January 29, 2016, Friday - Mentor Series Reading: Sherry Quan Lee at the Loft

Time: 7:00pm

Location: The Loft Literary Center, 1011 Washington Avenue S

The 2015–2016 Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose presents poetry mentor Sherry Quan Lee reading along with program participants Isela Xitlali Gómez (nonfiction) and Lynda McDonnell (fiction).

Sherry Quan Lee, MFA, Creative Writing, is a Community Instructor at Metropolitan State University (Intro to Creative Writing, Advanced Creative Writing), and has taught classes and mentored writers at Intermedia Arts and The Loft Literary Center. She has also co-taught A Gathering of Storytellers with Lori Young-Willams for the University [of Minnesota] Women of Color organization (UWOC), Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center (UROC), a partnership between the University of Minnesota and North Minneapolis, and for other community organizations statewide. She is the author of A Little Mixed Up, Guild Press, 1982 (second printing), Chinese Blackbird, a memoir in verse, published in 2002 by the Asian American Renaissance, republished in 2008 by Loving Healing Press/Modern History Press, How to Write a Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman’s life, Loving Healing Press/Modern History Press, 2008, and Love Imagined: a mixed race memoir, Loving Healing Press/Modern History Press, 2014. Follow her online at http://blog.sherryquanlee.com/.

Isela Xitlali Gómez is a community organizer and artist in the Twin Cities. An East LA/Inland Empire transplant, she writes to piece together broken stories of family, trauma, and travel a la Southern California. Her current work places her in the first-ring suburbs of Minneapolis, as a “community liaison” where she coordinates police-community relationships. Her newest vision dreams of sparking many storytelling spaces between community members and officers. Gómez’s art lays its roots in the spaces between jazz, mariachi, taco trucks, and chili cheese burgers, oceans and desert, and, now, snow.

Lynda McDonnell is a writer, teacher, and editor in Minneapolis. She spent the first 30 years of her career reporting and editing for newspapers and contributing occasional essays and short stories to literary journals. She spent the final 12 years of her paid professional life building ThreeSixty Journalism, a nonprofit program that teaches writing and reporting to high school students, primarily those from immigrant, low-income, and minority families. She's a wife, daughter, mom, and grandmother, an avid hiker, an enthusiastic choir member, and a good cook. She's grateful for the time and energy to make writing a central part of her life.

There is a $5-$10 suggested admission fee for this event.