance cartoonist. Other works of hers include Ferdinand Magellan Sails Around the World (Black Sheep: Extraordinary Explorers), Blind Spot (from the anthology Death Saves Vol. 2), 20 Fists by F.D. White, and her 2017 auto-bio graphic novella Broken Plastic Horses.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
1:30-2:15pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
It all started when Jojo saw a fairy but said she didn’t. After all, fairies aren’t real—and if they were, they wouldn’t look like that! Her sisters have no problem believing, though, and they decide to make fairy gardens to entice the new kid across the street to come play. Their plan works, but it also catches the attention of certain creatures . . . With the questionable help of a very self-satisfied cat, the sisters and their new friend, Theo, set off on an adventure, but making everything right again will require a different kind of magic: the magic of sharing stories and of letting go.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
H. M. Bouwman grew up as the second of four sisters, and together they put on plays and magic shows (and once, a circus), ran a hospital for animals, climbed trees, played made-up games, and roamed the neighborhood. She now has two children who grew up creating wild stories, collecting fossils of dead animals, and building fairy gardens. H. M. Bouwman lives in Minnesota and teaches at the University of St. Thomas. She is the author of several novels for young readers including A Crack in the Sea and Gossamer Summer.

Progress Center, Youth Activity Area, 10am–12pm

ABOUT THE BOOKS
Go back in time to when everyone's favorite Catstronaut, Waffles, was a kitten! Waffles and his sister Pancake are about to spend three days at Space Cat Camp—a fun, science-packed training experience for future CatStronauts. Pancake can’t wait to learn about satellites, space shuttles, and all things outer space, but Waffles is feeling a little homesick. How can he enjoy his time at camp when all he wants is his dad-cat?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Drew Brockington graduated from Kalamazoo College with a degree in Art and Art History, and soon found himself in Central Park working for Christo and Jeanne Claude on “The Gates” artwork installation in the winter of 2005. He went on to stay in New York as a graphic designer, using his illustration talents to help create custom logos and stationery pieces. In late 2012, Drew and his wife relocated to Minneapolis, where he refocused his efforts into writing and illustration. He currently draws in his home studio, while his dog, Leroy, snores next to him. He has a special love for comics and will never shy away from a pun.

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ABOUT THE BOOKS
CatStronauts—you are needed! When the world is in danger, only the best space cats can save us all. Meet fearless commander Major Meowser, brave-but-hungry pilot Waffles, genius technician and inventor Blanket, and quick-thinking science officer Pom Pom on their most dangerous and important missions in the galaxy. In this graphic novel series, author and illustrator Drew Brockington breathes life into a world populated entirely by cats, brimming with jokes, charm, science, and enough big boxes and tuna sandwiches for everyone!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Drew Brockington graduated from Kalamazoo College with a degree in Art and Art History, and soon found himself in Central Park working for Christo and Jeanne Claude on “The Gates” artwork installation in the winter of 2005. He went on to stay in New York as a graphic designer, using his illustration talents to help create custom logos and stationery pieces. In late 2012, Drew and his wife relocated to Minneapolis, where he refocused his efforts into writing and illustration. He currently draws in his home studio, while his dog, Leroy, snores next to him. He has a special love for comics and will never shy away from a pun.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
4:00-4:45pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
When new classmates Mattie and Mercedes meet and realize they have the same Colombian dad, the two team up in a Parent Trap–inspired misadventure to meet him for the first time. Come celebrate the paperback release of this sharp and poignant middle-grade novel about the bonds that make a family.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anika Fajardo was born in Colombia and raised in Minnesota. She is the author of Magical Realism for Non-Believers: A Memoir of Finding Family, as well as a previous book for middle-grade readers, What If a Fish, which won a Minnesota Book Award. A writer, editor, and teacher, she lives in the very literary city of Minneapolis.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
4:00-4:45pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
By the time Effie Galanos starts her senior year, it feels like she’s already been thinking about college applications for an eternity―after all, finding a college that will be the perfect fit and be accessible enough for Effie to navigate in her wheelchair presents a ton of considerations that her friends don’t have to worry about. What Effie hasn’t told anyone is that she already knows exactly what school she has her heart set on: a college in NYC with a major in Mass Media & Society that will set her up perfectly for her dream job in digital media. When she finds out that her longtime crush Wilder is applying there too, it seems like one more sign that it’s the right place, but it turns out that the universe is full of surprises, and Effie starts to learn that growing up means being open to a world of possibilities.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Claire Forrest holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University. Where You See Yourself is based on her lived experience as a wheelchair user who has cerebral palsy. As an undergraduate at Grinnell College, she was a consultant for the Disability Services and Admissions offices, working directly to address the concerns of incoming college students with disabilities and their families. She lives in Minneapolis, where when she’s not writing, she spends her time swimming and planning where to travel next.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
4:00-4:45pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
A group of LGBTQ+ college students find themselves, as well as a whole lot of trouble, when they search for a retired professor’s hidden (and immensely valuable) coin collection. Clues come from decoding classic lesbian, bi, and queer women’s literature —but in six years, no one has found the treasure. Can Maze and Lys decode the stories and find the prize before a malevolent classmate turns them against each other and takes the treasure for herself?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Gold is the author of several award-winning YA novels centered on queer and trans characters. Currently an English professor at Macalester College, their diverse writing career has included journalism and marketing in addition to fiction. Rachel is a nonbinary lesbian, all-around nerd, and avid gamer.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
4:00-4:45pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
Ahmed Aziz is having an epic year—epically bad. After his dad gets sick, the family moves from Hawaii to Minnesota for his dad’s treatment, and Ahmed can’t imagine a worse place to live. He’s one of the only brown kids in his school, and as a proud slacker, Ahmed doesn’t want to deal with expectations from his new teachers. But Ahmed surprises himself by actually reading the assigned books for his English class, and shockingly, he doesn’t hate them. Ahmed also starts getting bits and pieces of his family’s history, which might be the one upside of the move, as his dad’s health hangs in the balance and the school bully refuses to leave him alone. Will Ahmed ever warm to Minnesota?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nina Hamza moved to Minnesota from warmer climates. She tried downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, ice-skating, sledding, snow tubing, and snowshoeing before deciding the long winter months were perfect for reading and writing. Now she is happy to call Minnesota home. She writes about her experiences as a Muslim and an immigrant and has been published in the Star Tribune and the Chicago Tribune. Ahmed Aziz’s Epic Year is her debut novel.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
3:00-3:45pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
Finn lives in a family of theater lovers. His older brothers are both actors, and one of his moms is an actor and the other one is a director. They even live in an enormous historic mansion owned by the Beauregard, Minnesota's largest regional theater. Finn is desperate to be an actor, too, despite the fact that he can never seem to remember his lines. When a new artistic director threatens to sell the Jorgensen house and kick his family out of the only home he's ever known, his family puts on a show—an immersive 1890s experience unlike anything else. But will it be too much for his mom Lula, who is recovering from cancer? Will Finn connect with his crush and deal with his long-time rival, Jade? Will saving the house save Finn's acting career? Funny, warm, and full of Victorian hijinks, this is a novel for anyone looking for a place to belong.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nicole Kronzer is the author of the young adult novels Unscripted and The Roof Over Our Heads. Unscripted was named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association and was a Minnesota Book Award Finalist. Nicole is also a high school English teacher and former professional actor. She loves to knit and run (usually not at the same time). She lives with her family in Minneapolis.

Progress Center, Youth Stage, 11–11:30am

ABOUT THE BOOK
The Geisel Award-winning creators of See the Cat and See the Dog are back! This time, Max the dog and Baby Cakes the cat are grappling with some curious things they can’t see.

See the wind blow the leaves.
See the wind blow the leaves off the page.
See the wind blow the dog off the page.

