Readers and writers: Minneapolis gets its first poet laureate

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’

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.