Join author Ari Tison for a celebration of her book release on Friday, March 31. Cocktail hour at 6:30 pm, Reading and Interview at 7:30 pm, Signing at 8:30 pm. Takes place in the Open Book Performance Hall. Open to all and free to attend. Books will be available for sale.

Ari Tison is a Bribri (Indigenous Costa Rican) poet and author. Her debut YA hybrid prose and poetry novel SAINTS OF THE HOUSEHOLD releases March 28th, 2023 and has already received three starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and BCCB and was selected as a JLG Gold Standard Selection. She's been interviewed for NPR's Weekend Edition and featured on Kirkus Reviews Most Anticipated Books of 2023 and has been on various other most anticipated lists by BuzzFeed and Paste Magazine. Ari grew up in Minneapolis and took classes in the Loft's program as a teenager and young adult and received her MFAC from Hamline. She now teaches at Hamline's MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults and serves as the coordinator for Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop's mentorship program. You can also find her poetry and short works at POETRY, Yellow Medicine Review, The Under Review, Rock & Sling and OUR SHADOWS HAVE CLAWS anthology with Algonquin.  

Saints of the Household is a haunting contemporary YA about an act of violence in a small-town--beautifully told by a debut Indigenous Costa Rican-American writer--that will take your breath away.
Max and Jay have always depended on one another for their survival. Growing up with a physically abusive father, the two Bribri American brothers 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, breaking up a fight and beating their high school's star soccer player to a pulp. This act of violence threatens the brothers' dreams for the future and their beliefs about who they are. As the true details of that fateful afternoon unfold over the course of the novel, 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.
Told in alternating points of view using vignettes and poems, debut author Ari Tison crafts an emotional, slow-burning drama about brotherhood, abuse, recovery, and doing the right thing.