In a new trio of stories, Max and Baby Cakes encounter a scare-happy ghost who has a run-in with a mirror, the wind at its blustery best, and a teeny-tiny fairy with a wayward wand who may have met her match. Beginning readers will laugh out loud when they “see” these invisible things that go “Boo!,”“Whoosh!,” and “Hey! . . . Will you let me back into the book?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David LaRochelle has been writing and illustrating books since 1988. His books have won numerous awards, including the Sid Fleischman Humor Award, the SCBWI Golden Kite Honor Award, ALA's Theodor Seuss Geisel Award, and four Minnesota Book Awards. A former elementary school teacher, David enjoys solving puzzles, geocaching, and carving creative pumpkins.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
11:30am–12:00pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
Jayden loves the outdoors and the garden he created with his friend Mr. Curtis. But he’s not so sure about sampling some of the garden’s produce. When Mr. Curtis invites neighbors to share the harvest of scarlet runner beans, Jayden faces a dilemma. Will he find the courage to try something new? This story, which can be read as a standalone or as a sequel to the award-winning Jayden’s Impossible Garden, emphasizes the importance of friendship, community, and the courage and openness to try new things. Along with Mr. Curtis and Jayden, readers learn the value of outdoor play and contact with nature, from planting a seed to sharing and eating what it produces.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Working at the intersection of nature, literature, and culture, Mélina Mangal’s writing highlights youth whose voices are rarely heard, and the people and places that inspire them to explore their world. She is the author of short stories and biographies for youth, including The Vast Wonder of the World: Biologist Ernest Everett Just, winner of the Carter G. Woodson Book Award and named an NCSS/CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People. Mélina also works as a school library teacher in Minnesota and enjoys spending time outdoors with her family, whether it’s in her backyard or hiking in the woods.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
4:00-4:45pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
Sister has been the overlooked younger sibling for years—but this time, the blatant injustice has gone too far; Brother has been granted the incredible power of choosing the family pet. And what does he choose? A bearded dragon. Adding insult to injury, Brother gets to go to summer camp, leaving Sister at home to take care of his disgusting lizard. Sister refuses to suffer in silence and sends Brother letter after letter detailing her disdain for the scaly burden, but to her surprise, Brother’s replies reveal camp may not be everything he thought. As their correspondence continues, the siblings begin to find common ground. Sister may even develop a newfound appreciation for Brother . . . maybe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alison McGhee is a New York Times bestselling author who has published novels for middle-grade, young adult, and adult readers, as well as numerous picture books and the Bink & Gollie books (co-authored by Kate DiCamillo). She has won four Minnesota Book Awards, among other prizes, and currently splits her time between Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Laguna Beach, California.

Progress Center, Youth Activity Area, 11am–1pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
Today’s the day! It’s Baby Sister’s naming ceremony, and big sister Amira could not be more excited. She has the perfect name picked out . . . or, at least, she hopes it’s the perfect name. As Amira greets arriving family members, she asks what name they have brought to give to Baby Sister. Each is more beautiful than the last—Shakira, Akahana, Uhwe—and each has its own special meaning—thankful, red flower, moonlight. Amira knows that Baby Sister will love these names. But will she love the name Amira has chosen? Written by Seina Wedlick and beautifully illustrated in full color by Jenin Mohammed, Naming Ceremony is a story about rich traditions and the unique bond between sisters, celebrating a multigenerational Nigerian family and Black joy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenin Mohammed was born and raised in Miramar, Florida. She comes from African American and Caribbean ancestry. Thanks to her Christian/Muslim upbringing, she is on a never-ending quest to find halal versions of her favorite southern dishes. Mohammed’s interests include creating henna art, freestyle rapping (very badly), and pen-tapping off beat. She is the illustrator of Song in the City, All the Places We Call Home, and Super Mom.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
11:30am–12:00pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
Strawberry the Sasquatch lives deep in the forest, isolated and alone, the way she likes it. Most of the animals are afraid of her, but she’s content to do all the things a sasquatch does: hiking and foraging as well as dance moves and logger pranks. But everything changes when an extremely friendly squirrel named Nutty shows up… Packed with colorful illustrations and comic panels, Sasquatch and Squirrel will delight young readers with action and laugh-out-loud moments on every page. Fans of both Chris Monroe’s Monkey with a Tool Belt books and the Netflix series Chico Bon Bon: Monkey with a Tool Belt will find new characters to love in this charming picture book.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Monroe is an award-winning author, illustrator, and cartoonist. Her picture books include Sneaky Sheep, Bug on a Bike, and the Monkey With a Tool Belt series, which inspired the Netflix show Chico Bon Bon: Monkey with a Tool Belt. Chris is also the author and illustrator of the comic strip Violet Days, which has been in print for more than 20 years. She lives in Duluth, Minnesota.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
4:00-4:45pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
Millie has one goal: to make a movie in tribute to her late father. At the Manhattan Movie Academy, run by her favorite director Ricky O’Naire, she’s determined to make it happen. But before she can finish her project, the academy is shut down. Six months later, she sees a preview for the new O’Naire movie―and he’s stolen her idea. Outraged, she reunites her former film crew to steal the movie and hold it for ransom before its high-profile premiere, but when an unexpected femme fatale uncovers their plan, it’s not long before a trio of hardened criminals want in on the take. With the stakes now higher than she ever imagined―and her life on the line―Millie has no choice but to lead them all through a dazzling series of moves and countermoves that result in an ending not even Hollywood could see coming.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tyler Schwanke is a writer and a filmmaker. He holds an MFA from Hamline University, and his short stories have been widely published in online journals and literary magazines. He is also a graduate of the New York Film Academy and Minnesota State University Moorhead, where he was awarded a Minnesota Film and TV Grant; several of his award-winning short films have played at festivals across the country. Tyler lives in the Minneapolis with his wife and their dog. Breaking In is his debut novel.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
1:30-2:15pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
The kids at Benjamin Banneker College Prep are a little… competitive. The minute Principal Yee announces an epic competition for the golden B-B trophy, seventh-grader Frederick Douglass Zezzmer knows he has to win. But it won’t be easy. The competition doesn’t just include science, technology, engineering and math—it also has arts and sports. Even worse, it’s a TEAM competition. Instead of being in a superstar group, Doug gets paired with four middle school misfits no one else wants. Worst of all, Doug’s dad has a horrible backup plan: If Doug doesn’t win, he has to forget about becoming The World’s Greatest Inventor and spend the summer in sports camp, with his scary stepbrother. With only a week to go, Doug launches a quest to turn his team of outcasts into winners . . . and maybe even friends.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.E. Thomas grew up near Colorado’s Front Range mountains. She spent her early summers stuffing grocery bags with books at the local library, reading feverishly, then repeating the process week after week. J.E. has Bachelor’s degrees in Mass Communications and Political Science, as well as a Master’s degree in Public Communications. She wrote Control Freaks while working as an administrator at the same independent school she attended as a child.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
3:00-3:45pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
Told in alternating points of view using vignettes and poems, Saints of the Household is an emotional, slow-burning drama about brotherhood, abuse, and recovery.Max and Jay, two Bribri brothers, have always depended on one another for their survival at home. Growing up with a physically abusive father, they have learned that the only way to protect themselves and their mother is to stick to a schedule and keep their heads down. But when they hear a classmate in trouble in the woods, instinct takes over and they intervene. As the true details of that afternoon unfold, Max and Jay grapple with the weight of their actions, their shifting relationship as brothers, and the realization that they may be more like their father than they thought. They'll have to reach back to their Bribri roots to find their way forward.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ari Tison is a Bribri American and African descended poet and storyteller. Her poems and short works have been published in Yellow Medicine Review, The Under Review, Rock & Sling, and POETRY's first ever edition for children. She was the winner of the 2018 Vaunda Micheaux Nelson award for a BIPOC writer with Lerner Publishing. She is currently the annual broadside editor for Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, where she gets to collaborate with the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts to bring incarcerated voices into the world. Saints of the Household is her debut novel.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
12:45-1:30pm

ABOUT THE BOOKS
Black Excellence Project/Read Woke Books series: These books celebrate notable contributions and accomplishments of Black Americans—many of whom have been left out of history books. They bring to light the names and stories of Black achievers in careers ranging from science, politics, and business to sports, music, and entertainment.

