June 2018

Midstream Reading Series

.                                                                       

 When: Thursday June 7, 7:30–8:30pm.    2018

 Where: Blue Moon building, corner of 39th and (3820) East Lake. Upstairs. Entrance just west of the Blue Moon coffee house; up the stairs and to the left. Not wheel-chair accessible. Plentiful street parking.

  Best to arrive 10-20 minutes early to get coffee and food/dessert from the Blue Moon, and to be seated by 7:30 so we can begin on time. And, the venue will easily hold about 35; after that, standing or floor-sitting room only. The early bird gets the seat. Please occupy the close seats first. Be an up-front person.

Musical prelude: 6:45-7:15   Papa John Kolstad will perform before the Midstream Poetry reading June 7,2018 from 6:45 to 7:15 PM. He will be performing exclusively on the Acoustic 12 string guitar. The program will be blues, folk songs and some funny and novelty tunes. The 12 string guitar has a unique, robust sound that lend itself to blues, ballads and rhythmic music accompaniment. Papa John will select songs to demonstrate these qualities.       Legendary folk-blues singer, guitar player Papa John Kolstad has been performing more than 50 years.  Respectfully presenting the creators and history of American roots music. Papa John returned last October from a three week tour of Germany and was a featured performer at the Southern Germany Vintner Fest Wine Festival.   Email: jkolstad@millcitymusic.com

 Original poems and stories read/performed by their creators: 

Naomi Cohn, Mike Finley, Lon Otto, Mimi VanAusdall

Naomi Cohn is a poet, therapist and teaching artist. Through her project, Known by Heart, she leads accessible poetry workshops and experiences and publishes poetry posters featuring the work of older adults.  She’s also worked as a freelance writer, community organizer, encyclopedia copy editor and grant writer. Red Dragonfly Press published her chapbook, Between Nectar & Eternity, in 2013. Her lyric essay, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Bird, appeared in Hippocampus in 2016 and was  nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Thanks to a 2018 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant, she is currently finishing a book-length prose poem, Entries from the Braille Encyclopedia, about the experience of learning braille as an adult. A Chicago native, she now lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she’s proud to be featured in that city’s sidewalk poetry project.

Mike Finley has been working the Twin Cities poetry trenches for 50 years. He’s published over 230 books. He makes movies, tells stories, and roams our stages, coffeehouses and saloons like a fabulous creature — half angel, half troll. His goal is to make you glad you showed up tonight. Put’ em together for longtime friend Mike Finley.

Lon Otto published his third collection of stories in fall 2015—A Man in Trouble, from Brighthorse Books. His previously published books are A Nest of Hooks (U. of Iowa Press), winner of the Iowa School of Letters Award for Short Fiction, and Cover Me (Coffee House Press). His writing in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry is in many anthologies, including The Pushcart Prize, American Fiction, Flash Fiction and Flash Fiction Forward, Blink and Blink Again, Townships, and Not Normal, Illinois. Several of his stories have been broadcast on NPR’s Selected Shorts. He is professor emeritus at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, and regularly teaches in the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

Mimi Iimuro Van Ausdall, Ph.D., is a Minneapolis-based writer and teacher. Her creative and scholarly work appears in MUTHA Magazine, The Journal of Lesbian Studies, Feminist Formations, among others. She has been the recipient of the National Women’s Studies Association Graduate Scholarship in Lesbian Studies and of the Consortium of Institutional Cooperation (CIC) Fellowship at Purdue University. Her current projects include a book of personal essays entitled My Life as Almost Lesbian, Almost Asian, Almost Blind, Almost Mom and a novel Across the Fence; Gather the Sky featuring a trio of Japanese-American teenagers interned during World War II.

Before and after: The Blue Moon, downstairs, has coffee, sandwiches, desserts. Merlin’s Rest, a bar/restaurant 3 blocks west, has a full bar, good food, a late hours kitchen, reserved seating..

                  For further information: David Shove shove001@umn.edu     651-636-5672

And for a day by day, hour by hour calendar of local literary events, google Rain Taxi on the internet.