November 21, 2013, Thursday - Left Behind: A Reading Commemorating International Suicide Survivor's Day at The Loft

Time: 7:00pm

Location: The Loft Literary Center, at Open Book (Performance Hall), 1011 Washington Ave

Left Behind: A Reading Commemorating International Suicide Survivor's Day
 
Every year, survivors of suicide gather together in locations around the world to feel a sense of community, promote healing, and connect with others who have had a similar experience. This year, join writers Melanie Hoffert, Juliet Patterson, and Matt Rasmussen in advance of International Suicide Survivor's Day (November 23, 2013) to commemorate this event with an evening of literature.

Melanie Hoffert grew up on a farm near Wyndmere, North Dakota where she spent her childhood meandering gravel roads and listening to farmers at church potlucks. She has an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University, where she received the Outstanding Creative Nonfiction Thesis Award. Her essay "Going Home" won the Creative Nonfiction Award from The Baltimore Review; additionally, The Allure of Grain Trucks was selected as a finalist for the Writers at Work Fellowship Competition and also won the New Millennium Writings Creative Nonfiction Award. The Loft Literary Center selected her as a finalist for the Loft Mentor Series twice. Her work has also appeared in Muse & Stone and The Mochila Review. Prairie Silence is her first book.
 
Juliet Patterson is the author of The Truant Lover, winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize, and Dirge, a chapbook recently published by Albion Books. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous magazines including 26, American Letters & Commentary, Arts & Letters, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, and Verse. Her recent awards include the 2011 Arts & Letters Susan Atefat Prize in Non-Fiction, 201 0 Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, and a fellowship from the Minneapolis-based Institute for Community and Cultural Development. She lives in Minneapolis.
 
Matt Rasmussen is the author of Black Aperture, which was selected by Jane Hirshfield as the winner of the 2013 Walt Whitman Award and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The Literary Review, Gulf Coast, Water~Stone Review, Paper Darts, Poets.org and elsewhere. He is the recipient of grants and residencies from the McKnight Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Jerome Foundation, The Anderson Center, and The Corporation of Yaddo. He received a 2014 Pushcart Prize and is a founder and editor of the independent poetry press Birds, LLC. He lives in Robbinsdale, Minnesota.