First but Forgotten series: Open a history book, and you’ll probably see some familiar names, such as Cesar Chavez and Rosa Parks. We learn a lot about some historical figures. But that means other people’s stories aren’t told as often. In this series, you’ll learn about some people you don’t know—and how their stories connect to the people you do know. With key biographical information and text features that add more context, young readers will discover important stories they should know and explore why these stories aren’t well known.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Artika Tyner is a motivational speaker, author, and educator who helps people of all ages connect with their gifts and develop sustainable change in their family, workplace, community, or school. Tyner’s work is grounded in extensive experience as a lawyer, social change agent, researcher, and nonprofit founder of the Planting People Growing Justice Leadership Institute. As a thought leader, author, and designer of programs to drive organizational DEI initiatives, she has had an impact that spans from Fortune 500 companies to grassroots organizations; as an author, she has inspired and educated young people through books such as Amazing Africa A to Z, Justice Makes A Difference, and Your Passport to South Africa. Her most recent books are The Untold Story of Sarah Keys Evans: Civil Rights Soldier; The Untold Story of John P. Parker: Underground Railroad Conductor; and The Untold Story of Annie Turnbo Malone: Hair Care Millionaire (all in the First But Forgotten series from Capstone Press, ages 8-12) and Black Achievements in STEM: Celebrating Katherine Johnson, Robert D. Bullard, and More; Black Achievements in Activism: Celebrating Leonidas H. Berry, Marley Dias, and More; and Black Achievements in Politics: Celebrating Shirley Chisholm, Barack Obama, and More (all in the Black Excellence Project/Read Woke Books series from Lerner Publications, ages 10-14).

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
2:15-3:00pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
It’s the beginning of sophomore year, and Piedad “Piddy” Sanchez is having a hard time adjusting to her new high school. Things don’t get any easier when Piddy learns that Yaqui Delgado hates her and wants to kick her ass. Piddy doesn’t even know who Yaqui is, never mind what she’s done to piss her off. At first, Piddy is more concerned with learning about the father she’s never met, navigating her rocky relationship with her mom, and staying in touch with her best friend, Mitzi. But when the harassment escalates, avoiding Yaqui and her gang takes over Piddy’s life. Is there any way for Piddy to survive without closing herself off from those who care about her—or running away? More relevant than ever a decade after its initial publication, Mel Valentine Vargas’s graphic novel adaptation of Meg Medina’s ultimately empowering story is poised to be discovered by a new generation of readers.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Mel Valentine Vargas is a queer, Miami born, Chicago based, Latine comic creator and illustrator. They work largely with digital media and have a BA in illustration from Columbia College Chicago. Mel loves drawing minorities and art that their younger self needed while growing up. Their work is largely inspired by LGBT, Hispanic, and fem experiences, and is focused on graphic storytelling with themes that help highlight minority lifestyles of all shapes and sizes. It is Mel's goal to ensure that their illustrations help people who are not often represented feel a little less alone and a lot more love. Mel has worked with Candlewick, Little Brown, Harper Collins, and Penguin Random House. They have also done editorial work with many publications including The Chicago Reader and Lions Roar Magazine. When they aren’t working, Mel can be found playing with their cats, eating gyoza, or playing farming simulator games.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
12:45-1:30pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
Six decades ago, on August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom—a moment often revered as the culmination of this Black-led protest. But at its core, the March on Washington was not a beautiful dream of future integration; it was a revolutionary protest highlighting themes that still resonate to this day. Without diminishing the words of Dr. King, More Than a Dream is a gripping middle-grade book that describes the event’s radical roots and the underappreciated role of Black women. Authors Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long (who also wrote an acclaimed middle-grade history of Jackie Robinson, Call Him Jack) look at the march through a wider lens, using Black newspaper reports as a primary resource, recognizing the work of socialist organizers and Black women protesters, and repositioning this day as radical in its roots, methods, demands, and results.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Yohuru Williams is Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. The former chief historian of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, he appeared in Ken Burns’s Jackie Robinson and was one of the hosts of Sound Smart, the History Channel’s popular YouTube program. His educational videos on civil rights, social movements, and other historic events have garnered over 1 million views. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including the recently released After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America, and he has appeared on a variety of media outlets, including ABC, CNN, MSNBC, HISTORY, BET, CSPAN, and NPR.

Progress Center, Youth Stage, 11–11:30am

ABOUT THE BOOK
The Geisel Award-winning creators of See the Cat and See the Dog are back! This time, Max the dog and Baby Cakes the cat are grappling with some curious things they can’t see.

See the wind blow the leaves.
See the wind blow the leaves off the page.
See the wind blow the dog off the page.

In a new trio of stories, Max and Baby Cakes encounter a scare-happy ghost who has a run-in with a mirror, the wind at its blustery best, and a teeny-tiny fairy with a wayward wand who may have met her match. Beginning readers will laugh out loud when they “see” these invisible things that go “Boo!,”“Whoosh!,” and “Hey! . . . Will you let me back into the book?”

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Mike Wohnoutka has illustrated over 30 books for children. He is also the author-illustrator of several picture books, including Dad’s First Day, So Big!, and the Croc & Turtle series. His various clients include Bloomsbury Publishing, Candlewick Press, Penguin-Random House, Christy Ottaviano Books, Holiday House, Clarion Books, Disney-Hyperion Books, Scholastic Books, Cricket Magazine Group, General Mills, 3M, Medtronic, and Peaceable Kingdom Press. A native of Spicer, Minnesota, Mike currently lives with his family in Minneapolis.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
1:30-2:15pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
Kayla is just an ordinary girl—or so she thinks. When a day at the state fair is interrupted by the news that she’s the daughter of a “Dark Lord,” she and her family are quickly whisked to another world—one that’s chock-full of magic but lacking in technology. As her family encounters fantastical creatures in place of their Earthly gadgets, Kayla must prepare to meet her father, the Dark Lord himself, for the very first time. All Kayla wants is to go home, but she must learn magic to do so, and for the Dark Lord’s daughter, the road to mastering magic is filled with evil traditions. As she ventures closer to her father, Kayla must decide whether she is destined for darkness or can become a new kind of Dark Lady.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For over twenty years, Patricia C. Wrede has expanded the boundaries of young-adult fantasy writing. Her first novel, Shadow Magic (1982), introduced Lyra, a magical world in which she set four more novels. Her other series include the Enchanted Forest Chronicles; the Cecelia and Kate novels, co-written with Caroline Stevermer; the Mairelon books, which take place in Regency England; and the Old-West Frontier Magic series. Wrede lives and works in Minnesota.

Progress Center, Youth Stage,
3:00-3:45pm

ABOUT THE BOOK
“Just do this one thing for me”: Drew’s mother says it more often than good morning. Heidi Hill has been juggling shady side hustles for all of Drew’s seventeen years, and Drew knows that “one thing” really means all the necessary things her mother thinks are boring, including taking care of her fifteen-year-old sister and eight-year-old brother. In fact, Drew is the closest thing to a responsible adult they’ve ever known. When their mother disappears on the way to a New Year’s Eve concert in Mexico and her schemes start unraveling, Drew is faced with a choice: Follow the rules, do the responsible thing, and walk away–alone–from her mother’s mess, or hope the weather stays cold, keep the cons going, and just maybe hold her family together.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Zimmermann writes books for young people, and her debut YA novel My Eyes Are Up Here (Dutton, 2020) won a Minnesota Book Award. She lives in Minneapolis, where you can sometimes find her telling true stories live on stage, or striding through the snow in search of the perfect mocha.

Progress Center, 12:00-12:30pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
Charles Adams is a product of the Minneapolis’s North Side, the city’s poorest neighborhood, and of North High, the state’s poorest school. After graduation he joined the Minneapolis Police Department, overcoming racial prejudice within its ranks to become his alma mater’s resource officer. North High was in rapid decline—once the centerpiece of the community, the school was on the verge of folding. Then something magical happened: Adams stepped in as football coach and transformed a winless team into state champions. As North High began to thrive, Adams was hailed as a model of what a Black man from a Black neighborhood might be. That lasted until Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, which brought a rain of chaos upon Minneapolis. Twin Cities is the memoir of a divided life: a Black football coach during a time of racial reckoning, and a Black police officer in Minneapolis during the time of George Floyd. It is the story of the space between reality and perception, between law and justice. It is the story of what can happen when a man gives everything to his city in an effort to help kids envision a better future, only to have his city turn on him in response.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charles Adams is the head coach of the North Minneapolis Community High School football team, and director of team security for the Minnesota Twins. In 2016, his North High Polars became the first Minneapolis public school to win a state championship since 1976, while Adams became the state’s first Black coach to achieve the honor. Adams spent twenty years with the Minneapolis Police Department, retiring after Minneapolis Public Schools ended its contract with MPD and eliminated Adams’s position as a school resource officer. His story has been featured on HBO’s Real Sports, in the New York Times, on National Public Radio, and in Showtime’s four-part miniseries, Boys in Blue. He was a featured speaker at the 2021 Aspen Ideas Institute. He lives just north of Minneapolis.

