Minneapolis, MN
Readers and writers: Minneapolis gets its first poet laureate
![Readers and writers: Minneapolis gets its first poet laureate Readers and writers: Minneapolis gets its first poet laureate](https://www.twincities.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/GettyImages-944631208-e1676745471264.jpg?w=1024&h=576)
It had to happen. As soon as we take a little time off, literary news breaks, such as poet Heid E. Erdrich being appointed the first Minneapolis poet laureate. She will be honored Monday, Jan. 8, at the Minneapolis City Council meeting where she will read a special poem as her first official act.
An esteemed poet, author and advocate, Erdrich brings an influential body of work and life experience to this role, according to the Minneapolis Arts & Cultural Affairs department and the Loft Literary Center, partners in facilitating the competition. Erdrich is an Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain and, in addition to her own work, has edited multiple collections amplifying the work of other indigenous writers. She is the winner of two Minnesota Book Awards, as well as fellowships and awards from the Library of Congress, National Poetry Series, Native Arts and Culture Foundation, the Loft, First People’s Fund and others.
Erdrich, sister of Pulitzer Prize-winner Louise Erdrich, has taught and practiced multidisciplinary art for decades as a professor and in the community, visiting dozens of colleges and universities, libraries and cultural institutions as a guest speaker and teacher. She’s done multiple collaborations, curations, and installations around Native American art.
With her special interest in the intersection of poetry, performance, and visual art, Erdrich’s poems have been commissioned for the National Gallery of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art and elsewhere. She has collaborated on poem films, with choreographers, and on public art projects and has curated dozens of art exhibits focused on Native American artists. She is guest curator for Mead Art Museum of Amherst College and was 2023 chairperson of the National Book Awards poetry panel.
Mayor Jacob Frey said in a release announcing Erdrich’s appointment: “Minneapolis is a city of arts and creativity — and our new poet laureate will help inspire our community through the power of words. I look forward to welcoming Heid E. Erdrich to this role — and seeing her use language to inspire and unite our community.” In the release, Erdrich said: “It is especially gratifying for me as an Anishinaabe woman to acknowledge that indigenous people, particularly the Dakota, were the first poets of this place. In my role as poet laureate I will include Indigenous poets in all I do. Miigwech!”
The public can congratulate Erdrich during a celebration from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 18, at the Loft in the Open Book building, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Mpls.
Second printing for ‘Where We Come From’
![Book jacket for "Where We Come From"](https://i0.wp.com/www.twincities.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/STP-L-WHERECOVER.jpg?fit=620%2C9999px&ssl=1)
Minneapolis author and teacher Shannon Gibney had a very good 2023. “The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be,” her speculative memoir of being a mixed-Black transracial adoptee, was cited by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best young adult books of 2023.
Gibney also joined with local writers John Coy, Diane Wilson and Sun Yung Shin to write “Where We Come From,” a picture book for upper elementary readers published by Minneapolis-based Lerner Publishing Group. Now in its second printing, the book’s authors explore where they each come from — literally and metaphorically — as well as what unites all of us as humans. A starred review in School Library Journal, called it “Outstanding in all ways.”
Short story collection wins award
Pete Simons, pen name for Pete Simonse of Minneapolis, won the 2023 Best Indie Book Award for best short story collection for his third work of fiction, “Uncooperative Characters.” The award is an international literary competition honoring outstanding achievements by independent authors. Simonse retired as vice president and treasurer of Land O’Lakes in 2015. His previous books are “The Coyote” a humorous modernization of Cervantes’ “Don Quixote,” and “White as Snow,” a murder mystery inspired by “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Subtitled “Whimsical Tales and Preposterous Parodies,” Simons’ new book is made up of quirky short stories with plots that include a teapot private eye hired by a spoonlike femme fatale, three spies who play a deadly game of rock-paper-scissors, and a serial killer having a dispute with the story’s narrator. (For more information go to bestindiebookaward.com.)
Archivist honored for essay
Trista Raezer-Strusa has won the Minnesota Historical Society’s annual Solon J. Buck award given for originality, excellence, creative research and writing for articles published the previous year in Minnesota History magazine. Her winning essay is “I Thought I Would Write You a Few Lines: Solomon G. Comstock and Civil War Veteran Pensions,” published in the fall 2022 issue. The author is an archivist at Minnesota State University Moorhead.
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Minneapolis, MN
Overnight shooting leaves 4 kids injured in Minneapolis
![Overnight shooting leaves 4 kids injured in Minneapolis Overnight shooting leaves 4 kids injured in Minneapolis](https://kstp.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/0818-DP-N-MPLS-SHOOTING-PLYMOUTH-AND-IRVING_mxf_00.00.58.08.jpg)
A shooting around 1 a.m. Sunday left four children injured — one critically.
According to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, officers were notified of several ShotSpotter activations on the 1200 block of West Broadway Avenue. While responding, the officers were also notified of a 911 call stating that there was a vehicle with multiple people shot inside on the 1400 block of Plymouth Avenue North.
Officers found five children inside the car, four of whom had gunshot wounds. The injured included two boys and two girls, ages 11-14 years old, police said. They were brought to the hospital and the fifth juvenile was arrested, as the vehicle they were in was stolen.
Three of the children had non-life-threatening injuries, but one of the girls was shot in the head. O’Hara said she is in critical but stable condition.
Police said that preliminary information indicates that the group was driving a stolen Kia when someone driving a dark-colored sedan started following them and later shot at them with fully automatic gunfire. O’Hara added that around 30 pieces of ballistic evidence were recovered from the scene, but it’s possible even more rounds were fired, with some of the casings being in the sedan.
