Join three alumni of the 2015 Emerging Writers’ Mentor Program (sponsored by the Givens Foundation for African American Literature) – Stephanie Chrismon, Katie Robinson, and Michael Kleber-Diggs – for a mini-reunion featuring poetry, fiction and general awesomeness.

katie robinson is a poet, actor, and sexuality educator in the Twin Cities. In her work, she sits with moments of trauma and grief, with hopes that they may find relief in her blackness and her queerness. She graduated from Pitzer College in 2014 with a designed major in Narrative Studies, in which she explored systems of oppression, and the stories of desire and liberation they incite. She was a 2017 participant in the VONA Regional Workshop at the Loft Literary Center, and a 2015 Fellow with the Givens Foundation. She is currently acting in the web series Sweetness of Wild, a love story to the blackness of Minneapolis, and a brainchild of the experimental arts collective, Free Black Dirt. katie wants you to be gentle with yourself, and explore what makes you feel most free.

Michael Kleber-Diggs is a poet and essayist. In 2015, he was a Fellow with the Givens Foundation for African-American Literature. In 2015-16, he was a Winner of the Loft Mentor Series in Poetry. His work has appeared in books, journals, newspapers, light rail train cars, buses, online, and on coffee sleeves and radio stations. He someday hopes to have a poem on a sidewalk. Michael is husband to Karen Kleber Diggs, a horticulturist who makes art with flowers. They live in Saint Paul with their 15-year-old daughter who is an accomplished dancer and an emerging driver.

Stephanie Chrismon is a writer, pop culture junkie and Afrofuturist. She is a participant in the 2016-2017 Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose and was a fellow in the 2015 Emerging Writers’ Mentor Program sponsored by the Givens Foundation for African American Literature. Chrismon, who has a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Hamline University, lives in St. Paul with her partner and their two weird cats. Her first novel (writing as DC Edwards), Bright City, is a dystopian coming-of-age story set in a reimagined United States.

Following the reading, Chrismon will sign and sell copies of Bright City.