The league of Minnesota Poets and Heartland Poets present Minnesota Poet Laureate Joyce Sutphen on Saturday October 13, 2012 at 7:00 p.m.
The event will be held in the Central Lakes College Commons.
A signing and reception will follow the reading. Books may be purchased for signing at the event.
Minnesota Poet Laureate Reading and Reception Event
Minnesota’s Poet Laureate, Joyce Sutphen, will be the featured guest for a reading and reception event hosted by the League of Minnesota Poets and Heartland Poets on Saturday, October 13 at 7:00 p.m. in the Central Lakes College Commons. Sutphen will also be the keynote speaker earlier in the day as she addresses conference participants at the League of Minnesota Poets’ Fall “Poet Laureate Octoberfest” Conference held at Arrowwood Lodge in Baxter.
Joyce Sutphen was named Minnesota’s Poet Laureate in August, 2011 by Governor Dayton. As MN Poet Laureate, Sutphen serves as the state’s primary spokesperson, supporter and promoter of poetry. In her role as state Poet Laureate, Sutphen works with the Minnesota Humanities Center to organize future poetry events and to preside over various poetry and literary events.
Joyce grew up on a farm near St. Joseph, Minnesota in Stearns County where her parents still live. She earned a PhD in Renaissance drama from the University of Minnesota, and teaches British literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota.
Her first collection of poems, Straight Out of View (1995), won the Barnard Women’s Poets Prize. Her second book, Coming Back to the Body (2000), was a Minnesota Book Award finalist. Sutphen won the Minnesota Book Award for Naming the Stars (2004). In 2006, Sutphen co-edited the award-winning anthology To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from the Territorial Days to the Present. A letter-press edition of Fourteen Sonnets was published by Dragonfly Press in 2005 Her latest publication, First Words, published in 2010, “…flows like a memoir in poems, filled with shining detail from her childhood on a family farm (an ode to the oat binder!) through her years of young motherhood and beyond,” states Connie Wanek. “Central to the book are poems for and about family. From such elemental subjects comes the most endearing art.”
Sutphen’s poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Minnesota Monthly, North Dakota Review, and many other journals. She has been a guest on A Prairie Home Companion, hosted by Garrison Keillor.
Books may be purchased before and after the reading. Sutphen will sign books after the reading. A reception sponsored by Bang Printing and Close Converse will follow the performance/reading.
Sutphen’s books may also be obtained in advance by contacting Bookin’ It in Little Falls at 800-809-1848 or at <www.bookinitnow.com.
This activity is made possible in part by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Five Wings Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
Tickets are $5 and $8 at the door.
Tickets are available at The Center for Lifelong learning and The Crossing Arts Alliance Sales and Gift Gallery. To request a ticket online click the link below.
