On Friday, October 13th, at 8pm, The Lynhall hosts POETRY THE 13TH!

Please join special guest Chris Tonelli (poet & founding editor of Birds, LLC here for the Twin Cities Book Festival), and fellow Birds, LLC editor Matt Rasmussen for POETRY THE 13th as they host local poet-friends Caitlin Bailey, Su Hwang, katie robinson, and Michael Torres for a poetry reading full of (we hope) the macabre, gnawing existential angst/pathos, and a generous portion of dark humor at The Lynhall––a new “market-inspired café, event space, kitchen studio, and kitchen incubator” – on yes, Friday, October 13, 2017.

As a vast, community-based space, The Lynhall is excited to host this pre-Halloween/pre-Apocalypse reading in hope of future collaborations (if we all live that long) with artists, literary organizations, and social justice organizations in the Twin Cities. The reading will take place in The Linney Studio (a brand new, full-on kitchen television studio) on the southwest corner of Lyndale Avenue (there are two entrances).

These six poets will serve you poems from the kitchen stage, and the evening promises some new poetry cooked up just for this event on Friday the 13th! Reading starts at 8pm, but come early and/or linger afterwards for tasty bites and awesome drinks (full bar and coffee station until 10pm) and killer poems in a new, inclusive space in the heart of Uptown. Free wifi, free coffee refills, free reading!

POETRY THE 13TH Poets:

Caitlin Bailey is the author of Solve for Desire, winner of the 2017 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in December, 2017. She received an MFA from Hamline University and lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Su Hwang was awarded the 2016-17 Minnesota Emerging Writers Grant from the Loft Literary Center, and Coffee House Press In The Stacks Fellowship at Dickinson House in Belgium. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she grew up in New York then moved to San Francisco 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 Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize and a regional VONA alum. Her first poetry collection was named a finalist by Pleiades, BOAAT, and Noemi Press. Su currently lives in Minneapolis.

Matt Rasmussen is the author of Black Aperture, which won the 2013 Walt Whitman Award, the 2014 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. His poems have been published in The Literary Review, Gulf Coast, Water~Stone Review, Revolver, Paper Darts,Poets.org and elsewhere. He received a 2014 Pushcart Prize, was awarded the 2015 Holmes National Poetry Prize, and is a founding editor of the independent poetry press Birds, LLC. He teaches at Gustavus Adolphus College and lives in Robbinsdale, MN.

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.

Chris Tonelli works in the Libraries at NC State and co-owns So & So Books in Raleigh, NC where he lives with his wife, Allison, and their two kids, Miles and Vera. He is a founding editor of the independent poetry press, Birds, LLC, and he curates the So & So Series and edits So & So Magazine. He is the author of five chapbooks, and his second full-length collection, Whatever Stasis, is forthcoming from Barrelhouse Books.

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 The Sun, Copper Nickel, and Green Mountains Review among others. He has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Jerome Foundation. Torres is a VONA alum and was the 2017 CantoMundo Distinguished Fellow for the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Currently he teaches creative writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato and through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.