2024 Rutherford Aris Memorial Lecture

"Mapping the Interconnected Medieval World: Diasporic Communities and Their Books," Dr. Suzanne Conklin Akbari (The Institute for Advanced Study)

More Information and Registration

Note: A reception will precede the lecture and begin at 6:00 pm. The lecture will begin at 7:00 pm. Both events are open to the public.

Join us for the December entry in our monthly Faculty/Student Reading Series, where we host a local faculty writer from the University of Minnesota's Creative Writing MFA Program and a student writer, offering a chance for emerging local writers to place their work in conversation with an established writer. For this final reading of the Fall 2023 semester, MFA candidate Jordan Young will be reading with Kathryn Nuernberger, author of The Witch of Eye.

This reading will also feature an exclusive student discount on all purchases in the bookstore, where anyone attending with a valid student ID will receive 10% off as our show of appreciation for the Twin Cities student writing community.

About the readers

Jordan Young is a nonfiction writer from South Florida. Her essays explore relationships, race, cruelty and beauty. Her work can be found in Roxane Gay's The Audacity. Jordan holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago and is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Kathryn Nuernberger is an essayist and poet who writes about the history of science and ideas, renegade women, plant medicines, and witches. Kathryn Nuernberger’s latest book is The Witch of Eye, which is about witches and witch trials. She is also the author of the poetry collections RUE, The End of Pink and Rag & Bone, as well as a collection of lyric essays, Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past. Her awards include the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an NEA fellowship, and notable essays in the Best American series. She teaches poetry and nonfiction for the MFA program at University of Minnesota.

Join local writer Elmer Lovrien for a celebration of his recent book “The World of Others.” Takes place in room 203 at Open Book. All are welcome.

Join us for the November entry in our monthly Faculty/Student Reading Series, where we host a local faculty writer from the University of Minnesota's Creative Writing MFA Program and a student writer, offering a chance for emerging local writers to place their work in conversation with an established writer. For this month's reading, MFA candidate Natalie Dalea will be reading with Kim Todd, author of Sensational: The Hidden History of America's "Girl Stunt Reporters."

This reading will also feature an exclusive student discount on all purchases in the bookstore, where anyone attending with a valid student ID will receive 10% off as our show of appreciation for the Twin Cities student writing community.

About the readers

Natalie Dalea is a midwestern mestiza artist. She is pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of Minnesota. Her writing works to heal family wounds, with a thematic focus on feminism, faith, and forgiveness. Her essays can be found with The Offing, Pidgeonholes, Between Cities, and MN Artists. Her journalism can be found with WBEZ, The Chicago Reader, and The Portalist.

Kim Todd is the award-winning author of several books, including Sensational: The Hidden History of America's “Girl Stunt Reporters”, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, and Tinkering with Eden: A Natural History of Exotic Species in America, winner of the PEN/Jerard Award and the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award. Her essays and articles have appeared in Smithsonian, Salon, Sierra Magazine, Orion, and Best American Science and Nature Writing anthologies, among other publications. She is a member of the MFA faculty at the University of Minnesota and lives in Minneapolis with her family.

In honor of Maya Williams' release of eir poetry collection, Refused a Second Date, join us to get engaged with sexual health resources from Family Tree Clinic and hear poems from Maya's book. The evening will consist of Family Tree Clinic sharing their work, and Maya sharing poems that will lead to a Q&A about queerness, interpersonal relationships, mental health, and sex, Event starts at 6 pm and will conclude at 8 pm in room 203 at Open Book. Masks are highly recommended. Capacity is 40 people. There will be no food at this event, so we encourage you to eat beforehand.

Author Bio: Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who is currently the poet laureate of Portland, Maine. Refused a Second Date is eir second full-length collection. Maya's debut collection Judas & Suicide was selected as a finalist for the New England Book Award in July 2023. Maya was one of three artists of color selected to represent Maine in The Kennedy Center's Arts Across America series in 2020. Maya was also selected as one of The Advocate's Champions of Pride in 2022. You can follow more of their work at mayawilliamspoet.com

TONIGHT’S EVENT IS CANCELED.

Join us for a special panel discussion in our monthly event series Milkweed Presents! For this conversation, torrin a. greathouse, author of the incredible poetry collection Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, curates a panel of (yet-to-be-announced) local guest QTBIPOC poets to read their work and talk about what community means to them.

Join writer Mary Carroll Moore as she celebrates the launch of her newest novel A Woman’s Guide to Search and Rescue. Mary will be in conversation with Loft teaching artist and author Kate St. Vincent Vogl about creative risk. The Twin Cities jazz duo, JazzLove, will offer live music and Mary Carroll Moore will join them for a song from her novel. 

Event is at 6:30 pm in the Open Book Performance Hall. Everyone is welcome.

Come to the First Annual Midwest Queer & Trans Zine Fest on Oct. 21-22, 2023 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. Celebrate LGBTQ History Month by joining us on the second floor of the Open Book Building in downtown Minneapolis.

The Midwest QT Zine Fest brings together queer and trans artists, zine makers, collectives, and small presses to share their work with zine enthusiasts and LGBTQ community members. Over 70 local and regional exhibitors will have their work for sale, ranging from hand-made zines to small-run publications. The Midwest QT Zine Fest strives to be a new hub for the exchange of queer zines and related materials in the region and an opportunity for queer and trans zinesters and artists to engage one another. This zine fest is co-hosted by the Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies at the University of Minnesota Libraries and Late Night Copies Press. Free to attend.

Come to the First Annual Midwest Queer & Trans Zine Fest on Oct. 21-22, 2023 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. Celebrate LGBTQ History Month by joining us on the second floor of the Open Book Building in downtown Minneapolis.

