In partnership with the Blue Heron Coffeehouse, the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest is proud to sponsor poetry events that are part of the First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series of readings in Winona, Minnesota.
Scott Lowery
Tuesday | December 5, 2023 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
On Tuesday, December 5th, at 7pm, Scott Lowery will read from his work at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse, 162 W 2nd St. The reading will be followed by a book signing and then an open mic. Bring some of your work to share. This event is free and open to the public.
Longtime Winona area resident and teacher Scott Lowery returns to Winona to read from his brand-new collection of poems Mutual Life. In 2019, Scott and his wife Connie moved to Milwaukee, drawn by the inexorable pull of young grandchildren.
Lowery’s poems have appeared in a range of journals and anthologies, including Prairie Schooner, River Styx, Nimrod, Great River Review, and The Wisconsin Poetry Calendar. He has been awarded the Julia Darling Memorial Poetry Prize, Pushcart and Best of Net nominations, honors from the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, and a residency at the Anderson Center. He is a 30-year veteran public school teacher and has presented writing workshops to young poets from grade school through college. Lowery is also a singer-songwriter and has recorded three CDs with the Beef Slough Boys, an American roots band.
Lowery’s debut poetry collection, Empty-Handed, won the Emergence Chapbook Prize, from Red Dragonfly Press in 2013, and has recently been released in an expanded second edition. The new collection, Mutual Life, documents everyday life against a backdrop of climate crisis, Trumpism, and pandemic anxiety. His poems look for answers in close observation of nearby nature and in the shared rituals of family and personal sustenance.
St. Paul poet and essayist Naomi Cohn says, of Empty-Handed, “These poems are full of music and witness—keenly felt and keenly observed—whether it’s a moment of horror, rage or wonder. Fierce, funny, tender, and ultimately hopeful, Lowery has transformed the dumpster fire of our recent past into poems you want to visit again and again.”
PLEASE COME OUT AND WELCOME SCOTT AND CONNIE BACK TO WINONA!
This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event is co-sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest and the Blue Heron Coffeehouse.
James Lenfestey
Tuesday | November 14*, 2023 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
On Tuesday, November 14th, at 7pm, poet James Lenfestey will read from his work at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse, 162 W 2nd St. The reading will be followed by a book signing and then an open mic. Bring some of your work to share. This event is free and open to the public. Please note: this event is being held on the second Tuesday of the month due to Election Day.
After a career in academia, marketing communications and journalism on the editorial board of the Star Tribune, where he won several Page One awards for excellence, since 2000 James Lenfestey has published seven collections of poems, two collections of personal essays, edited three poetry anthologies and co-edited Robert Bly in This World, University of Minnesota Press. His haibun memoir, Seeking the Cave: A Pilgrimage to Cold Mountain (Milkweed Editions) was a finalist for the 2014 Minnesota Book Award. His sixth poetry collection, A Marriage Book: 50 Years of Poems from a Marriage (Milkweed Editions), was a finalist for two 2017 Midwest book awards.
In 2020 he received the Kay Sexton Award for significant contributions and leadership in the Minnesota Literary Community. In 2024, Milkweed will publish his eighth poetry collection, Body Odes, Praise Songs and other Oddities and Amazements. For fifteen years he chaired the Literary Witnesses poetry program in Minneapolis and led a summer poetry class on Mackinac Island, Michigan. He currently serves on the board of Red Dragonfly Press in Minnesota and the Hellbender Poetry Gathering in North Carolina. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife Susan Lenfestey. They have four children, eight grandchildren and two step-grandchildren.
This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event is co-sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest and the Blue Heron Coffeehouse.
Mary Moore Easter
Tuesday | October 3, 2023 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
On Tuesday, October 3rd, at 7pm, poet Mary Moore Easter will read from her work at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse, 162 W 2nd St. The reading will be followed by a book signing and then an open mic. Bring some of your work to share. This event is free and open to the public.
Mary Moore Easter has published four books of poetry: Walking From Origins (chapbook, 1993). The Body of the World (Minnesota Book Award Finalist, 2019), Flutes of Our Bones (2020), and Free Papers—Poems Inspired by the Testimony of Eliza Winston, a Mississippi Slave Escaped to Freedom in Minnesota in 1860 (2021). She has also published a memoir, The Way She Wants to Get There—Telling on Myself (2022) that chronicles her life as a dancer and choreographer as well as a poet. Her poetry speaks “the language of dance.”
