Events

The 2018 Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) brings bold, exciting and moving works by emerging and veteran filmmakers to the Twin Cities, April 12-28, presenting more than 250 new films representing over 70 countries.

MSPIFF, one of the longest-running film festivals in the country and the largest film event in the Upper Midwest, draws an attendance of 40,000 annually. This year, MSPIFF expands to include select screenings at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, in addition to screenings at its hub at the St. Anthony Main Theatre, the Capri Theater, the Uptown Theatre, Metropolitan State University’s Film Space in St. Paul and the Marcus Wehrenberg 14 Theater in Rochester.

For 37 years, the staff of the Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul, the Festival’s parent organization, has scoured international film festivals to bring a unique slate of award-winning, critically acclaimed international films to regional audiences, films that otherwise would never be screened in this market.

Join us for “Community Journalism for Social Movements: Training and Discussion” on Sunday, April 22n from 1pm – 2:30pm at the East Side Freedom Library.

For this Journalism of Color training, learn how to use journalism as a tool for building community power and to report on social change work. Journalism of Color emphasizes:

-Disrupting traditional narratives about historically-marginalized communities and systems of oppression
-Elevating the voices and experiences of historically-marginalized communities
-Writing for and by historically-marginalized communities
-Creating journalism, journalism spaces, and journalism tools that are easily accessed by these communities and can be practiced by these communities
-Developing localized journalism structures and processes, and community-based journalism and journalistic literacy.

Light snacks will be provided. Childcare will be available. Free and open to all.

For more information, contact Cirien Saadeh at cirien.saadeh@prescott.edu and 952-426-2429
or
East Side Freedom Library at info@eastsidefreedomlibrary.org and 651-230-3294

The East Side Freedom Library is located at 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106.

Registration now open! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/conference-on-justice-involved-women-and-girls-2018-tickets-41510100829?aff=eac2

Join the Task Force on Justice Involved Women and Girls as we explore disparities in the criminal justice system as experienced by women and girls.

Agenda
8:30am-9:00am: Registration & Breakfast (provided)

9:00-9:15: Welcome and Awards

9:15-9:45: Overlooked: Women in Jails in an Era of Reform, Kristine Riley, Vera Institute

9:45-9:55: Break

9:55-10:25: A Picture of Female Incarceration in Minnesota, Kelly Mitchell, Robina Institute

10:25-10:35: Break

10:35- 11:30: Break-out Session #1

(1) Are All Facilities Created Equal?: Parity for Women in Jails and Prisons
Presenters: Kristine Riley, Vera Institute
Jan Scott, Asst. Deputy Director, Ramsey County Community Corrections Adult Services; Guy Bosch, Asst. Warden, Shakopee Correctional Facility

(2) Women and Girls’ Pathways to Incarceration
Presenter: Vicki Hunter, Associate Professor of Sociology, Minnesota State Mankato

(3) Creating Change through Legislation & Policy
Presenters: Erica Gerrity, Program Director, Minnesota Prison Doula Project; Kathleen Lonegran, Director of Government Relations, MN Department of Corrections

11:30-12:15: Lunch (provided)

12:15-1:15: In Her Own Words: A Discussion with Formerly Incarcerated Women

1:15-1:25: Break

1:25-2:20: Break-out Session #2

(1) Add Women and Stir: Evaluating Probation and Risk/Needs Assessments for Women
Presenter: Angela Brewer, Career Probation Officer, Rice County Community Corrections

(2) Meeting the Needs of Justice Involved Women Through Gender Responsive Programming
Presenters: Roxanne Sanderson, MSW, LICSW, Ramsey County Corrections; Nicole Staeheli, MATS, EBP Coordinator, Dakota County Community Corrections; Dori Maddox, MA, Career Case Worker, MCF-Shakopee

(3) When It’s Time to Sue: Litigating on Behalf of Incarcerated Women
Presenter: Ellen Barry

2:20-2:30: Break

2:30-3:20: Break-out Session #3

(1) Re-Entry Challenges for Women
Presenters: Amber Jochem, Community Outreach Manager, Minnesota Teen Challenge; Luanne Buck, Director of Women’s Re-entry Services, RS Eden

(2) Girls Don’t Just Wanna Have Fun: The Disparate Experience of Justice Involved Girls
Presenter: Kristi Cobbs, Girls Focus Program Director, Hennepin County Home School

