Roy Guzmán, G.E. Patterson, Gabriella Anais Deal-Marquez, Mary Moore Easter, Sagirah Shahid, Maitreyi Ray, and your hosts Michael Kleber-Diggs and Paula Cisewski will add Twin Cities voices to poets and musicians around the world promoting peace, sustainability, and justice. You can read more about 100 Thousand Poets for change at 100tpc.org

Mary Moore Easter’s first poetry collection, The Body of the World, a finalist for the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in 2017, is forthcoming from Mad Hat Press in 2018. Born in Petersburg, Virginia to parents on the faculty of then-segregated Virginia State College (University), she holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence and an M.A. from Goddard. Widely published (Poetry, The NewYork Times), her work earned a Pushcart Prize nomination. She is a Cave Canem Fellow and professor emerita of Dance at Carleton College where she founded and directed the Dance Program. Honors include The Loft Creative Non-Fiction Award; a Bush Artist Fellowship in Choreography and others.

Poet and translator G.E. Patterson is the author of two poetry collections, Tug and To and From. His work has garnered a Minnesota Book Award and fellowships from Cave Canem, the Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, & New York City’s Fund for Poetry. He was a featured poet-performer in New York’s Panasonic Village Jazz Fest. Recent work includes two public-art commissions in the Twin Cities – for Create: The Community Mealand The Plume Project. With artist Jil Evans, he is curating a fall 2017 visual and literary exhibit titled Mapping North at Form + Content Gallery in the North Loop neighborhood of Minneapolis.

Roy G. Guzmán was born in Honduras and raised in Miami, Florida. He is a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow and a Minnesota State Arts Board Initiative grant recipient. His work will be included in the Best New Poets 2017 anthology, guest-edited by Natalie Diaz.

Sagirah Shahid is a Black Muslim writer based in Minneapolis. She is a 2015-2016 winner of a Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series Award in poetry, a 2016-2017 winner of a Minnesota Center for Book Arts Mentorship Award, and a 2017 recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board grant. Sagirah was one of four poets selected by the city of Minneapolis to have poems sculpted into giant metal lanterns along downtown Minneapolis’ iconic Nicollet Mall. In addition to being a member of MPR’s Generation Listen advisory council, Sagirah is on the board of the Saint Paul Almanac and is a member of the Northern Spark program council. She is currently writing her first book of poetry.