Open Book
1011 Washington Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55415
United States
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. RSVP HERE
Join us for the our monthly reading and panel discussion event series Milkweed Presents, hosted by Worldly Things author Michael Kleber-Diggs! Michael will lead readings and a conversation on the topic of art and activism during times of global and civil conflict with special guest speakers Sun Yung Shin and Michael Torres.
Please join us in-person at Open Book for an unforgettable reading and discussion at 6 p.m., and come early for a book-signing and social hour at Milkweed Books, our brick-and-mortar independent bookstore, at 5 p.m.
Milkweed Presents is a monthly event series featuring Milkweed authors as curators of conversation with local writers and community organizers on a topic of their choosing. These events are held in-person at Open Book.
Our Spring 2024 slate of Milkweed Presents includes:
February 14: Erin Sharkey
April 3: Claire Wahmanholm
May 2: Diane Wilson
May 23: Michael Kleber-Diggs
June 5: Beth Dooley
About the authors:
Michael Kleber-Diggs (KLEE-burr digs) (he/him/his) is a poet, essayist, arts educator and literary critic based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His work often considers themes of intimacy, community, and empathy, concepts he argues are different but also related and interdependent. Michael’s debut poetry collection, Worldly Things was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. His poem “Canine Superpowers” appears in You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, edited by Ada Limón and also published by Milkweed Editions. His essay “There Was a Tremendous Softness” is included in A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (Milkweed Editions 2023). Michael is currently working on a memoir about his complicated relationship with lap swimming called My Weight in Water (forthcoming Spring 2025), and he’s started to put a few poems into the same blue folder under the working title Second Book of Poems, but he suspects that title will change.
Michael Kleber-Diggs
Michael Kleber-Diggs’s debut collection of poems, Worldly Things, won the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. He was born and raised in Kansas and now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. His work has appeared in Lit Hub, the Rumpus, Rain Taxi, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Water~Stone Review, Midway Review, North Dakota Quarterly and a few anthologies. Michael teaches poetry and creative non-fiction through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop.
Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, the poems of Worldly Things offer needed guidance on ways forward—toward radical kindness and a socially responsible poetics.