Progress Center, 1:30-2:00pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
1964. Karachi, Pakistan. Rozeena is running out of time. She’ll lose her home—her parents’ safe haven since fleeing India and the terrors of Partition—if her medical career doesn’t take off soon. But success may come with an unexpected price. Meanwhile, the interwoven lives of her childhood best friends seem to be unraveling with each passing day, and the once small differences between their families’ social standing now threaten to divide them. Then one fateful night someone ends up dead and the life they once took for granted shatters. Years later, Rozeena receives a call from a voice she never thought she’d hear again. What begins as an ask to look after a friend’s granddaughter grows into an unconventional friendship—one that unearths buried secrets and just might ruin everything Rozeena has worked so hard to protect. Captivating and atmospheric, Under the Tamarind Tree shows us the high-stakes ripple effects of generational trauma, and the lengths people will go to protect the ones they love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Nigar Alam spent her childhood in Turkey, Nigeria, Italy, Kenya, Indonesia, and the United States before returning to Karachi. With an MBA and CPA, she has worked in both brand management and auditing. Currently, Alam teaches at Anoka-Ramsey Community College and lives with her family in Minnesota.

Progress Center, 10:30-11:00am
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
Asé is a word of affirmation, of agreement, that the storytellers in this anthology give to each other. Rather than solely looking for that affirmation from the outside world, the storytellers gather together to share and bear witness to the life unfolding before them. In this anthology, full of writing from our Black sisters, we are taught to embrace the fullness and diversity of our spirituality. We are encouraged in our mothering, whether we are natural mothers or not. We are given the courage to embrace life and love—courage when these things are really good, and courage to still lean in when it hurts. We are brave enough to cherish our strength and not use our strength as an excuse to hide from our vulnerabilities. We invite you, reader, yes you, to join us as we tell these stories with ourselves, understanding that our asé transcends our individual experiences and is shared by Black people all around the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ebony Aya is the founder of the Aya Collective, a space that centers the expertise and experience of Black women. In this work, she has gathered Black women around writing, education and training, and spiritual practice. In 2020, Ebony launched the Aya Collective’s first online writing cohort, Fragmented and Whole, as well as hosted a summer teach-in series, Talking Back, which featured four Black women scholars and thinkers sharing their work as it pertains to identity, politics, culture, and spirituality. In 2021, Ebony hosted the Aya Collective’s #BlackWomenWriting series featuring six Black women authors with recently published work. Ebony is also a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota in Curriculum and Instruction, with minors in Culture and Teaching and African American and African Studies. She is the author of the recently published books The Gospel According to a Black Woman and Incomplete Stories: On Loss, Love, and Hope.

Progress Center, 12:30-1:00pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
The Little House on the Prairie was a childhood TV classic for a generation of kids, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s novels have never gone out of style for young bookworms. Her stories of her family’s life in the 1870s offer countless gems of wisdom, and many facets of their lifestyle and the skills they relied on have become some of the hottest trends of today, from sourdough bread and modern pioneering to DIY prairie dresses and needlepoint. Little House Life Hacks playfully compiles the most crucial takeaways from that world, practical enough to work for pioneering stock and updated for today’s evolving world. The Ingalls are the perfect reminders of what’s important: love, family, community, honest work, and integrity. Alongside the life advice are selected inspirational quotes from the Little House books and show and fun pop culture tidbits (like that The Rock’s first celebrity crush was original mean girl Nellie Oleson), as well as with meaningful takeaways for creating more balance, wellness, and fun in all aspects of your life.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
An author and humorist, Angie Bailey writes the Texts from Mittens site, books and calendar, as well as whiskerslist: the kitty classifieds. She’s also been contributor to the Catster print magazine and site. Her co-written book, Little House Life Hacks, was released in August 2023. She particularly enjoys writing about ’70s/’80s pop culture and cats doing people things. Angie lives in Minneapolis, MN with her husband and two cats who think it’s always mealtime.

Susie Shubert helps others navigate their unexpected journeys as a writer and content creator for modernprairie.com, a tarot advisor, and a former graduate of the school of rock. The basis of all that she does is her life coaching certification through Oprah’s favorite, Dr. Martha Beck, and the loving support of her husband and two kids. She lives in Minneapolis.

Progress Center, 4:00-4:30pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
Mikkel Beckmen did a solo thru hike of the Superior Hiking Trail in 2021. The 310-mile trail skirts Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world. On his 24 days of hiking, he brought no music, electronics, or even books. Just a journal to record thoughts each day. Gifts of the Superior Hiking Trail: Walking Into Myself has 24 chapters, one for each day of hiking the trail. It is an ode to self-discovery, the natural world, and one person's question: "Who am I in relation to wilderness and to the land?"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mikkel Beckmen is a folk percussionist who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has been involved for over 30 years in the human rights struggle to end homelessness. He prefers being outside, but when inside, he drinks coffee, reads books, and listens to records.

Progress Center, 2:00-2:30pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
Vlad Taltos is in love. With a former assassin who may just be better than he is at the Game. Women like this don’t come along every day and no way is he passing up a sure bet. So a wedding is being planned. Along with a shady deal gone wrong and a dead man who owes Vlad money. Setting up the first and trying to deal with the second is bad enough. And then bigger powers decide that Vlad is the perfect patsy to shake the power structure of the kingdom. More's the pity that his soul is sent walkabout to do it. How might Vlad get his soul back and have any shot at a happy ending? Well, there’s the tale . . . Hold on to your hats and get ready for another swashbuckling adventure with Tsalmoth, the next installment in Steven Brust’s bestselling Vlad Taltos series.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven Brust is the author of a number of bestselling fantasy novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Dzur and Tiassa. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Progress Center, 3:00-3:30pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
Lesbian bars have always been treasured safe spaces for their customers, providing not only a good time but a shelter from societal alienation and outright persecution. In 1987, there were 206 of them in America. Today, only a couple dozen remain. How and why did this happen? What has been lost—or possibly gained—by such a decline? What transpires when marginalized communities become more accepted and mainstream? In Moby Dyke, Krista Burton attempts to answer these questions firsthand, venturing on an epic cross-country pilgrimage to the last few remaining dyke bars. While Burton sets out on the excursion to assess the current state of lesbian bars, she also winds up examining her own personal journey, from coming out to her Mormon parents to recently marrying her husband, a trans man whose presence on the trip underscores the important conversation about who precisely is welcome in certain queer spaces—and how they and their occupants continue to evolve.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Krista Burton is the creator of the popular blog Effing Dykes and was a frequent contributor to the online magazine Rookie. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Elle, and VICE. She lives in Minnesota.

Progress Center, 1:00-1:30pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K’s invitation to work as a medic at a field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers and Indian peacekeepers arrive only to commit further atrocities, Sashi begins to question where she stands. When one of her medical school professors, a Tamil feminist and dissident, invites her to join a secret project documenting human rights violations, she embarks on a dangerous path that will change her forever. Set during the early years of Sri Lanka’s three-decade civil war, Brotherless Night is a heartrending portrait of one woman’s moral journey and a testament to both the enduring impact of war and the bonds of home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
V. V. Ganeshananthan (she/her) is the author of the novels Brotherless Night (a New York Times Editors’ Choice) and Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others. A former vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, she has also served on the board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and is presently a member of the boards of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota and co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast on Literary Hub, which is about the intersection of literature and the news.

