Join us for a powerful evening of poetry and literature while supporting a great cause: helping kids learn to be peacemakers. Free, with a suggested donation of $20 to support PeaceMaker Minnesota's mission.
Writers will read work that touches on the importance of bridging divides, fostering kindness and creating a more peaceful world. In partnership with Hamline University Creative Writing Programs.
Light snacks and refreshments will be provided.
peacemakermn.org
Readers:
Mubanga Kalimamukwento
Deborah Keenan
Kayla Knoll
Michael Kleber-Diggs
Pamela Schmid
Nolan Zavoral
Mubanga is the author of Shipikisha: A Novel (Forthcoming from Dzanc Books, 2026) winner of the 2024 Dzanc Prize for Fiction, Obligations to the Wounded: Stories (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024) winner of the 2024 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and finalist for a 2025 Minnesota Book Award; Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies: Poems (Forthcoming from Wayfarer Books, 2025) finalist for the 2023 Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP) Book Prize; unmarked graves (Tusculum University Press, 2022) winner of the 2023 Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Prize, and The Mourning Bird (Jacana, 2019) winner of the 2018/2019 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award. Her creative work has also appeared in adda, Aster(ix), Isele Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Kweli, Overland, on Netflix, and elsewhere. Her editorial work can be found or is forthcoming in Shenandoah, the Water~Stone Review, Doek! Literary Magazine and Safundi. She founded Ubwali Literary Magazine and co-founded the Idembeka Creative Writing Workshop. Mubanga serves as a Mentor at the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and is currently a PhD student in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota (Twin-Cities).
Deborah Keenan has eleven collections of poetry. Her new book, The Saint of Everything, comes from Lynx House Press. A teacher in the MFA program at Hamline University for 30 years, she now teaches privately and at The Loft. She lives near the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers in beautiful mysterious St. Paul.
Michael Kleber-Diggs (KLEE-burr digs) is a poet, essayist, literary critic, and arts educator. He is the author of My Weight in Water, a memoir about his complicated relationship with lap swimming (forthcoming with Spiegel & Grau, 2026). Michael’s debut poetry collection, Worldly Things, won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. His poems and
essays often explore themes of intimacy, community, empathy, and grace, practices he believes are simultaneously distinct and interdependent. Michael is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in Literature, and he teaches creative writing at Augsburg University and through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Michael is married to Karen Kleber-Diggs, a tropical horticulturist and orchid specialist. Karen and Michael have a daughter, Elinor, who lives in New York City and works as a professional dancer.
Kayla Knoll is a Twin Cities-based poet pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Hamline. She received the Deborah Keenan Poetry Award in 2024. She served as the Yearlong Writing Project Apprentice in poetry at the Loft Literary Center in collaboration with poet Gretchen Marquette for 2021-22. Kayla currently serves as Assistant Poetry Editor for Water~Stone Review for Volume 28 with contributor Jose Hernandez Diaz & previously had the pleasure of assisting with Volume 27 with poet Joan Naviyuk Kane. She is also a contracted book reviewer for Publishers Weekly. Kayla is a community health nurse, which inspires much of her writing.
Pamela Schmid is a multi-genre writer and editor. A Loft Mentor Series winner in nonfiction, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University and has spent more than a decade as the creative nonfiction editor at Sleet, an online literary magazine. Her words have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, River Teeth, The Common, Tahoma Literary Review, Blue Mesa Review, Baltimore Review and elsewhere. She also has a poem stamped on the sidewalk near her St. Paul, Minnesota home.
Nolan Zavoral was a charter member of the Laurel Poetry Collective, and there he published a book of poetry (“The Heretic Hotel”), as well as a chapbook and broadside and poems for anthologies. He’s the author of “A Season on the Mat—Dan Gable and the Pursuit of Perfection, chronicling the final season of a renowned wrestling coach. Published by Simon & Schuster, the book remains in print and was the cornerstone of an ESPN documentary on Gable. For 30 years, Nolan was a staff writer for major newspapers, ranging from The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel to USA Today to the Minnesota Star Tribune. He’s interviewed, among others, Muhammad Ali and the Dalai Lama, Paul Wellstone and Sister Helen Prejean.
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