Mary Moore Easter was born in Virginia, to parents on the faculty of Virginia State College (now University) and was immersed in their artistic and intellectual interests as she was in the limitations segregation imposed on her black world. She holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence and an M.A. in Music for Dancers from Goddard. Her adult career as an independent dancer/ choreographer and Founder and Director of Carlton College's dance program overlapped with writing as a Cave Canem Fellow. Her awards include an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Bush Artist Fellowship in Choreography, multiple McKnight Awards in Interdisciplinary Arts, The Loft Literary Center’s Creative Non-Fiction Award, and residencies at Ragsdale and the Anderson Center.
This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event is co-sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest and the Blue Heron Coffeehouse.
Samuel Hawkins II - Spoken Word Poet
Tuesday | September 5, 2023 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
Samuel Hawkins II, Spoken Word Poet, will read from his work at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse on Tuesday, September 5th at 7 pm. The reading is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing and an open mic. Please bring some of your work to share with us.
Born in Clarksville, Tennessee and raised in Paducah, Kentucky, Samuel now lives in Rochester. Bluegrass, jazz and hip-hop all had a profound effect on him. He studied Sociology and Art at Bethel University in Tennessee. Some of his major influences were poets who participated in the televised show Def Poetry Jam: Andrea Gibson, J Cole, Rudy Francisco, and Shihan The Poet, as well as the kids he’s worked with in poetry workshops.
Samuel has performed his work at festivals, colleges, and conventions in Tennessee, Kentucky, Washington DC, Tampa Bay, Vero Beach, St. Petersburg, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis. He has published two books of poetry, This is Why Kids Wanna Stay Up Late and the Greatest stOry ever solD. His poetry forces us to see homelessness, sexual abuse, relationships, art, testimonies, love, war, the light within us, our potential, history, and God. He is an entertaining and captivating performer.
This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event is co-sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest and the Blue Heron Coffeehouse.
Gwen Westerman - Minnesota's Poet Laureate
Tuesday | August 1, 2023 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
Minnesota’s Poet Laureate Gwen Westerman will read from her work at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse on Tuesday, August 1st at 7 pm. The reading is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing and an open mic. Please bring some of your work to share with us.
Gwen Westerman is a Dakota educator, writer and fiber artist. She is a professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and the Director of the Native American Literature Symposium, as well as Director of the Humanities Program. She was appointed by Governor Tim Walz as Poet Laureate of Minnesota in September 2021, the first Indigenous poet to be so honored. Westerman is an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and a speaker of the Dakota language. Through her mother, she is also Cherokee.
Westerman has won two Minnesota Book Awards for her work about the Dakota people, “Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota,” and her first poetry book, “Follow the Blackbirds” which was written in English and Dakota. Gwen's poems, essays, and short stories appear in numerous publications, including the Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, and New Poets of Native Nations. Songs, Blood Deep, a book of her poetry, will be released in September of this year from Holy Cow! Press. In addition, she has been awarded three Artist Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board as a quilt artist and her quilts have won several awards at prestigious juried shows and are part of the permanent collection of the Minnesota Historical Society and other museums. Poet Carter Revard says of her work “The poems are quiet and powerful, understated and deeply moving.”
This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event is co-sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest and the Blue Heron Coffeehouse.
Michael S. Moos
Tuesday | July 11, 2023 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
Michael S. Moos is the author of The Idea of the Garden (winner of the Richard Snyder Prize, Ashland University Poetry Press, 2018), and three earlier poetry books. He will read his poetry as part of First Tuesday: The Laureate Writers Series. The event will be held on Tuesday, July 11th at 7pm at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse and is free and open to the public. The reading will be followed by a book signing and an open mic. Please note that this event will be held on the second Tuesday this month, due to the July 4th holiday.
