Kristin Laurel Presents: Questions about the Ride accompanied by Sandra Sidman Larson and Sue Reed Crouse

About Questions about the Ride:

Questions about the Ride, is a spiritual memoir of poetry. The author's nephew was killed when he went out to get the mail on his ATV and was struck by a truck at the end of the driveway. His mother performed CPR. Two years later, his toddler brother fell off the tractor his father was driving and died in his father’s arms. The book is a personal exploration on grief and the poet's quest for transcendence. As the poet struggles with faith, she creates her own cosmology through writing, and finds a sense of reckoning with the help of poetry, nice humans, the natural world, dogs, hawks, seagulls, rats, all kinds of creatures, but especially horses. It is a testimony to a family’s resilience and an elegiac tribute.

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Kristin Laurel has been employed as a nurse for nearly thirty years. A great deal of her writing examines trauma and the complexities of human experience. She owes her passion for poetry to the Loft Literary Center (MPLS) where she completed a two-year apprenticeship in poetry. Her poetry and essays have been published in CALYX, Chautauqua, Gravel, Raleigh Review, The Portland Review, and numerous others, and her poetry was featured on NPR. She is the author of Giving Them All Away (Evening Street Press), and Questions About the Ride (Main Street Rag Publishing). She and her spouse divide their time between Waconia, MN and Asheville, NC.

Sandra Sidman Larson, twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has four

chapbooks to her credit. Her first full-length book of poetry This

Distance in My Hands was published in March of 2017 by Main Street Rag

Press, Charlotte, North Carolina. Holding an MSW, Sandra managed

social justice and service nonprofit organizations for a career, and,

as a poet, she has been writing for almost 35 years. She is an active

member of The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and the grandmother

of two.

Sue Reed Crouse is a graduate of the Foreword Program, a two-year poetry apprenticeship at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis where she worked closely with poetry mentors Thomas R. Smith and Jude Nutter.

Her work appears in many journals, including Grey Sparrow, Earth’s Daughters, Damselfly Press, Verse Wisconsin, The Aurorean, Talking Stick and others. In addition, her work appears in two anthologies: Gatherings:  A Foreword Anthology, 2012 and In the Company of Others, a Foreword anthology, 2018. Her manuscript One Black Shoe was a finalist for the Backwaters Poetry Prize.

Much of her work is elegiac in nature, exploring themes of grief and loss after her 20 year-old daughter died in 2008. Finding unique ways to explore this universal theme through nature and even humor helps her navigate the sorrow and connect with others. In addition to poetry, she is a collage artist and presents “Collage as a Healing Art” to grief groups.

This author is available for interviews. Please contact:

klaurelpoet@hotmail.com

For more information about events at Common Good Books, please contact

Riley Davis--651/225-8989; riley@commongoodbooks.com