As part of the Cracked Walnut Poetry Festival, "Expressions!", poets/writers from Writers for Democratic Action will read works speaking out on political, social, and cultural occurrences in our country. The reading will be held at the East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St., St. Paul, MN on September 18, 7:00-8:30 p.m. Participants include Diane Jarvenpa (spokesperson for WDA), Margaret Hasse, Kathryn Kysar, Michael Kleber-Diggs, and Donna Isaac.
Bios
Diane Jarvenpa is the author of six books of poetry. She has received The Midwest Independent Publishers Association Award and Artist Initiative grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She is a teaching artist with the Alzheimer's Poetry Project MN and the East Side Arts Council. As a singer-songwriter she performs and records under the name Diane Jarvi.
Margaret Hasse was among the remarkable generation of Minnesota poets who came of age in
the 1970s and '80s. Her first book, Stars Above, Stars Below, was published by New Rivers in 1984,
Press, followed by In a Sheep's Eye, Darling, Milkweed Editions. Forty years and many
publications later, including five with Nodin Press, Margaret's most recent book, Belongings,
was released in 2024. Her poems are a rich tapestry of "belongings" that extend from
cherished personal memories outward into a skein of relationships and concerns, including poems about
the current assault on American democracy.
Kathryn Kysar is the 2025 winner of the Association of Writers and Writing Program's George Garrett Award for Outstanding Service to Literature and recipient of a 2024 Creative Individual Minnesota State Arts Board grant. Her poetry books include Dark Lake and Pretend the World, and she edited Riding Shotgun: Women Write about Their Mothers, and she has published recently in Hayden's Ferry Review, Sequestrum, Slag Glass City, and The Under Review. She teaches creative writing at the Loft Literary Center and Anoka-Ramsey Community College.
Michael Kleber-Diggs 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 Hamline University and Augsburg University and through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. (photo by Martin Diggs)
Poet Donna Isaac is a teaching artist and organizer of community readings and workshops; she taught full-time for 40 years. Published work includes Footfalls (Pocahontas Press); Tommy (Red Dragonfly Press); Holy Comforter (Red Bird Chapbooks); Persistence of Vision (Finishing Line Press), In the Tilling (Finishing Line Press), and writing work in over fifty literary journals. <donnaisaacpoet.com />
Also check out other Arts events in St Paul, Literary Art events in St Paul, Festivals in St Paul.
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