Loft Literary Center
1011 Washington Ave S
Target Performance Hall | Open Book, 2nd Floor
Minneapolis, MN 55415
United States
Member: $5 | Regular: $10
The Loft Literary Center Presents their 2018-2019 Loft Mentor Series Reading with mentor Carmen Maria Machado and fellows Jeannie Goodspeed and Maitreyi Ray. Book sales provided by Milkweed Books. Learn more.
Jeannie Goodspeed (creative nonfiction) is a mother of three, wife, pediatrician, and writer. When her second child was born with profound disabilities, Jeannie experienced a new chapter of motherhood, one full of grief but also many unexpected joys. After her daughter’s death, Jeannie began writing as a way to remember and honor her child. In her memoir, Jeannie explores the heartbreak and beauty that can come with choosing palliative care. Jeannie lives in Saint Paul with her husband, daughter, and son.
Maitreyi Ray (poetry) is a multimedia artist, poet, and performer who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has performed at many Twin Cities arts and literary events including Daddy, Patrick’s Cabaret: Raw Materials, and Queertopia. Maitreyi was recently shortlisted for the 2018 Cosmonauts Avenue Poetry Prize. She is a Sagittarius.
Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the Crawford Award. In 2018, The New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of “The New Vanguard,” one of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.” Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, Tin House, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the CINTAS Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.