The Midwest QT Zine Fest brings together queer and trans artists, zine makers, collectives, and small presses to share their work with zine enthusiasts and LGBTQ community members. Over 70 local and regional exhibitors will have their work for sale, ranging from hand-made zines to small-run publications. The Midwest QT Zine Fest strives to be a new hub for the exchange of queer zines and related materials in the region and an opportunity for queer and trans zinesters and artists to engage one another. This zine fest is co-hosted by the Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies at the University of Minnesota Libraries and Late Night Copies Press. Free to attend.

Join us for the October entry in our monthly Faculty/Student Reading Series, where we host a local faculty writer from the University of Minnesota's Creative Writing MFA Program and a student writer, offering a chance for emerging local writers to place their work in conversation with an established writer. For this month's reading, MFA candidate John Lapine will be reading with Krys Malcolm Belc, author of The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood.

This reading will also feature an exclusive student discount on all purchases in the bookstore, where anyone attending with a valid student ID will receive 10% off as our show of appreciation for the Twin Cities student writing community.

About the readers

John LaPine is an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Minnesota. He earned his MA in creative writing & pedagogy from Northern Michigan University (NMU), where he volunteered as an associate editor of creative nonfiction & poetry for the literary journal Passages North, and worked as an intern at Graywolf Press. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in: The Rising Phoenix Review, Hot Metal Bridge, The /Temz/ Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Under the Gum Tree, Rhythm & Bones, Midwestern Gothic, & elsewhere. His first chapbook of essays, An Unstable Container, is forthcoming from Bull City Press.

Krys Malcolm Belc is the author of The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood (Counterpoint) and the flash nonfiction chapbook In Transit (The Cupboard Pamphlet). His essays have been featured in Granta, Guernica, The Rumpus, Brevity, and elsewhere. Krys is the memoir editor of Split Lip Magazine. He lives in Philadelphia with his partner and their four young children.

Milkweed Editions and Liquid Music present an evening of music, poetry, and conversation with JJJJerome Ellis.

“A lyrical celebration of and inquiry into the intersections of blackness, music, and disabled speech.” —Claudia Rankine

Liquid Music joins forces with Milkweed Editions to present a multidisciplinary book launch event celebrating JJJJJerome Ellis’s forthcoming Aster of Ceremonies—a work exploring what rites we need now and how poetry, astir in the asters, can help them along.

What is the relationship between fleeing and feeling? How can the voices of those who came before—and the stutters that leaven those voices—carry into our present moment, mingling with our own? Through the grateful invocations of ancestors and their songs, Ellis rewrites history, creating a world that blooms backward, reimagining what it means for Black and disabled people to have taken, and to continue to take, their freedom.

The evening will feature live music and readings from Ellis, followed by a conversation facilitated by neurodivergent poet Chris Martin—curator of Milkweed Editions‘ Multiverse series, a literary series devoted to different ways of languaging.

Attendees will have first access to purchase Aster of Ceremonies ahead of its publication in October. JJJJJerome will be available to sign books after the event at a post-reception social hour with refreshments.Tickets are free with a suggested donation of $10. All proceeds will go towards supporting the artist's visit to Minneapolis.

Tickets available at this link. More information available here.

Join us at Milkweed Books as we partner with PeoplesPoetryMN to host over 30 local poets for the return of a Twin Cities tradition: The Great Twin Cities Poetry Read! Each poet will have three minutes to read a poem of their choosing before passing the torch to the next, creating a marathon reading that spans as many different forms of poet—established and emerging, experimental and spoken word—as we can fit into a single event.

Founded by Matt Mauch in 2008, the GTCPR was envisioned as a “for us, by us” adventure, with as many people as possible playing a part in making it happen. Over the years, several organizers and venues have worked annually to make the GTCPR a tradition in the poetry scene up through 2019. Now, after a four year hiatus, organizers Chavonn Williams Shen, Natalie Marlin, and Anthony Ceballos are bringing the Great Twin Cities Poetry Read back to life with that same mission at the forefront, aiming to offer as wide a platform for the local poetry community as possible.

Our list poets for this event includes: Allison Blevins, Alice Paige, Ash Wynter, Celina McManus, Clarence White, Daphne DiFazio, Elizabeth Tannen, Erin Sharkey, Gen Del Raye, Halee Kirkwood, J. Bailey Hutchinson, Jada Brown, Jessica Zick, Kate Kyser, Kris Bigalk, Larissa Larson, Lenora Magee-Howard, Lisa Yankton, LM Brimmer, Lynette Reini-Grandell, Marlin M. Jenkins, Mary Moore Easter, Matt Mauch, Merle Geode, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Michael Moore, Michael Torres, Moheb Soliman, Oliver D. Allen, Paula Cisewski, Peter Mason, Raine Ngo, Roy Guzman, Zang Xiong, and Zibiquah Denny.

Join us for a special panel discussion in our monthly event series Milkweed Presents! For this conversation, Michael Bazzett, author of poetry books such as The Echo Chamber and You Must Remember This, leads a talk with a curated selection of (yet-to-be-announced) guest speakers about the concept of "difficult joy," what goes into working toward happiness in the most fraught of circumstances, and what catharsis writing on these moments can bring.

Please join us in-person at Milkweed Books, our brick-and-mortar independent bookstore located on the first floor of Open Book, at 6 p.m. for an unforgettable discussion about searching for difficult joy, in life and in writing.

Milkweed Presents is a monthly event series featuring Milkweed authors as curators of conversation with local writers and community organizers on a topic of their choosing. These events are free and open to the public and held in-person in our bookstore, Milkweed Books, on the first Wednesday of the month.