Moos has been a poet-in-residence for The Academy of American Poets, has an M.F.A. from Columbia University, and has received poetry awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, and The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. He lives in St. Paul, and also spends time writing in the Black Hills of South Dakota, with his wife Nancy, a watercolor artist. His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Midwest Quarterly, Cottonwood, Briar Cliff Review, Great River Review, Notre Dame Review, and A 21st Century Plague: Poetry from a Pandemic. He has new poems forthcoming in the anthologies: Broad Wings, Long Legs, a Rookery of Heron Poems (North Star Press), and Little by Little, the Bird Builds Its Nest (Paris Morning Press).
Gordon Henry
Tuesday | June 6, 2023 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
Gordon Henry is a poet, novelist, editor and scholar. He will read from his latest book of poetry, Spirit Matters: White Clay, Red Exits, Distant Others as part of First Tuesday: The Laureate Writers Series. The event will be held on Tuesday, June 6th at 7pm at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse and is free and open to the public. The presentation will be followed by a book signing and an open mic.
Henry is an enrolled member/citizen of the White Earth Anishinaabe Nation in Minnesota. He is also a Professor in the English Department at Michigan State University, where he teaches American Indian Literature and Creative Writing. He serves as Senior Editor of the American Indian Studies Series at Michigan State University Press. In 1995 Henry received an American Book Award for his novel The Light People and his poetry, fiction, and essays have been published extensively, in the U.S. and Europe. In 2004, he co-published an educational reader on Ojibwe people with George Cornell. In 2007, Henry published a mixed-genre collection, titled The Failure of Certain Charms with Salt Publishing.
More recently Henry’s writing has appeared in, Bob Seger’s House, by Wayne State University Press; Iperstoria, a literary journal, from the University of Verona, Italy; Revolucion: A Cuban Journal, of Havana; New Poets of Native Nations; the June 2018 issue of Poetry; Wassafiri; and When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through (2020) and Living Nations. Living Words (2021)—two poetry anthologies edited by Joy Harjo. Gordon now lives in Empire, Michigan.
This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event is sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest in partnership with the Blue Heron Coffeehouse.
Jean Prokott
Tuesday | May 2, 2023 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
Jean Prokott, recently named Poet Laureate for the city of Rochester, will be the featured guest writer for this month’s First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series. The event will be held on Tuesday, May 2nd at 7pm at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse and is free and open to the public. The presentation will be followed by a book signing and an open mic.
Prokott has been teaching at the high school, college, and graduate levels for over fifteen years and has designed original curriculum for over ten courses, including Philosophy, Creative Writing, Literature and History of Film, American Literature, AP Language & Composition, and Implementation of Instruction and Curriculum Planning. She is a recipient of two scholarships from the National Endowment for the Humanities: To study the Philosophers of Education at Boston University and to study John Steinbeck at Stanford and San Jose State University.
Her poetry collection The Second Longest Day of the Year won the Howling Bird Press Book Prize (Howling Bird Press). She is the author of the chapbook The Birthday Effect (Black Sunflowers Press), is a recipient of the AWP Intro Journals Award, and of the John Calvin Rezmerski Memorial Grand Prize with the League of Minnesota Poets. She has poetry and nonfiction published in Verse Daily, Rattle, and Arts & Letters, among other journals.
Prokott is a graduate of Minnesota State University Mankato’s MFA program, holds a Master of Science in Education from Winona State University, and lives in Rochester, Minnesota with her husband and their two dogs. Learn more about her at jeanprokott.com.
This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event is sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest in partnership with the Blue Heron Coffeehouse.
Robert Love
Tuesday | April 4, 2023 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
On Tuesday, April 4th at 7pm, Robert Love, Montana poet, essayist, logger, and conservationist will read selections from and lead a conversation about his first book, Pathfinder. The presentation will be followed by a book signing and an open mic. This event will be held at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse and is free and open to the public.
After flying under the literary radar for the past 50 years, Love now shares poems, essays, and tales that present a crystal-clear tableau of a life well-lived in the woods of northern Montana. While some experts make pronouncements about our forests from their padded armchairs he has been on the front lines. His writings also take us inside his life as a householder and citizen and express his thoughts on hunting and hunting ethics, his involvement with Native American culture, and how to pay attention. There is power, intelligence and humor in his words. Bob Love is an old soul, a mystic, and a pragmatist. In a letter, Wendell Berry says “Dear Bob, I’m looking forward eagerly to your book. I love to hear from your neck of the woods when the messenger is you.” Ben Long says, “His life’s work enriches the reader like an old nurse log on the forest floor, feeding future generations.”
