April 17, 2013, Wednesday - Loft Writers’ Studio Reading at The Loft

Tme: 7:00pm

Location: The Loft, Performance Hall, 1011 Washington Avenue South

Loft Writers’ Studio Reading

Writers who use the Loft’s studio workspaces will present works-in-progress in a range of genres. Readers include James Bettendorf, Nona Kennedy Carlson, Karlyn Coleman, Patrick Cabello Hansel, Neal Karlen, Lynne Maker Kuechle, Elmer Lovrien, David Malley, Therese Stanton, and Nico Taranovsky. A casual reception will follow.

James Bettendorf is a retired math teacher who has written poetry for years. He completed the Loft Master Track writing apprenticeship in 2009. He has had poems published in Off Channel, Main Channel Voices, Light Quarterly, Rockhurst Review, Ottertail Review, Talking Stick, Verse Wisconsin and Free Verse.
 
Nona Kennedy Carlson is the recipient of a 2011-2012 Loft Literary Center Mentor Series Award, a 2012 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, and a 2012 Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant. Her work has appeared in Crazyhorse, temenos, Dust and Fire, The Talking Stick and Minnpost. In 2012, her story “Shift” was selected by Joyce Carol Oates as a finalist for the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize and her short story “Queer” received the Jonis Agee Award. She is currently at work on Boom, a novel in stories set against the backdrop of the Bakken Oil Boom and the war in Iraq.
 
Karlyn Coleman is a certified English teacher. She has taught for seven years in both private and public schools. She is a winner of the 2009–10 Loft Mentor Series in fiction. She was recently awarded first place for her story, "Ice Roads," that is forthcoming in the 2013 summer issue of Crab Orchard Review. Her work has been published in Revolver, McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, Writers' Block, and Paper Darts. Currently she is working on her first young adult novel and often she types to the Vertigo sound track. She lives in South Minneapolis with her husband, two boys, and a dog named Happy.
 
Patrick Cabello Hansel has published poetry in journals such as Turtle Quarterly, Main Channel Voices, Parachute, Painted Bride Quarterly, Passager and forthcoming in Hawai´i Pacific Review and Perfume River Poetry Review. His poem “Quitting Time” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Cabello Hansel was in the 2008-2009 Loft Mentor Series, and received a 2011 State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. His novella “Searching” was serialized in 33 issues of The Alley News. With his wife Luisa, he is co-pastor at St. Paul’s Lutheran in Phillips neighborhood of south Minneapolis, and director of its Semilla Community Arts Program.
 
Neal Karlen has been a Rolling Stone Contributing Editor, Newsweek staff writer, and regular contributor to The New York Times. His journalism and fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Indiana Review. Karlen has written eight books, on topics ranging from punk rock to minor league baseball; self-loathing to Yiddish linguistics. With Prince, he wrote “The Dawn,” a thankfully never-seen rock opera, and with sex object Jenny McCarthy, he penned a best-selling feminist manifesto. His latest book is Augie’s Secrets: The Minneapolis Mob and the King of the Hennepin Strip. Karlen lives with Bunny Lebowsky, an ex-girlfriend’s rabbit.
 
Lynne Maker Kuechle is a fiscal year 2013 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Maker Kuechle was a 2011-2012 creative nonfiction winner in the Mentor Series at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She is at work on a memoir/series of essays about her lifelong fascination with figure skating.
 
Elmer Lovrien has been writing in journals since his college days in the late '60's. Since he completed The Loft Master Track program (now called Forward) three years ago, he has been working on the completing a coming of age story called Homer The Innocent.
 
David Malley has held staff positions at the Discovery Channel, Rolling Stone, and Maxim, and his writing has appeared in numerous publications. Before relocating to Minneapolis in 2009, he spent three years in Berlin, Germany, where he performed with theater director Michael Laub’s Remote Control Productions and played an American soldier on German television. His essay “Confessions of an Amateur Pickup Artist” was anthologized in the book Howl: The Best Contemporary Dog Wit. He was a recent fellow at the Anderson Center at Tower View and is a grateful recipient of a 2012 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant.

MaryAnn Franta Moenck writes poetry and non-fiction. Her poems have appeared in Dogwood, Snowy Egret, Cimarron Review, Nimrod, and Water~Stone Review. She is a participant in the 2012-2013 Loft Mentor Series. She is currently at work on a poetry collection that is based on family history. MaryAnn and her blacksmith husband divide their time between their home on the east of Saint Paul and the family farm in southeast Minnesota.
 
Therese Stanton is a fiction writer who is working on a novel about Walt Whitman and his relationship with American Indians during the Civil War. She is the recipient of many awards including: Special Mention, 2013 Pushcart Prize XXXVII, Avery Hopwood Award for Fiction, The Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, The Barbara Deming Award for Writers. Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in journals including: A Public Space, Meridian, Carve, Ms. Magazine, On the Issues, Changing Men, Emma, Off Our Backs, and Lakota Times. Her family is members of the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Morton, Minnesota.