Progress Center, 2:00-2:30pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
When Aaron Langford’s friend, Otis Thomas, gives him a divination tray as a housewarming gift, Aaron thinks nothing of it. However, as weird occurrences begin to happen around him, Aaron’s life is suddenly thrust into turmoil with the disappearance of his son, Asher, and daughter, Imani. As Aaron’s marriage and life spiral out of control and the police zero in on him as the prime suspect in his children’s disappearance, Aaron realizes he and his friends may have unleashed ancient supernatural powers that were best left alone. In a desperate attempt to bring his children back and clear his name, Aaron decides to embark on an improbable journey with the help of the divination’s tray original owner, Urbi Houna, as his guide. Shadowland explores one man’s attempts to overcome death and despair as well as pierce the veil between life and death.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
P. L. Hampton is a fiction writer, college professor, and law student currently pursuing his JD. Before returning to academia as a professor and student, he worked for close to twelve years in various sectors of the finance industry. Currently, P.L. Hampton resides along with his wife in Minnesota.

Progress Center, 1:00-1:30pm
More info here

ABOUT THE BOOK
Chuck Gross would like nothing more than to prune himself from his family tree. He’s already clipped his name, turning Charles Grossheart, Jr.—son of a billionaire labor exploiter, weapons manufacturer, and climate change denier—into ordinary good-guy Chuck, the “self-made” proprietor of an up-and-coming punk label. But when Daddy threatens to cut him off, Chuck is forced to get a “real job”—and conveniently, an old college friend has just swept back into his life with the perfect opportunity. Famed Harvard dropout and biotech darling Olivia Watts says she is on the verge of totally reinventing the field of medicine, but when Chuck signs on, he soon discovers that things at the vast Kenosis campus are not quite how they appear. Is Olivia simply a scammer, or does her technology threaten to usher humanity toward a far bloodier fate? Moreover, does Chuck stand a chance of stopping her? Daniel Hornsby hilariously skewers the insatiable hungers of the ultrarich in Sucker, a novel that no one will be able to resist sinking their teeth into.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Hornsby was born in Muncie, Indiana. He holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan, where he received Hopwood Awards for both short fiction and the novel, and an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of a novel, Via Negativa, and his stories and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, The Missouri Review, and Joyland. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Progress Center, 11:30am-12:00pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
“Diane Jarvenpa's latest collection, Shy Lands, teaches us how to engage the natural world with the careful listening of an introvert, ‘pushed by the wind . . . hearing the drops of dew.’ Her attention draws us to the tiny things that make up a whole landscape, and that, she tells us, ‘is where the village of [her] mind has brought [her].’ She uses words the way an impressionist painter deploys color, ‘know[ing] how all this works, the close and the distant, / the heap and faded, / the swoop and the click.’ This new beauty is only possible in a shy and quiet land, the one she creates for us here.” —Joyce Sutphen, author of Carrying Water to the Field

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Jarvenpa is the author of Divining the Landscape, Ancient Wonders, the Modern World and swift, bright, drift, The Way She Told Her Story, and The Tender Wild Things, which received the Midwest Independent Publishers Association book award in poetry. Her latest book is Shy Lands. She has received artist initiative and fellowship grants in writing and music from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She is a teaching artist with the Alzheimer's Poetry Project-MN. She is also a singer- songwriter who records under the name Diane Jarvi.

Progress Center, 1:30-2:00pm
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Timm Gay Johnson was an unrepentant nudist. He didn’t care whether anyone saw him naked. In fact, if anyone appeared at the front door, he never bothered to put anything on. “Just in case the Jehovah’s Witnesses pay a visit,” he always said. Likewise, when guests came over for dinner, he never put on his clothes. When a legendary Minneapolis florist with an oversized penis the stuff of legend in the local gay community suddenly dies, his partner Howie Dwight Taft has a real problem when he dates for the first time in 30 years. How does a perfectly average-sized, overweight, and predictable middle-aged man try to find a new husband of his own? Covering some 40 years of gay Minneapolis history, Widower, 48, Seeks Husband explores what it means to be an older gay widower.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Raymond Luczak, a native of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, is the author and editor of many books, including Flannelwood, The Kinda Fella I Am, and the award-winning Deaf gay novel Men with Their Hands. Some LGBTQ titles that he's edited over the years include QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology and Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman. His book once upon a twin: poems was listed as a Top Ten U.P. Notable Book of the Year for 2021. His most recent title was A Quiet Foghorn: More Notes from a Deaf Gay Life. An inaugural Zoeglossia Fellow, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Progress Center, 11:30am-12:00pm
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In When I Was Young and Old, Freya Manfred's new collection of poetry and prose explores those evocative yet often illusive connections between experience, memory, and emotion. Often the poet questions herself, finds herself briefly unmoored and filled with a nameless yearning that crystallizes in images of the nature that surrounds her or of loved ones, now present or vividly remembered. The prose pieces counterbalance the poetic reflections, offering memories of childhood games and the anxious and exciting campus parties of young adulthood. This panoply of glimpses into a life richly lived yet also filled with longing unfolds with the simplicity and imaginative concreteness of a true master.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Freya Manfred is a longtime Midwesterner who has lived on both coasts. She attended Macalester College and Stanford University, and has received a Radcliffe Grant and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant. Her seventh collection, Swimming With A Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle, won the 2009 Midwest Booksellers Choice Award for Poetry, and her poems have appeared in more than a hundred reviews and magazines and more than fifty anthologies. Her memoir, Frederick Manfred: A Daughter Remembers, was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award and an Iowa Historical Society Award. Her more recent memoir is Raising Twins: A True Life Adventure. She lives with her husband, screenwriter Thomas Pope, in Stillwater, Minnesota. Their sons, visual artists Bly Pope and Rowan Pope, have illustrated many of her books.

Progress Center, 4:00-4:30pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
When Bob Dylan recorded Blood on the Tracks in New York in September 1974, it was a great album. But it was not the album now ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the ten best of all time. “When something’s not right, it’s wrong,” as Dylan puts it in “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”—and something about that original recording led him to a studio in his native Minnesota to re-record five songs, including “Idiot Wind” and “Tangled Up in Blue.” Six Minnesota musicians participated in that two-night recording session at Sound 80, bringing their unique sound to some of Dylan’s best-known songs—only to have their names left off the album and their contribution unacknowledged for more than forty years. Blood in the Tracks tells the story of those two nights in Minneapolis, introduces the musicians who gave the album so much of its ultimate form and sound, and describes their decades-long fight for recognition.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Paul Metsa is a musician and songwriter from Minnesota. Born on the Iron Range, he has been based in Minneapolis since 1978. He has received seven Minnesota Music Awards and has played more than five thousand gigs, including forays to Iceland and Siberia. He lives in Northeast Minneapolis with his faithful dog, Blackie; a dozen or so guitars; twenty-five orange crates of LPs; hundreds of books, compact discs, magazines, and vintage postcards; and several kitchen cupboards full of old cassettes.

Rick Shefchik spent almost thirty years in daily journalism, mostly as a critic, reporter, and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He is author of several books, including Everybody’s Heard about the Bird: The True Story of 1960s Rock ’n’ Roll in Minnesota.

Progress Center, 1:00-1:30pm
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In a reverse of the American immigrant novel, The All-American follows Bucky, a Korean American high school senior whose real name no one can pronounce. Never knowing his mother and abandoned by his father, Bucky grows up in a rural Washington trailer park dreaming of playing college football. However, his football dreams are snuffed out as the U.S. government deports him and the South Korean government conscripts him. With this, Bucky confronts the fact that how he sees himself is not how others see him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joe Milan Jr. is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Waldorf University, was the David T.K. Wong Creative Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia, UK, and a Black Mountain Institute and Barrick Ph.D. Fellow of Creative Writing at University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA. He has served as fiction editor at Witness and is an MFA graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He’s American with Korean ancestry and taught in Korea for nine years. His work has appeared in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, F(r)iction, LA Review of Books, The Kyoto Journal, and more.

