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On Thursday, February 26th, local author Jessica Nordell partnered with Milkweed Editions and The Loft Literary Center on a benefit reading for the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota responding to the current, ongoing tensions within the Twin Cities and our surrounding communities. They were joined by writers Curtis Sittenfeld, Sarah Ghazal Ali, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Chaun Webster, Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay, Claire Wahmanholm, Halee Kirkwood, Lara Mimosa Montes, and Jessica Nordell for a night of collective healing. All proceeds benefitted the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. 

All around us, at first, were…

On February fifth, Marne Zafar sat down for a Friends Lecture at the Minneapolis Institute of Art with Max Ritvo-award winning poet Michael Kleber-Diggs and Publisher Daniel Slager. Together, they discussed dual perspectives between author and publisher, from winning awards to forging literary friendships within the Twin Cities.  

Good people show up where they’re meant to be. —Michael Kleber-Diggs

This line, from his poetry collection Worldly Things, won’t be read until later in the night, but the crowd that gathers in the Minneapolis Institute of Art already evokes this notion. Just as tonight’s Friends Lecture suggests, everyone checks up…

On Thursday, October 9th, 2025, Robin Wall Kimmerer and an abundance of writers, readers, and Milkweed supporters coalesced along the historic Minneapolis riverfront for our annual Book Lovers Ball. There, they were joined by Milkweed publisher Daniel Slager for a celebration of confluences between publishing, plants, and poetry. All throughout the week, she was joined by poets Ada Limón, Heid E. Erdrich, Chris La Tray and memoirists Helen Whybrow, Nicholas Triolo, Scott Chaskey, Erin Sharkey, Angela Pelster, and Beth Dooley, as they consider what it means to publish transformative literature in…

Following a night of conversation with Robert Macfarlane to launch his latest novel, Is a River Alive?, Nicholas Triolo and Milkweed staff accompanied Owámniyomni Okhódayapi program director Barry Hand on a tour of St. Anthony Falls. There, they discussed Nicholas’ debut memoir, The Way Around: A Field Guide to Going Nowhere, restorative efforts on the historic riverfront in downtown Minneapolis, and what it means to strive toward mutual flourishing. The Way Around launches Tuesday, July 8th, with a reading hosted by Nicholas Triolo at the Missoula Public Library.

“How are you doing, Nick? You had such an amazing…

On April 13, 2025, Milkweed Editions delighted in collaborating with The Obodo Collective, a Las Vegas-based urban farm, to break ground on their second annual Our Mothers’ Garden Book Festival. To join in the festivities, Milkweed Editions donated a bundle of books to distribute to the community.

Collaborating with The Obodo Collective to break ground on a successful festival, for Milkweed, means more than just extending this act of mutual flourishing—it is the chance to delight in a gift economy over tilled earth. Per their website, their namesake embodies their mission in its entirety: “Obodo comes from the Igbo…

Milkweed Editions is an independent publisher of literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Our mission is to identify, nurture, and publish transformative literature, and build an engaged community around it.

As a publisher, we join in thoughtful partnerships to “build an engaged community” around the books and authors we publish. Sometimes partners are community organizations, libraries, or independent bookstores who host readings with the authors we publish. And sometimes our partners are organizations with connections to specific communities of readers that we may not otherwise reach through bookstore, digital, library, or other traditional publishing channels. One such partner is the Women’s…

The year is 2021, and wildfires are ravaging the West Coast. America is in lockdown, and time as we know it has come to a grinding halt.

Enter the poet Jos Charles, whose seminal collection of poems, feeld, was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and just recently, one of “The 25 Most Influential Works of Postwar Queer Literature” in the New York Times Style Magazine. Charles is a trans artist, and no stranger to devastation—so it comes as no surprise that their followup act, a Year & other poems, is as unprecedented as the times…

“In the beginning, yes, a garden. As lush as you’re imagining.” So begins K. Iver’s tender and heart-wrenching debut; what follows is a coming of age story of creation and demise, a love story upended by suicide. The collection’s fleeting first images of doting parents (a fantasy), dogwoods in bloom, a boy—later referred to by the poems’ speaker as Missy—who “looks at you the way someone must have when you were born” quickly give way to images of a paternal pattern of abuse, the cold interior of a psychiatric hospital, a mental-health-crisis-turned-exorcism, and in a poem called “god,” a closed-casket…

Since its inception in 1980, Milkweed Editions has built an engaged community around “transformative” literature. But in an age where language is slipperier than ever, it feels crucial to make tangible the impact and value of our stories today. This April, I’m thinking about “transformative” stories in the timely context of Earth month; I’m thinking about the ways Milkweed publishes titles that not only represent a vast range of artistic excellence and cultural diversity, but also address some of today’s greatest challenges, like dwindling biodiversity and climate change. In doing so, it champions a list that boldly leads the discourse…

Chris Dombrowski is the author of The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water. He is also the author of Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World’s Most Elusive Fish, and of three acclaimed collections of poems. Currently the Assistant Director of the Creative Writing program at the University of Montana, he lives with his family in Missoula.

In the following interview, the famously personable hybrid-author made a stop in to the Milkweed Editions offices in Minneapolis, MN in the midst of touring for his new book, which has just been named a finalist…