This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event is sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest in partnership with the Blue Heron Coffeehouse.
Delta Eddy
Tuesday | March 7, 2023 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
On Tuesday, March 7th at 7pm, Delta Eddy will read from her poetry at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse as part of First Tuesday: The Laureate Writers Series. Eddy is the author of Sparks, a collection of poetry published by Tom Driscoll of Shipwreckt Books, a publishing company that recently moved to Winona. The reading will be followed by a short Q&A, a book signing, and an open mic. This event is free and open to the public.
Eddy is Professor Emerita at Winona State University, where she taught twentieth century literature, creative writing, and classics for many years. She published most of her work as Gary Eddy, transitioning to her natural state in 2017. Her work, written over 40 years, has appeared in distinguished journals such as The Georgia Review and Colorado Review.
Her first book was Waking Up Late, published in 1977, and she also has performed as poet and musician in venues across the U.S. She is married to the artist Kay Lind Eddy and they live in Ashland Township, Minnesota, where they raise cattle and Angora goats.
This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event is sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest in partnership with the Blue Heron Coffeehouse.
Photo: Delta Eddy. Photo credit: Joy Davis Ripley.
Su Smallen Love
Tuesday | February 7, 2023 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
On Tuesday, February 7th at 7pm, Su Smallen Love will read from her poetry at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse as part of First Tuesday: The Laureate Writers Series. The reading will be followed by a short Q&A, a book signing, and an open mic. This event is free and open to the public.
Su Love is the author of six collections of poetry, some published as Su Smallen, including Buddha, Proof, a Minnesota Book Award finalist and Weight of Light, a Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award nominee. Her work has been recognized with the Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize and international publications, fellowships, and residencies from, notably, Vermont Studio Center, the Jerome Foundation with Tofte Lake Center, St. Croix Watershed Research Station, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Unamuno Author Series in Madrid, Spain, and Salmon Literary Centre in County Clare, Ireland. She is a 2023 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant through the Minnesota State Arts Board. Su was a founding member of Laurel Poetry Collective, a small press that published handsome books and broadsides for ten years. She taught in the graduate creative writing program at Hamline University and has been a visiting artist at several colleges and universities. Su was a professional dancer and choreographer, and her poetry has served as scores for dance and film. You can find some of these films and poems, as well as interviews at sulove.org.
Joyce Sutphen and Walter Cannon
Tuesday | January 10*, 2023 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
On Tuesday, January 10 at 7pm, Joyce Sutphen and Walter Cannon will read from their poetry at the Blue Heron Coffee House. Please note that because of the holidays this event will be on the second Tuesday this month.
Joyce Sutphen is a former Poet Laureate of the state of Minnesota. Her first collection, Straight Out of View, won the Barnard New Women Poets Prize and her collection, Naming the Stars, won the Minnesota Book Award in poetry. Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems is introduced by Ted Kooser and contains poems from her first seven full collections. Her chapbook, This Long Winter, is now available and her new book, That Other Life, is forthcoming. She is Professor Emeritus of English at Gustavus Adolphus in St. Peter, MN. Other chapbooks are First Words, After Words, and Modern Love & Other Myths as well as two other books, Coming Back to the Body and Naming the Stars. Many of her poems reflect her early life on a farm in rural Minnesota.
Walter Cannon is the author of The Possible World, a chapbook collection, and his poems, essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of journals and books including “Nimrod,” “The Blue Earth Review,” “Mid-America Poetry Review” and “The Upstart Crow.” Cannon co-edited a collection of essays entitled Who Hears In Shakespeare? Auditory Worlds on Stage and Screen. Cannon has participated in poetry workshops at Squaw Valley and Sligo, Ireland in connection with the Yeats School, where he has been an invited lecturer. He also has been the recipient of grants from the Iowa Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Central College in Pella, Iowa.
Following the readings, there will be a book signing followed by an Open Mic. This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event is open to the public and is sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, in partnership with the Blue Heron Coffeehouse.