Progress Center, 3:00-3:30pm
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For 25 years, Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl has been a fixture of Twin Cities life, telling the stories of our people, places, and (sometimes delicious) things. What do we see looking back at a quarter-century of Dara? A place brimming with unforgettable Minnesota eccentrics—from libertarians at the gas station to Aquatennial Queens to artists working in the medium of dog hair. A place full of culinary adventurers and ambassadors—the Ann Kims, Sean Shermans, and Juicy Lucys in our midst. A place profound and complex—from George Floyd Square to the shores of mighty Lake Superior. A place uniquely Twin Cities and Minnesotan. The Essential Dear Dara is a must-read for people who want to meet the people in that neighborhood of four million souls who call the land in and around the upper Mississippi home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl is one of the most awarded magazine writers in the country, with six James Beard Award wins (and 15 nominations) and another six CRMAs. She grew up in New York City, little aware of her destiny: to write about the quirks and passions, the foods and cocktails, the people and places of Minnesota. She started her work life as a 13-year-old restaurant dishwasher and, after coming to Minnesota to attend Carleton College, became City Pages' restaurant critic in 1997. Since then she has worked as a staff writer, columnist, and critic at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Delta Sky, Minnesota Monthly, Gourmet, Saveur, Food & Wine, Experience Life, Bon Appétit, and other publications. For eight years she hosted a radio show on WCCO called "Off the Menu," and she is a regular guest on Minnesota Public Radio. She lives in south Minneapolis with a dog the size of a cat, a cat the size of a cat, and two children who are much bigger than cats and want to be left out of it.

Progress Center, 2:30-3:00pm
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One afternoon, Emma Nadler gets a call from her daughter's doctor that changes her life forever. Faced with the realities of raising a child with a rare genetic condition, Nadler must confront her preconceptions of motherhood and her perfectionistic beliefs. With a generous wit and a wide-open mind, Nadler—who also happens to be a psychotherapist—offers a rare window into the unconventional ways she and her family adapt to their improbable path. As she and her husband join the 53 million caregivers in the United States, Nadler wrestles to belong in a society that devalues both caregivers and people with disabilities. She illustrates the complexity, grief, and joy of living an unexpected life, all with the wisdom of a therapist, the heart of a loving parent, and the ingenuity of a queer woman who refuses to be shackled by cultural expectations.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emma Nadler is a writer, speaker, and psychotherapist. In her private practice, she helps people better understand and tolerate emotions, build deeper relationships, and find meaning in life’s challenges. She is passionate about transforming her own experiences as a parent of a child with disabilities into empathy, compassion, humor, and, of course, stories. She lives in Minnesota with her (never boring) family and Benny, who is arguably the cutest little dog this side of the Mississippi.

Progress Center, 11:00-11:30am
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indiscernible elements: Calcium explores the path a molecule can take through various stages of life and death - from the perspective of Calcium itself. Through the use of detailed illustrations, poetry, and dialogue, author Korynn Newville creates a discussion around how humans can change the way they create the built environment to be more conscious of the wondrous systems at work in nature. If the same Calcium in a femur bone can be used in concrete to build a cathedral, a house, a sidewalk or can be recycled by a nearby plant or tree, how can humans purposefully help that process along? What would Calcium design if it had the choice? What would Calcium say if it could tell you its story?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Korynn Newville received a master's degree in architecture from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Bachelor of design from the University of Minnesota. She is currently an architectural designer studying to become a licensed architect. She strives to utilize sustainable building practices in her professional projects. She has a passion for creating artwork through common materials that are used to construct the buildings she designs. She spends her free time creating art and enjoying the Teton Mountain Range with her partner and her dog.

Progress Center, 12:00-12:30pm
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In this remarkable memoir, Jeremy Norton marshals twenty-two years of professional experience to offer, with compassion and critique, an extraordinary portrayal of emergency responders. Norton brings brutally honest insight and grave social conscience to his account, presenting a rare insider’s perspective on the insidious role of sexism and machismo in his profession, as well as an intimate observer’s view of individuals trapped in dire circumstances and a society ill equipped to confront trauma and death. Trauma Sponges captures in arresting detail the personal and social toll the job exacts, as well as the unique perspective afforded by sustained direct encounters with the sick, the dying, and the dead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeremy Norton has been a firefighter/EMT with the Minneapolis Fire Department since 2000; he was promoted to captain in 2007 and heads Station 17 in south Minneapolis. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., he received a bachelor’s degree from Tufts University and a master’s degree in creative writing from Boston University. After teaching high school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Norton moved to Minneapolis, where he taught creative writing at the Loft Literary Center before joining the MFD.

Progress Center, 2:30-3:00pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Dr. Pierre Sartor wrote an inspiring first-person account of how he treated more than 1,000 patients – and by his reckoning, lost only five—which lay forgotten in a lockbox of family artifacts until it was discovered decades later by his granddaughter, Beth Obermeyer, a journalist and author of three previous books. Based upon Dr. Sartor’s memoir and her years of research, she vividly reconstructs his life. A pioneer in the geographic as well as the medical sense, Dr. Sartor left his flourishing urban practice and settled his family in rural Iowa where, he said, “I am needed.” Those words took on special resonance in the early months of 1918, amid the gathering storm of the influenza pandemic. This story speaks across generations to the qualities that make a compassionate, skilled physician—a compelling example of doing the best of things in the worst of times. Because, when winter comes, we all want a doctor like Pierre Sartor.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A performer, entrepreneur and author, Mary Beth Sartor Obermeyer used her journalism degree from Iowa State University and a lifetime of dance and music to seed three careers: dance/soloist, Minnesota Dance Theatre; founder of TA DA! Special Events/Public Relations; and author of three previous books, one of which, The Days of Song and Lilacs, was a finalist in the Midwest Book Awards. Obermeyer has conducted seminars for many higher education, business and professional groups, including Public Relations Society of America. As a dual citizen of Luxembourg and the United States, she has visited the key places in her grandfather’s life and conducted years of research to bring his story to life in her fourth book, “When Winter Came; A Country Doctor’s Journey to Fight the Flu Pandemic of 1918,” Mayo Clinic Press.

Progress Center, 2:00-2:30pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Imagine you are on the way to a remote mountain cabin with your friends. Upon arrival, you discover an abandoned armored van with fifteen million dollars on board. Would you take the money? Nova and her friends answer with a resounding yes. Perhaps their answer would have been different had they known that a professional killer was already tracking down the money. Or that a legendary creature known as the Wraith roams the mountain, ravenous with hunger. Thinking they’re safe and anonymous, Nova and her friends divvy up the stolen cash, unaware who or what is after them, unaware that soon they will be fighting for their lives. Claw Heart Mountain will keep you on the edge of your seat, second guess any past bad decisions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Oppegaard is the author of The Town Built on Sorrow, the 2016 MN Book Award finalist The Firebug of Balrog County, the Bram Stoker-nominated The Suicide Collectors, And the Hills Opened Up, and Wormwood, Nevada. David grew up in the small town of Lake Crystal, MN, and wrote his first novel at the age of fifteen. David’s work is a blend of YA, literary fiction, science fiction, horror, and dark fantasy. He holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Hamline University and a B.A. in English from St. Olaf College. He has worked as an optician, a receptionist, a standardized test scorer, a farm hand, an editorial assistant, a trash picker, a library assistant, a seasonal bookstore employee, and as a child minder on a British cruise ship. He teaches the occasional fiction class at Hamline University and currently works at the University of Minnesota. He lives in St. Paul, MN.

Progress Center, 4:00-4:30pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
In Charlie Parr’s fiction debut, Last of the Better Days Ahead, readers are treated to a deep dive into the architecture of a group of his songs. Like old, well-hewn gospel songs, there is both darkness and light. There are tales of childhood, families, cantankerous uncles and aunts, and slightly lost individuals. Through keyholes opening into rays of light, the reader watches the lives of everyday humans unrolling in unheroic yet poetic and unvarnished ways that those who love Parr’s songs will cherish.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charlie Parr is an American country blues musician. Born in Austin, Minnesota, he spent part of his childhood in Hollandale before starting his music career in Duluth. His influences include Charlie Patton, Bukka White, Reverend Gary Davis, Dave Van Ronk, and Mississippi John Hurt.

