Literary Bridges Reading series November 7, 2021

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OCTOBER 10, 2021
St. Paul, MN

Literary Bridges Reading series November 7, 2021
2:00 PM, Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 Snelling Avenue S. , St. Paul, 55105
NOTE: Masks and COVID vaccination required.

“The Literary Bridges reading for November is a rare all-male session,” says co-host /curator, Stan Kusunoki. “It also is a bridge between relative newcomers and those with lots of experience in the Minnesota writing community.”
 
The roster bridges continents with writers who have roots in Somalia, Sierra Leone and Guinea; one with spiritual roots in Japan and another whose spirituality is grounded in Minnesota.

“It should be a diverse, yet interestingly connected reading,” Kusunoki says. “And like many Literary Bridges readings, you can say you heard some of the writers first at this reading!”

On the roster:

Charles Curry is a founding member of Nerve Poets, established in 2002. He is published in the Saint Paul Almanac, the Martin Lake Journal, the Herald, a magazine of the Community of Christ, Minnesota Zoo Tracks, engagemn.com, and the Konundrum Engine Literary Review. He won first prize in the Dakota County Library Poetry contest. Right now, he’s collecting rejection slips and dead silence from prestigious publications.
Charlie is married to one of his muses. He has two grown children & two non-grown grandchildren. Charlie is retired, after 38 years of consulting, teaching, owning a business, and serving as a Bishop and Financial Officer of the Community of Christ. He remains active as a bi-vocational minister. He currently is the financial officer for the Minnesota Multifaith Network.

IBe Kaba is an award winning spoken work poet born and raised in Sierra Leone and Guinea. He's called Minnesota home for over half of his life. So naturally, of course, he lives in the middle of the Atlantic. Among others, IBé is the recipient of a Midwestern Voices Award, Jerome/SASE Verve Grant, and a Minnesota Academy Award nominee for Best Spoken Word. He is the contributing writer to the acclaimed collection "Good Time for the Truth" and a member of the Sonoglyph Collective, an eclectic group of poets and musicians spreading a new old vision of music all over Minnesota.

Said Shaiye is a Somali writer who calls Minneapolis home. He is an MFA Candidate & Graduate Instructor at the University of Minnesota. He has published in Entropy, Diagram, 580 Split, Rigorous, and elsewhere. His debut book, Are You Borg Now?, was recently released by Really Serious Literature. It's an experimental combination of poetry, self-interview, memoir, photography & Star Trek: Voyager tribute

Barry MacDonald goes by the dharma name “Tekkan,” which means “Iron Man” in 12th century Japanese. Tekkan indicates a “settled practitioner of great determination.” He was given name when he took Buddhist vows. Tekkan’s poetry is an exploration of everyday consciousness. He looks for inspiration in ordinary events. He lived in Japan for 9 years, teaching English at the Berlitz Corporation in Kyoto. He practiced at the Zen at Hosshin-ji, a Zen temple in Obama — a small town on the coast of the Sea of Japan.

Sigi Leonhard is the author of the novel Stimmen, the chapbook When You Fall Asleep, and poems published in Hunger Mountain, Absorb the Colors, A Rich Salt Place, Penchant,
Persimmon Tree and, most recently, in the anthology Rocked by the Waters. Poems of Motherhood. She has been part of the Northfield women writers group for thirty-some years. Her play “Truth Serum” received a staged reading at the Minneapolis Playwrights Center in 2018. A professor at Carleton College, she has published on Goethe, Christa Wolf, Ingeborg Bachmann, Monika Maron and East German film

Literary Bridges is the regular reading series at Next Chapter Booksellers, and is sponsored by Cracked Walnut, the performance arm of the League of Minnesota Poets. Co-hosts/curators are Donna Isaac and Stan Kusunoki.

Literary Bridges is a reading series focused on bridging and strengthening connections between people through the joy of the written and spoken word. The series is committed to presenting readings that celebrate all communities, especially those in MN