The Lyric Essay

Heidi Czerweic, Sun Yung Shin, Michael Kleber-Digs,
and Katrina Vandenberg

Join Heidi Czerwiec, co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay, and three Twin Cities authors who contributed pieces to the book: Sun Yung Shin, Michael Kleber-Diggs, and Katrina Vandenberg. Heidi will introduce the book and explain the lyric essay, then each contributing author will briefly describe the craft aspect they wrote about, offer a couple pointers, and read a brief example.

About the Authors

Poet and essayist Heidi Czerwiec is the author of Crafting the Lyric Essay: Strike a Chord, the lyric essay collection Fluid States, winner of Pleiades Press’ 2018 Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose, and the poetry collection Conjoining. She teaches and writes in Minneapolis.

Michael Kleber-Diggs (KLEE-burr digs) is a poet, essayist, arts educator, and podcast host. He is the author of Worldly Things, which won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. Michael’s second book, My Weight in Water, a memoir about his complicated love of lap swimming, will be published by Milkweed Editions in 2028. His poems and essays often explore themes of intimacy, community, empathy, and grace, practices he believes are simultaneously distinct and interdependent. Michael teaches creative writing through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and at universities throughout the Twin Cities. He also co-hosts, with Erin Sharkey, the podcast “Into a Darker Wilderness.”

신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin is a Korean-born creative nonfiction writer, freelance arts journalist, fiction writer, poet, editor, and children’s book author. She is the author of  Heart Eater: A Memoir of Immigration, Belonging, and How We Find Ourselves in Language; the experimental poetry/prose book Six Tones of Water co-authored with Vi Khi Nao; The Wet Hex, which won the Society of Midland Author’s Award in Poetry and was a finalist for a 2023 Minnesota Book Award; Unbearable Splendor, a book of essays/poems which won a Minnesota Book Award in 2017; and two other acclaimed books of poetry. She is the editor/co-editor of three anthologies of essays including What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories on Food and Family (2021); A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota (2016); and Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption (2006/2021). She is also the author of two illustrated books for children—most recently the co-authored Where We Come From, a finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award. She has been awarded fellowships from the Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the MacDowell Foundation, as well as an Asian American Literary Award. Forthcoming books include a picture book about legendary Detroit civil rights activists James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs, and other projects. She has been teaching creative writing in community spaces, public school, and colleges and universities for two decades; with poet Su Hwang she is the co-founder of Poetry Asylum. She lives in Minneapolis with her family.

Katrina Vandenberg is the author of two books of poems, The Alphabet Not Unlike the World and Atlas, and co-author of the chapbook On Marriage. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, The American Scholar, Orion, Post Road, Poets and Writers, and other magazines. She has received fellowships from the McKnight, Bush, and Fulbright Foundations; been a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference; and held residencies at the Amy Clampitt House, the Poetry Center of Chicago, and the MacDowell Colony. She is the poetry editor of Water~Stone Review and a professor in The Creative Writing Programs at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.