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ABOUT THE BOOK
In the 1970s, Lynette Reini fell in love with a fascinating, talented man named Steve Grandell. They married in 1983; five years later, Steve came out to her as transgender. Through the following decades, as her spouse developed a public persona as Venus de Mars and fronted the band All the Pretty Horses, the couple struggled to stay together. They navigated an often hostile, anti-trans environment; fractures grew between them as Venus pushed the band toward success. Against the backdrop of the art, literary, and indie rock worlds of Minneapolis and New York in the 1990s and early 2000s, Wild Things shows how, through hard work and love, they invented a way of being who they truly are.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lynette Reini-Grandell is the author of the poetry collections Wild Verge and Approaching the Gate, winner of the 2015 Northeastern Minnesota book award for poetry. She teaches English and creative writing at Normandale Community College and the Loft and has received support for her work from the Finlandia Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board. A multidisciplinary collaborator, she performs at spoken-word venues with the Bosso Poetry Company and the jazz collective Sonoglyph. Her poetry is part of a permanent installation at the Carlton Arms Art Hotel in Manhattan. She lives in Minneapolis on the ancestral homeland of the Dakota people.

Progress Center, 1:30-2:00pm
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Jason Fitger may be the last faculty member the dean wants for the job, but he’s the only professor available to chaperone Payne University’s annual “Experience: Abroad” (he has long been on the record objecting to the absurd and gratuitous colon between the words) occurring during the three weeks of winter term. Among his charges are a claustrophobe with a juvenile detention record, a student who erroneously believes he is headed for the Caribbean, a pair of unreconciled lovers, a set of undifferentiated twins, and one young woman who has never been away from her cat before. Through a sea of troubles—personal, institutional, and international—the gimlet-eyed, acid-tongued Fitger strives to navigate safe passage for all concerned, revealing much about the essential need for human connection and the sometimes surprising places in which it is found.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julie Schumacher grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and graduated from Oberlin College and Cornell University. Her first novel, The Body Is Water, was published by Soho Press in 1995 and was an ALA Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Minnesota Book Award. Her other books include the novel Dear Committee Members, a short story collection, An Explanation for Chaos, and five books for younger readers. She lives in St. Paul and is a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program and the Department of English at the University of Minnesota.

Progress Center, 11:00-11:30am
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"‘You gotta find reflections of yourself however you can to survive this country,’" writes Said Shaiye in this innovative AF (Afrofuturist) memoir. Are You Borg Now? cyphers with trauma through a poetics of refusal via hard and beautiful language. Finding vigor in Islam and mirrors in Star Trek: Voyager, Shaiye shifts achingly between memory and improvisation. This is a serious debut." —Douglas Kearney, Author of Sho

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Said Shaiye is an Autistic Somali writer and photographer who lives in Minneapolis. His debut book, Are You Borg Now?, was named a 2022 Minnesota Book Award Finalist in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir. He has published poetry and prose in Indiana Review, Texas Review, Entropy, Diagram, and elsewhere. He has contributed essays to the anthologies Muslim American Writers at Home and We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World. He holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota, where he was a Graduate Instructor of Creative Writing, as well as a Judd International Research Fellow. He is a 2023 Loft Mirrors & Windows Fellow, where he is working on several children’s book manuscripts. He teaches writing at various colleges in the Twin Cities area, as well as with Unrestricted Interest, an organization dedicated to fostering a love of self expression in Autistic children.

Progress Center, 10:30-11:00am
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What are the politics of nature? Who owns it, where is it, what role does it play in our lives? Does it need to be tamed? Are we ourselves natural? In A Darker Wilderness, a constellation of luminary writers reflect on the significance of nature in their lived experience and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks in the United States. Each of these essays engages with a single archival object, whether directly or obliquely, exploring stories spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles, traveling from roots to space and finding rich Blackness everywhere. A scrapbook, a family chest, a quilt—and an astounding work of historical engagement and literary accomplishment—A Darker Wilderness is a collection brimming with abundance and insight.

ABOUT THE EDITOR
Erin Sharkey is a writer, arts and abolition organizer, cultural worker, and film producer based in Minneapolis. She is the cofounder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental arts collective called Free Black Dirt and is the producer of film projects including Sweetness of Wild, an episodic web film project, and Small Business Revolution (Hulu), which explored challenges and opportunities for Black-owned businesses in the Twin Cities in the summer of 2021. Sharkey has received fellowships and residencies from the Loft Mentor Series, VONA/Voices, the Givens Foundation, Coffee House Press, the Bell Museum of Natural History, and the Jerome Foundation. In 2021, Sharkey was awarded the Black Seed Fellowship from Black Visions and the Headwaters Foundation. She has an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.

Progress Center, 4:00-4:30pm
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When Bob Dylan recorded Blood on the Tracks in New York in September 1974, it was a great album. But it was not the album now ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the ten best of all time. “When something’s not right, it’s wrong,” as Dylan puts it in “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”—and something about that original recording led him to a studio in his native Minnesota to re-record five songs, including “Idiot Wind” and “Tangled Up in Blue.” Six Minnesota musicians participated in that two-night recording session at Sound 80, bringing their unique sound to some of Dylan’s best-known songs—only to have their names left off the album and their contribution unacknowledged for more than forty years. Blood in the Tracks tells the story of those two nights in Minneapolis, introduces the musicians who gave the album so much of its ultimate form and sound, and describes their decades-long fight for recognition.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Rick Shefchik spent almost thirty years in daily journalism, mostly as a critic, reporter, and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He is author of several books, including Everybody’s Heard about the Bird: The True Story of 1960s Rock ’n’ Roll in Minnesota.

Paul Metsa is a musician and songwriter from Minnesota. Born on the Iron Range, he has been based in Minneapolis since 1978. He has received seven Minnesota Music Awards and has played more than five thousand gigs, including forays to Iceland and Siberia. He lives in Northeast Minneapolis with his faithful dog, Blackie; a dozen or so guitars; twenty-five orange crates of LPs; hundreds of books, compact discs, magazines, and vintage postcards; and several kitchen cupboards full of old cassettes.

Progress Center, 12:30-1:00pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
The Little House on the Prairie was a childhood TV classic for a generation of kids, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s novels have never gone out of style for young bookworms. Her stories of her family’s life in the 1870s offer countless gems of wisdom, and many facets of their lifestyle and the skills they relied on have become some of the hottest trends of today, from sourdough bread and modern pioneering to DIY prairie dresses and needlepoint. Little House Life Hacks playfully compiles the most crucial takeaways from that world, practical enough to work for pioneering stock and updated for today’s evolving world. The Ingalls are the perfect reminders of what’s important: love, family, community, honest work, and integrity. Alongside the life advice are selected inspirational quotes from the Little House books and show and fun pop culture tidbits (like that The Rock’s first celebrity crush was original mean girl Nellie Oleson), as well as with meaningful takeaways for creating more balance, wellness, and fun in all aspects of your life.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Susie Shubert helps others navigate their unexpected journeys as a writer and content creator for modernprairie.com, a tarot advisor, and a former graduate of the school of rock. The basis of all that she does is her life coaching certification through Oprah’s favorite, Dr. Martha Beck, and the loving support of her husband and two kids. She lives in Minneapolis.

An author and humorist, Angie Bailey writes the Texts from Mittens site, books and calendar , as well as whiskerslist: the kitty classifieds. She’s also been contributor to the Catster print magazine and site. Her co-written book, Little House Life Hacks, was released in August 2023. She particularly enjoys writing about ’70s/’80s pop culture and cats doing people things. Angie lives in Minneapolis, MN with her husband and two cats who think it’s always mealtime.

Progress Center, 2:30-3:00pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
In 1942, the US government began construction on a sixty-thousand-acre planned community named Oak Ridge in a rural area west of Knoxville, Tennessee. Unmarked on regional maps, Oak Ridge attracted more than seventy thousand people eager for high-paying wartime jobs. Among them was author Emily Strasser's grandfather George, a chemist. All employees were provided only the minimum information necessary to perform their jobs. It wasn't until three years later that the citizens of Oak Ridge, and the rest of the world, learned that Oak Ridge was one of three secret cities constructed by the Manhattan Project for the express purpose of developing the first atomic bomb, which devastated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. In Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History, Emily Strasser exposes the toxic legacy—political, environmental, and personal—that forever polluted her family, a community, the nation, and the world. With brilliant insight, she reveals the intersections between the culture of secrecy in her family and the institutionalized secrecy within the nuclear industry, which persists, with grave consequences, to this day.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emily Strasser is a writer based in Minneapolis, where she received her MFA from the University of Minnesota. Her work has appeared in Catapult, Ploughshares, Guernica, Colorado Review, The Bitter Southerner, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Gulf Coast, among others. She was also the presenter of the 2020 BBC podcast “The Bomb.” Her writing has been honored by awards and fellowships including the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest, an AWP Intro Award, the W.K. Rose Fellowship, the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship in Creative Writing, and grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. She was a 2019 McKnight Writing Fellow. Half-Life of a Secret is her first book.

