When: Thursday March 11, 2021, 7:30–8:30pm CST. Musical prelude starts at 7pm.
Where: Live online via Zoom, from the comfort of your own home. The Zoom invitation will be posted on the website on the morning of the reading. If you don't already have it, you should get the Zoom client installed on your device ahead of time.
We are limited to 100 Zoom participants. The reading will be recorded and posted to YouTube afterwards; please check the website for details.
Original work from Mary Moore Easter, L. Renée, Kermit Pattison, and Sean Hill. Musical prelude from Jay Reusch.
Mary Moore Easter, a 2020 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, is the author of four poetry books: Free Papers: poems inspired by the testimony of Eliza Winston, a Mississippi slave freed in Minnesota in 1860 (2021); The Body of the World (Minnesota Book Award in Poetry Finalist, (2019), Walking from Origins, and From the Flutes of Our Bones (2020). Originally from Petersburg, Virginia, she pursued a long dance career in Minnesota as an independent dancer/choreographer and as founder and director of Carleton College’s dance program.
L. Renée is a 2020 Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and nonfiction writer from Columbus, Ohio. She is a third-year MFA candidate at Indiana University, where she has served as Nonfiction Editor of Indiana Review and Associate Director of the Indiana University Writers’ Conference. Her poems have been published or forthcoming in Tin House Online, Poet Lore, the Minnesota review, Appalachian Review, Southern Humanities Review, the Women of Appalachia Project’s anthology, Women Speak: Volume 6, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference, and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Instagram: @lreneepoems
Kermit Pattison is the author of Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind. The New York Times called the book a “riveting account” and praised the author’s “uncanny ability to write evocatively about science.” The Minneapolis Star-Tribune hailed it as a “brilliant book of reportage” and “a work of staggering depth that brings us into the search for the oldest human.” Science News picked Fossil Men as one of the best science books of 2020. Pattison also has written for The New York Times, GQ, Inc. magazine and Fast Company. He lives with his family in St. Paul, Minnesota. He can be found online at kermitpattison.com or on Twitter twitter.com/KermitPattison.
Sean Hill is the author of Dangerous Goods (Milkweed Editions, 2014) and Blood Ties & Brown Liquor (UGA Press, 2008). He has received numerous awards including fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, Stanford University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Hill’s poems and essays have appeared in Callaloo, Harvard Review, The Oxford American, Poetry, Terrain.org, Tin House, and numerous other journals, and in several anthologies including Black Nature and Villanelles. He directs the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference* at Bemidji State University and lives in Montana with his family. More information can be found at his website: www.seanhillpoetry.com.
* Additional links: www.northwoodswriters.org/ and www.northwoodswriters.org/application.
John Joseph (Jay) Reusch is a retired physician and life-long musician from St. Paul, MN. His experience with Notre Dame’s Glee Club and Minnesota’s Bach Society has enabled him to sing in great US and European cathedrals, and to share the stage with both Twin Cities’ orchestras. He sings tenor in Denver’s “Sine Nomine” chorus; he has recorded two albums and played many of Denver’s small venues and community charity events as singer/ guitarist with Denver’s “Dogs in the Yard” pop/rock band. Having written over 30 songs, he’s working on a solo album in the Denver home he shares with his wife Jane and dog Ely.
Before and after: Both Milkweed, downstairs from our usual venue, and Merlin’s Rest, a bar/restaurant 3 blocks west where Midstream attendees often congregate, are once again open.