Orval Lund
Tuesday | December 6, 2022 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
Walter Cannon is the author of The Possible World, a chapbook collection, and his poems, essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of journals and books including “Nimrod,” “The Blue Earth Review,” “Mid-America Poetry Review” and “The Upstart Crow.” Cannon co-edited a collection of essays entitled Who Hears In Shakespeare? Auditory Worlds on Stage and Screen. Cannon has participated in poetry workshops at Squaw Valley and Sligo, Ireland in connection with the Yeats School, where he has been an invited lecturer. He also has been the recipient of grants from the Iowa Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Central College in Pella, Iowa.
Following the readings, there will be a book signing followed by an Open Mic. This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event is open to the public and is sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, in partnership with the Blue Heron Coffeehouse.
Local writer Orval Lund will be the featured writer at the Laureate Writers Series First Tuesday program on December 6 at 7:00pm at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse. Lund will present work from his new collection of poetry Heading Home, and the evening will conclude with an open mic session at which members of the community can present an example of their own writing.
Orval Lund is from Lancaster, population 300, in the far northwest corner of Minnesota, and his work reflects the landscape of life formed while he was riding a tractor as a kid over land dominated by horizon. The main character in his work is named “Swede” and his mate is Signe, wittier and wiser versions of Ole and Lena. Swede came of age in the 50’s. He delivered newspapers, experienced A-bomb drills, suffered through penmanship exercises, swam naked in the swimming hole, loved his baseball and trout fishing, and endured a Lutheran taciturnity.
Beneath these experiences lie the deeper concerns lurking in the poems—current events, science, marriage, parenting, and the mysteries of the natural world. Lund strives to provide clear and understandable poems that are at once well-crafted, often humorous, and serious.
An Army veteran and former member of the Minnesota Humanities Commission, Lund also has a long history of literary engagement. He was a professor of English at WSU for 33 years, and while there also worked as an organizer of the Great River Writers’ Conferences and as an editor of the nationally recognized literary journal Great River Review. His work has appeared widely in many publications. His previous published books of poetry are Take Paradise (1989), Ordinary Days (1996), and Casting Lines (1999).
This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event will be sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, in cooperation with the Blue Heron Coffeehouse.
Kimberly Blaeser
Wednesday | November 9, 2022 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
Kimberly Blaeser will read from her recent poetry and prose as part of the Laureate Writers Series at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, November 9th at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse. Note that this is the second Wednesday of the month. This event is usually held on the first Tuesday of the month, but has been moved due to scheduling problems. The reading will be followed by a book signing and an open mic for up to ten readers. Anyone is invited to participate.
Kimberly Blaeser is past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of In-Na-Po—Indigenous Nations Poets. She is the author of five poetry collections including Copper Yearning, Apprenticed to Justice, and Dancing Resistance. Blaeser edited Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry and authored the monograph Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. An enrolled member of White Earth Nation, she is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee, and MFA faculty for the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her photographs, picto-poems, and ekphrastic pieces have appeared in exhibits such as “Visualizing Sovereignty,” and “No More Stolen Sisters.” Accolades include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas and a Wisconsin Library Association Notable Author award for her body of literary work. Blaeser lives in rural Wisconsin and in a water-access cabin near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. More information is available at kblaeser.org.
Steve McCown
Tuesday | October 4, 2022 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St
Winona, MN
The First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series returns after being on hold for more than two years because of Covid. Held on Tuesday, October 4, 2022 at 7:00pm at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse (162 W 2nd St in Winona), this year’s opening event will feature Northfield, Minnesota poet Steve McCown. This will be a homecoming for McCown, who was born and raised in Winona. The event is free and open to the public with an open mic session for up to ten writers following McCown’s presentation.
McCown graduated from Winona State University and earned a Master’s Degree in English at Northern Arizona University. For over 30 years he taught English and drama in the San Pasqual Unified School District in Winterhaven, California, and English part-time at Arizona Western College in Yuma, Arizona. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he has published poems in several literary journals, and five of his poems are imprinted in the sidewalks of Northfield, where he currently resides with his wife Barbara, also a WSU graduate. His first book of poetry Ghosting was published in 2020 by Shipwreckt Books Publishing Company, which recently established its new home in Winona.