Progress Center, 1:30-2:00pm
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Harboring is a literary take on the Japanese Kyodai (Giant) Hero genre that examines the position of this oft-heroic figure. The novelette follows Takeshi Furuya, an alien who has adopted contemporary Kobe, Japan as his new home and fully assimilated while defending the nation against less friendly visitors. When he meets a Japanese man who unsettles him even more than these outsiders, he begins to question the simplicity of his moral vision.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Sullivan is an American writer whose stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Cimarron Review, New Ohio Review, Third Coast, Fourth Genre, Fourteen Hills, The Normal School, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, and Phoebe among others. In 2022, he was a finalist for the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction.

Progress Center, 11:30am-12:00pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
That Other Life is a narrative about how relationships fail and succeed—or rather, about how the narrator fares on the changeable course of love and domestic commerce. Most of the poems in Joyce Sutphen’s twelfth book are sonnets, and each sonnet provides a glimpse of a swiftly moving life. In the same carefully crafted language as she uses to describe an oat binder, Sutphen surveys marriage and love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joyce Sutphen is the author of ten previous books of poetry, including Straight Out of View, Naming the Stars, and Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems. She is Professor Emerita at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, where she taught literature and creative writing. Her awards include the Barnard New Women Poets Prize and a Minnesota Book Award for Poetry. She served as Poet Laureate of Minnesota from 2011-2021.

Progress Center, 1:00-1:30pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Magical, heartfelt, and surprisingly funny, Sin Eaters paints a tumultuous picture of religion and repression while hinting at the love and connection that come with healing. The stories in Caleb Tankersley’s debut collection illuminate the shadowy edges of the American Midwest, featuring aspects of religion, sex and desire, monsters and magic, and humor. Tankersley’s characters—including swamp creatures looking for love, pothead pastors, ghosts obsessed with TV, and a Jesus made of rust—arrive at the crossroads of pleasure and hunger in a world that is equal parts playful, hopeful, and dark. Sin Eaters is a fight for authenticity in a world that is mysterious, muggy, and punctured by violence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caleb Tankersley’s debut short story collection Sin Eaters won the 2021 Permafrost Book Prize and was published by University of Alaska Press. He is also the author of the poetry chapbook Jesus Works the Night Shift. His stories, poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of magazines and publications. For the 2023-24 academic year, Caleb is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Previously, he taught at Edmonds College near Seattle and led the creative writing program at Mississippi School of the Arts. He holds a PhD from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Caleb is also the Managing Director for Split/Lip Press. In his free time Caleb bakes, attempts to be a runner, spends time with his partner Richie, writes when he can, and reads as much as possible.

Progress Center, 2:00-2:30pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
For generations, the Kalotay family has guarded a collection of ancient and rare books. Books that let a person walk through walls or manipulate the elements—books of magic that half-sisters Joanna and Esther have been raised to revere and protect. But magic comes at a price. After their father dies, the estranged sisters must reunite to preserve their family legacy, uncovering a world of magic far bigger and more dangerous than they ever imagined. Ink Blood Sister Scribe is a suspenseful and richly atmospheric novel that draws readers into a vast world filled with mystery and magic, romance, and intrigue—and marks the debut of an extraordinary new voice in speculative fiction.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emma Törzs is a writer, teacher, and occasional translator based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her fiction has been honored with an NEA fellowship in prose, a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction, and an O. Henry Prize. Her short stories have been published in journals such as Ploughshares, Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed, and American Short Fiction, and her first novel, Ink Blood Sister Scribe, was chosen as a Good Morning America book club selection and was a Sunday Times bestseller. She received her MFA from the University of Montana, Missoula, and is an enthusiastic member of the Clarion West class of 2017. She currently teaches creative writing at Macalester College.

Progress Center, 11:30am-12:00pm
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Originating from the prairies of the Great Plains, Songs, Blood Deep is a collection that affirms a passion for family, community, and the environment. Gwen Nell Westerman draws upon both English and the Dakota language to celebrate the survival of her people and articulate the conflicts of the past and present, so that an enriched future will endure. Historical misinformation about the First Peoples is unmasked, the record set straight apart from how explorers and conquering armies have wrongly portrayed the past. Herein life-affirming words are conveyed from grandmother, to mother, to children and offered as a gift to the reader: "This is my give-away—to touch what is good in you/with words your heart can hear."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gwen Nell Westerman lives in southern Minnesota, as did her Dakota ancestors. Her roots are deep in the landscape of the tallgrass prairie from Oklahoma to Minnesota and reveal themselves in her art and writing through the languages and traditions of her family. She has worked as a proofreader, a waitress, an editor, a sandwich delivery driver, a technical writer, and a teacher.

Progress Center, 11:00-11:30am
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Sam Zimmerman’s work explores his Ojibwe heritage by preserving oral histories handed down from elders while also reflecting the artist’s personal experiences and learnings in nature by incorporating the landscapes of Lake Superior’s North Shore, where he and generations of his ancestors have lived. His work features Northland creatures such as moose, loons, wolves, and fish, as well as the night sky and native flora. Zimmerman preserves the Ojibwe storytelling tradition, reimagining the symbolism of the clan animals in natural North Shore landscapes. His work is infused with the color theories of the abstract and expressionism movements while also promoting environmental stewardship. Following My Spirit Home features more than 80 vibrant and colorful images accompanied by stories, mostly based on tales Zimmerman’s grandfather told him or from his own experiences in nature along the north shore of Lake Superior. The stories are presented in both English and Ojibwemowin with the goal of advancing language revitalization.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Artist and educator Sam Zimmerman / Zhaawanoogiizhik is a direct descendant of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe). He began participating in juried and solo exhibitions immediately after receiving a bachelor of fine arts degree in studio art from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2000. At first, painting was a part-time activity while he worked as a special education and school and district administrator. When he returned home to Minnesota after almost two decades on the East Coast, he rededicated himself to painting with a ferocity that had been absent since his earlier studio days. Today Zimmerman's work is held in private collections in the United States and abroad. His studio projects and current creations can be seen on Instagram and Facebook at CraneSuperior. He lives in Duluth, Minnesota, and can be often found exploring the natural beauty of Minnesota's North Shore.

Authors at the Festival

Fine Arts Stage

Kat Calvin

Anders Carlson-Wee

Josh Cook

David Corn

Peter Coviello

Anya Johanna DeNiro

Kate DiCamillo

David Dodd Lee

Kelcey Ervick

Naoko Fujimoto

Mojgan Ghazirad

Major Jackson

Kij Johnson

Adrian Matejka

Kathleen Rooney

Laura Sims

Brian Teare

Youth Stage

Kat Baumann

H. M. Bouwman

Drew Brockington

Anika Fajardo

Claire Forrest

Rachel Gold

Nina Hamza

Nicole Kronzer

David LaRochelle

Mélina Mangal

Alison McGhee

Jenin Mohammed

Chris Monroe

Tyler Schwanke

J. E. Thomas

Ari Tison

Artika Tyner

Mel Valentine Vargas

Yohuru Williams

Mike Wohnoutka

Patricia Wrede

Laura Zimmermann

Minnesota Author Showcase

Charles Adams

Nigar Alam

Ebony Aya

Angie Bailey

Mikkel Beckmen

Steven Brust

Krista Burton

V.V. Ganeshananthan

P. L. Hampton

Daniel Hornsby

Diane Jarvenpa

Raymond Luczak

Freya Manfred

Paul Metsa

Joe Milan Jr.

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl

Emma Nadler

Korynn Newville

Jeremy Norton

Beth Obermeyer

David Oppegaard

Charlie Parr

Lynette Reini-Grandell

Julie Schumacher

Said Shaiye

Erin Sharkey

Rick Shefchik

Susie Shubert

Emily Strasser

James Sullivan

Joyce Sutphen

Caleb Tankersley

Emma Törzs

Gwen Nell Westerman

Sam Zimmerman