Poetry

Poetry writers from Minnesota.

Hill-Lindsay-Stuart_headshot_2026

Lindsay Stuart Hill

Lindsay Stuart Hill is a poet, educator, and freelance writer. Her first full-length poetry collection, World of Dew, won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her poems explore loss, impermanence, Buddhism, and travel. Raised in New Hampshire, she earned her MFA from the University of Virginia, where…

Gilmore-Renee_headshot_2026

Renee Gilmore

Renee Gilmore is the author of Wayfinding: A Memoir. She is a neurodivergent multi-genre writer, essayist, and poet, and she fearlessly explores the illusion of happiness. Through her writing and lived experience, Gilmore proves that resilience can be practiced both by accident and intention. She holds degrees from the University of New Mexico and Hamline…

DeGrazia-Emilio_headshot_2026

Emilio DeGrazia

Emilio DeGrazia, from Winona, is a writer, teacher, and editor. In 1977 he founded Great River Review, now with the University of Minnesota. His first short story collection, Enemy Country, was followed by a novel, Billy Brazil. Then came more stories, Seventeen Grams of Soul, the novel A Canticle for Bread and Stones, essay collections…

DSC_1140 copy – Version 2

Connie Wanek

Connie Wanek lived for over a quarter century in Duluth, Minnesota. She is the author of 10 books, including Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems. Wanek’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other journals. She was named a Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress in…

Erickson-Anne-Marie_headshot_2026

Anne-Marie Erickson

Anne-Marie Erickson was born in the western Minnesota prairie town of Benson. Her journalism, poetry, essays, and book reviews have appeared in regional publications. Her first book, In the Evening, We’ll Dance, is a memoir in essays based on the 17 years of her husband’s dementia. Erickson attended Augsburg University in Minneapolis (B.A., American Studies).…

Weil-Helen_headshot_2025

Helen Weil

Helen Weil is a poet, writer, and educator from the Chicago suburbs who loves ghost stories and love stories in equal measure. She studied Psychology and Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota and went on to earn an M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education. Her poems and short stories have appeared in the Dalliances Anthology,…

Allen-Jon_headshot_2025

J.M. Allen

J.M. Allen has been a resident of Rochester, Minnesota for over 30 years and enjoys writing rhyming poems. His book Real Rhyming Poems is cataloged at over 20 Minnesota libraries – maybe it is available at your local library?

Breeden-David_headshot_2025 edit

David Breeden

Rev. David Breeden, Ph.D. is a poet, practical theologian, and former Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, a historically Humanist congregation. A long-time public intellectual, he holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a Ph.D. from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, and an M.Div. from Meadville…

Larkins-Dralandra_headshot_2025 crop

Dralandra Larkins

Dralandra Larkins is a multi-genre writer, three-time award-winning spoken word poet, and the author of Before I Lie. She is a teaching artist at COMPAS and has performed for the NAACP, Button Poetry, Mill City Museum, Minnesota State Capitol, Minnesota Black Business Ball, and the Minnesota Black Authors Expo. Larkins co-edits Cracked Walnut’s Rewilding Hope…

Miller-Leslie_headshot_2025

Leslie Adrienne Miller

Leslie Adrienne Miller’s collections of poetry include Y, The Resurrection Trade, Eat Quite Everything You See, Yesterday Had a Man In It, Ungodliness, and Staying Up For Love. Miller’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Harvard Review, Georgia Review, Ploughshares, and Crazyhorse. Professor of English at the University of…