Poetry
Poetry writers from Minnesota.
Candace Simar
Candace Simar is a Minnesota writer with a passion for history and her Scandinavian heritage. Her Abercrombie Trail Series received awards from the Western Writers of America. Shelterbelts is set in Otter Tail County, Minnesota and received finalist awards from the Willa Literary Awards in Historical Fiction. Her Escape to Fort Abercrombie is geared toward…
William Reichard
William Reichard is a writer, editor, and educator. He has published seven poetry collections, most recently, Our Delicate Barricades Downed. Three of his previous collections were finalists for the Minnesota Book Award. Reichard is the editor of the anthology, American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice, and he revised and edited…
Yvonne Pearson
Yvonne Pearson is a writer and clinical social worker who lives in Minneapolis. Her most recent picture book, Little Loon Finds His Voice, won a PubWest Silver Design Award and is a 2021 finalist for Foreword Indie Picture Book of the Year. Her first picture book, Sadie Braves the Wilderness, was published in 2017. She…
Sheila Packa
Sheila Packa is a poet, writer, and teacher with Minnesota and Finnish roots. She has five books of poetry: The Mother Tongue, Echo & Lightning, Cloud Birds, Night Train Red Dust: Poems of the Iron Range, and Surface Displacements. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and has taught creative writing and…
Brett Ortler
Brett Ortler is a writer and an editor from just north of the Twin Cities. He is the author of 10 books, including everything from a poetry collection, Lessons of the Dead, to nonfiction books pertaining to fireflies, mosquitoes, and ship watching on the Great Lakes. His essays, poetry, and articles appear widely, including in…
Mai Neng Moua
Mai Neng Moua is a writer spinning tales of what it means to be Hmong in America. Her memoir is titled The Bride Price: A Hmong Wedding Story. She is the founder of Paj Ntaub Voice, the Hmong literary arts journal where she published more than 200 artists, and the editor of Bamboo Among the…
Michelle Matthees
Michelle Matthees is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s MFA program in Creative Writing. She has received grants and awards from The Jerome Foundation, The Minnesota State Arts Board, The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, AWP, and other arts organizations. In 2016 New Rivers Press published Flucht, her first book-length collection of poems about Eastern…
Freya Manfred
Freya Manfred has nine collections of poetry. Her sixth collection, Swimming with a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle, won the 2009 Midwest Bookseller’s Choice Award for Poetry. Her ninth and most recent collection is Loon in Late November Water. A longtime Midwesterner who has lived on both coasts, her poetry has appeared in over 100…
Raymond Luczak
Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of more than 20 books. His most recent titles include Flannelwood and Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman. He lives in Minneapolis.
Athena Kildegaard
Athena Kildegaard grew up in St. Peter, Minnesota, and, after having lived in Chicago, Austin TX, Oxford MS, New Orleans, and central Mexico, now lives and teaches in western Minnesota. Her poems have been set to music by Linda Kachelmeier, Libby Larsen, Jake Endres, and others. She has experience teaching people of all ages, is…