June 28, 2019, Friday - Loft Mentor Series Reading with Danez Smith

Time:  7:00 - 9:00 pm

Location: The Loft Literary Center, 1011 Washington Avenue S

Mentor Series Reading with Danez Smith

The Loft Literary Center Presents a 2018-2019 Loft Mentor Series Reading with mentor Danez Smith and fellows Haeyoon Fry, Jessie Lee-Bauder and Hilal Isler.

Haeyoon Fry (fiction) is an author and accountant from Saint Paul, MN. She has been published in Sixfold's 2017 Winter Fiction issue, listed as a finalist for New Millennium Writings, and featured on her mother's refrigerator. She has an incomplete degree in English Literature from Hamline University, an incomplete degree in German Literature from the University of Trier, and an incomplete certification in the safe removal of bio-hazardous materials.

Jessie Lee-Bauder’s (fiction) short stories are both confessional and surreal, as she conveys the experience of occupying an intersection of identities that simultaneously welcome and isolate. She also deals with experiences shared across identities and examines the universal wants for connection, and to love and be loved. She has a BA in Creative Writing from Macalester College and lives in Minneapolis.

Hilal Isler (creative nonfiction) teaches social justice at the University of Minnesota. She writes mostly about her experience, growing up the child of Turkish immigrants.

Danez Smith is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of ​Don’t Call Us Dead​ (Graywolf Press, 2017), finalist for the 2017 National Book Award, the Lambda Award for Gay Poetry, and two Publishing Triangle Awards. Their first collection, ​[insert] boy​ (YesYes Books, 2014), was the winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez’s third collection, ​Homie​, will be published in Spring 2020.They are the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Montalvo Arts Center, Cave Canem, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Danez's work has been featured widely including on​ Buzzfeed​, ​The New York Times​, ​PBS NewsHour, Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine,​ and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness. Danez is also the recipient of the inaugural Four Quartets Prize from the Poetry Society of America and the T.S. Eliot Foundation. Find more at ​www.danezsmithpoet.com​