(3) #metoo: Women in the Profession
Presenters: Honorable Pamela Alexander, Judge of Hennepin County District Court
Katie Kizerow, Senior Corporate Security Officer, Target Corp., and former University of Minnesota Police Department Sergeant
Renee Louck, Career Probation/Parole Officer, Hennepin County Community Corrections
Melissa Toavs, Probation Officer, Hennepin County Adult Correctional Facility

3:20-3:35: Break w/ Snacks (provided)

3:35-4:30: Next Steps and Closing

4:30: Meet and Greet Reception

Register today at {include link}
CLE and CEU credits are being applied for

Questions? Contact Karmen McQuitty kmcquitt@umn.edu

Registration now open! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/conference-on-justice-involved-women-and-girls-2018-tickets-41510100829?aff=eac2

Join the Task Force on Justice Involved Women and Girls as we explore disparities in the criminal justice system as experienced by women and girls.

Ever Wonder Why there is no LGBTQ Community Center in Minnesota? What Does a Queer and Trans Community Center mean to you? MTHC wants to know. For years the Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition has been hosting a Defacto Community Center and space The Exchange Minneapolis along with RARE Productions and Cafe SouthSide creating space and programming for Trans, Queer, People of Color, Artists and Organizers. MTHC stakeholders think LGBTQ folks deserve more than a Defacto Space and are leading conversations to find out What this Center should be and we want your input, ideas and voice!

The Race, Indigeneity and Sexuality Studies Initiative (RIGS) & the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities are proud to present a conversation on language endangerment in Belize with Dr. Jennifer Gomez Menjivar

What is the relationship between land rights and language rights? What do sovereignty and autonomy have to do with language maintenance in indigenous communities? Dr. Gómez Menjívar draws on her research in Belizean Mopan and Garifuna communities to examine the relationship between endangered indigenous languages and the ancestral lands that nourish them. While analyses of language endangerment often focus on the diminishing use of a local language as a result of a European language’s growing use without attending to economic factors or policy, Gómez Menjívar grounds her analysis on the impact of tourist economies on the erosion of language islands in Belize.

LIGHT REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED

This event is FREE and open to the public.

Local writers, artists, and activists will discuss masculinity and the danger of stereotypes that narrowly define us. David Mura will lead the conversation with Art Coulson, Ezekiel Joubert, Shinaah Thao, and Michael Torres, with an opening poem by Anthony Ceballos.

Founded by Carolyn Holbrook in 2015, the program is loosely based on Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s powerful TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story where she warns against fostering stereotypes by treating one story of a people as their only story.

To learn more about this event visit www.thefriends.org/singlestory and read more about each one of the one of the presenters.

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Milkweed Editions! Join us for an evening honoring poets and the vitality of the local poetry community.

6:00 p.m. | Join poets and their many fans for poetry-themed drinks and hors d’oeuvres!

7:00 p.m. | The party continues with a reading featuring the finalists* for this year’s $10,000 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry—the largest regional poetry prize. The finalists are:

Su Hwang, for BODEGA
Michael Torres, for HOMEBOYS WITH SLIPPED HALOS
Elizabeth Tannen, for NOTES ON DISTANCE
Angela Voras-Hills, for THE ACCOUNT OF WORMS
Claire Wahmanholm, for WILDER

BODEGA by Su Hwang
Su Hwang was awarded the 2018 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, the 2017 Minnesota Emerging Writers Grant from the Loft Literary Center, and the 2017 Coffee House Press In The Stacks Fellowship at Dickinson House in East Flanders, Belgium. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she called New York City and San Francisco home before transplanting to the Twin Cities to attend the University of Minnesota, where she received her MFA in Poetry. She is also the recipient of the Michael Dennis Browne Fellowship in Poetry and the Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize. She is a regional VONA alum, teaches creative writing with the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop, and is the co-founder/co-director of Poetry Asylum with award-winning poet Sun Yung Shin. She currently lives in Minneapolis.

HOMEBOYS WITH SLIPPED HALOS by Michael Torres
Michael Torres was born and brought up in Pomona, California where he spent his adolescence as a graffiti artist. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Sun, and Poetry Northwest, among others. He has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Jerome Foundation. Torres is a VONA alum and a CantoMundo Fellow. Currently he teaches creative writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato and through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.