“This is a tremendous problem we’ve been having over the past two years — juveniles joyriding in stolen cars and then becoming involved in more and more serious crime,” O’Hara said. “We’ve noticed this year that the theft of Kias and Hyundais is down by about a quarter, and for most of the summer, Kias and Hyundais were less than half of all the vehicles stolen in the city.”
O’Hara noted that there was a slight uptick in the number of stolen Kias and Hyundais in the past month but said that while fewer of these cars are being stolen, the juvenile crime associated with the thefts has become more brazen. He added that there have been more aggravated assaults, robberies, hit-and-runs and other serious crimes more frequently committed by those involved in the vehicle thefts.
“I think, in a lot of ways, we are failing to deter this activity,” he said. “Two of the five juveniles involved in this incident were arrested not even two weeks ago for being in a stolen car.”
“Four kids shot between 11-14[years old] is outrageous,” O’Hara added. “And everyone should be up in arms over it. The police are doing everything that we can in response to this, but we can’t keep responding after the fact, we can’t keep arresting these kids. More needs to be done to deter this type of activity in the first place.”
When asked how to deter juveniles from stealing vehicles, O’Hara said he feels there haven’t been adequate consequences for the teens who have been arrested,
Minneapolis, MN
Growing encampment in South Minneapolis prompts safety concerns
![Growing encampment in South Minneapolis prompts safety concerns Growing encampment in South Minneapolis prompts safety concerns](https://kstp.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/0817-JFK-HOMELESS-ENCAMPMENT-BROLL_mp4_00.02.08.42.jpg)
Welna Hardware is a family business with deep roots in South Minneapolis.
“We’ve been on the block for seventy years,” owner Mark Welna says.
But he explains he has concerns about a new neighbor.
“We have another encampment in the old Super America parking lot,” Welna notes. “It’s just been very tough on the neighborhood.”
He says about three weeks ago, a couple of tents began appearing just across the street, at East 25th Street and Bloomington Avenue.
The encampment is now much bigger — and Welna says it’s having an impact.
“The shoplifting at the store, the panhandling, people afraid to come across Lake Street and shop at our store,” he declares. “On a daily basis, we’ve had people coming in and out that we’ve had to kick out that have been from the encampment.”
Welna, who has tenants living in a building next to the encampment, says some of them have moved out because of safety concerns.
“It’s really unsafe, and we really need something done,” says Angel Roa. “This is getting worse every time.”
Roa, a longtime employee at the store, has lived in the building since 1992.
He showed us hypodermic needles littering an alley behind his apartment — and part of a cardboard box used as an outdoor restroom.
Roa says the needles began appearing when the encampment went up.
He adds his 80-year-old mother, visiting from Puerto Rico, is afraid to leave the building.
“Every time we have to open the door, there’s people blocking the door using heroin and all kinds of drugs,” Roa says. “You see young people doing the heroin and stuff right in your face. It is sad.”
Welna says he believes police are doing what they can — there is an MPD security camera right next to the encampment.
“I feel bad that people feel like that, I don’t like it that people are scared or in fear, but I doubt that’s happening,” declares Nicole Nalewaja.
A 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew tried to speak with people in the encampment but were asked to leave.
But Nalewaja — who says she has friends and family there, agreed to be interviewed.
“We started in tents, teepees, and wigwams, whatever, right?” she says. “So, it’s like a community, we’re like a family, right, so why is that a bad thing?”
Nalewaja disputes that encampment residents have done any shoplifting at Welna’s store — and says there were drug issues in the area long before the encampment arrived.
She argues that people have a right to live there.
“We don’t want to live in houses, some people don’t want to live in houses, they want to live like we used to live,” Nalewaja declares. “So, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
City Council member Jason Chavez, who represents the area, released a statement Saturday, which says in part:
“People are going to live outside until we have enough public health infrastructure to meet their needs. If we don’t have adequate shelter space that’s effective for people and they have nowhere to go, they will be living outside in the community.”
Chavez says the city recently lost a total of one-hundred-thirty shelter beds, run by two different programs, despite a search for resources by Agate, a Minneapolis housing and services non-profit.
He says he’s also reached out to city staff to see how to address issues like more “proactively cleaning up the neighborhood and cleaning up the needles.”
On Monday, Ward 8 Council Member Andrea Jenkins is hosting a meeting to discuss the city’s unhoused community and encampment issues.
Chavez says the City Council will hold a public hearing on September 11th to discuss one of four ordinances designed to address homelessness in the city.
Still — Roa says he’s worried about the future.
“Ten years from now, what’s my neighborhood going to be?” he asks. “I work here, I go to church here, I go to the bars here, my grocery store is a few blocks away. This has been my life for over thirty years.”
Welna — who’s planning to sell the store to his children to keep the business in the family, hopes there will be a path to move forward.
“It’s very, very sad. I’m kind of at my wit’s end about this situation,” he says. “But I would hate to close down the store because of crime. That’s the part that really, it tugs at my heart.”
Minneapolis, MN
1 resident injured in Minneapolis kitchen fire
![1 resident injured in Minneapolis kitchen fire 1 resident injured in Minneapolis kitchen fire](https://kstp.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2SH-VW-MONITOR-MINNEAPOLIS-FIRE-DEPARTMENT-300x169-1.jpg)
The Minneapolis Fire Department said a resident was injured after a kitchen fire.
The fire occurred on the 3700 block of Newton Avenue North at 11:30 a.m. Saturday.
When crews entered the residence, they found a fire in the house’s kitchen where a stove and trash can were on fire.
Fire crews said they were able to extinguish the fire.
One resident had been injured due to the fire. The department said a resident was medically evaluated and sent to the hospital with burn injuries to their arm and leg.
The condition of the resident is unknown at this time.
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