March 24, 2012, Saturday - Winners of 2011 McKnight Artist Fellows Reading at The Loft

Time  7:00pm

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

The winners of the 2011 McKnight Artist Fellowships for Writers, Loft Award in Children's Literature and Loft Awards in Creative Prose, read from their work. A reception follows. Readers include Heather Bouwman, John Colburn, Jessica Roeder, Ethan Rutherford, and Dominic Saucedo. Judges for the fellowships were Arthur A. Levine (children's literature) and Pam Houston (creative prose).

Heather Bouwman is the author of the middle-grade fantasy novel The Remarkable & Very True Story of Lucy & Snowcap (Marshall Cavendish, 2008). She is an associate professor in the English Department at the University of St. Thomas. Along with novelist Swati Avasthi, she curates the Second Story Reading Series for children's and young adult authors at The Loft Literary Center.

John Colburn is originally from Mantorville, MN, and is an editor and co-publisher at Spout Press. His first chapbook, Kissing, was published by Fuori Editions in 2002. A second chapbook, The Lawrence Welk Diaries, was published by WinteRed Press in 2006. His writing ahs also appeared in such journals as Fairy Tale Review, Uncanny Valley, Jubilat, and Black Warrior Review. He works as a teacher at Hamline University and at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, and also plays in the improvised music group Astronaut Cooper's Parade.

Jessica Roeder lives in Duluth. She has published stories, poems, and essays in journals including The Threepenny Review, Third Coast, Narrative, Alaska Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her fiction has earned her a Pushcart Prize, a fellowship at Writers at Work, and a Loft-McKnight Award in Creative Prose. She holds an MFA from the University of Florida and teaches online for Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver.

Ethan Rutherford's fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, Esopus, and in the anthologies Fiction on a Stick: Stories by Writers from Minnesota and The Best American Short Stories 2009. His work has received special mention in two Pushcart Prize anthologies. His first novel, The Peripatetic Coffin, will be published by Ecco Press in 2013. 

Dominic Saucedo, a native of Los Angeles, now happily resides in Minneapolis. He has received fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, SASE/Jerome Foundation, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. His most recent work can be found in Cerise Press, Paper Darts, Breakwater Review, and Fiction on a Stick: Stories by Writers from Minnesota. A portion of his novel-in-progress was nominated for in 2010 for Best American Short Stories. He teaches writing at Minneapolis Community and Technical College.