NOTES ON DISTANCE by Elizabeth Tannen
Elizabeth Tannen is a Brooklyn native, South Minneapolis resident, teacher, activist and multigenre writer. She holds an MFA from the University of New Mexico in Creative Nonfiction and in 2016-2017 won a Loft Mentor Series Award and a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, both for poetry. If you ask what she’s most proud of, she’ll say the ongoing reading series she founded in 2015: Five Writers, Five Minutes, Five Watt, or 555. Her writing appears in places like Copper Nickel, Salon, Southern Humanities Review, and Passages North, as well as the blog she’s intermittently and often ambivalently written since 2009, Dating in the Odyssey Years. She spends much of her time seeking out conversations about dad jokes, community, and dismantling white supremacy.

THE ACCOUNT OF WORMS by Angela Voras-Hills
Angela Voras-Hills earned her MFA at UMass-Boston and has been awarded grants from The Sustainable Arts Foundation, Key West Literary Seminar, and was a fellow at Writers’ Room of Boston. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Best New Poets, Memorious, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, among other journals and anthologies. She is Online Literary Arts Director at Arts + Literature Laboratory and lives with her family in Milwaukee, WI.

WILDER by Claire Wahmanholm
Claire Wahmanholm is the author of the chapbook Night Vision, which won the 2017 New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM chapbook contest. Her poems have most recently appeared in, or are forthcoming from, anthropoid, Paperbag, Saltfront, New Poetry from the Midwest 2017, PANK, Bennington Review, The Collapsar,Newfound, Bateau, DIAGRAM, elsewhere, Best New Poets 2015, Handsome, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Journal, The Kenyon Review Online, BOAAT, 32 Poems, and Waxwing, among others. Her debut full-length collection is forthcoming from Tinderbox Editions in early 2019. She lives and teaches in the Twin Cities.

TICKETS
PAY WHAT YOU CAN
All are welcome! No one will be turned away for lack of funds.(Suggested donation of $5 to help cover food & drinks.)

$10 GENERAL ADMISSION TICKET
Enjoy poetry-themed drinks, light fare, and poetry.

$25 TICKET PLUS A BOOK!
Your ticket will also serve as a voucher redeemable at the party for a collection of poems** of your choosing!

*Please note that this event does NOT factor into the selection of the prize winner. The winner is selected in a blind process by an impartial judge and will be announced by 4/30/18.

**Book vouchers are redeemable for titles published by Milkweed Editions only.

Celebrate Independent Bookstore Day at
Moon Palace Books on Saturday, April 28

Geek Love Cafe Independent Bookstore Day Specials
9am – 11am Grab a cup of free coffee to start your day!
3pm – 6pm 2-for-1 tap beer, cider, or house wine.
6pm – close Bring in 5 Independent Bookstore Day receipts from 5 different Twin Cities bookstores and get half off a 12 inch specialty pizza. Bring in 7 receipts and we’ll throw in a free mini-cheese cake!

We’re participating in the fabulous Twin Cities Bookstore Day Passport and we’ll have free copies of the First Annual Midwest Indie Bookstore Roadmap!

Poetry Asylum presents: The Great Twin Cities Poetry Read
6pm – 9pm featuring an amazing line-up of 30+ local poets in the bookstore AND interactive poetic and literary activites (Tarot-reading, Order-a-poem, etc) in the Event Room.

Oodles of exclusive merchandise! Tote bags, stuffies, comics, posters, prints, and signed items.

Mixed Blood Theatre presents, ON OUR OWN TERMS: Voices at the Intersection of Transgender Experience and Mixed Blood Theatre, living at the crossroads of theater and the trans experience at Mixed Blood on April 28. The event propels Mixed Blood’s ambition to become an artistic home for trans theatre artists.

ON OUR OWN TERMS programming schedule is as follows on Saturday, April 28th:

NOON
Salon: The Roles We Play: Building A Better Model for Transgender Inclusivity and Accessibility in the Theatre

2:00PM
No Bull by Bennett Fisher Directed by Genevieve Bennett

5:00PM
Sensitive Guys by MJ Kaufman Directed by Noel Raymond

7:30PM
Mermaid Hour: ReMixed by David Valdes Greenwood, Music by Eric Mayson Directed by Leah Anderson

For more information, visit our website at https://mixedblood.com/on-stage/ourterms/