Milkweed Books
1011 S Washington Avenue
Suite 107
Minneapolis, MN 55415
United States
This event is free and open to the public. Let us know you are coming here.
Join Milkweed Books and Minnesota Center for Book Arts as we celebrate the work of Joel Hernandez. Featuring local poet and book artists MC Hyland, who will read and engage with Joel in conversation about hybrid and concrete poetry and the influences behind his newest work, war | machine. Refreshments will be provided by Chowgirls.
ABOUT THE WORK
What do we make of the past—our archives, artifacts, and the forgotten histories of individuals? war | machine began as a collection of anonymous photographs from the University of Minnesota in the 1930s and ’40s, and from WWII albums recovered from a house lost at forfeit auction. Those fragments have been reimagined into a hybrid narrative of telegrams, poems, and images—a project in conversation with Tom Phillips’ transformations of postcards and texts, Alec Soth and Brad Zellar’s work with vernacular archives and American solitude, and Sophie Calle’s choreographies of privacy and revelation.
The result is a book intentionally resistant to completion, a narrative that shifts, unsettles—and ultimately becomes unique to each reader. There will be special editions available to the first 100 attendees.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Joel Hernandez is the author of Baghdad Express: A Gulf War Memoir (Borealis/Penguin) and a recovering book critic. His writing has appeared in GQ, Granta, The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals—and on highway signs, train stations, and a see-saw.
He is currently completing the book arts certificate program at MCBA, where he is developing additional concrete-poetry and experimental book projects. Joel will be holding launch events and readings for war | machine throughout 2026. His editions are available at ninechainspress.com.
MC Hyland (she/they) is the founding editor of DoubleCross Press, a poetry micropress. MC is the author of over a dozen poetry chapbooks/artist books, three full-length books of poems (THE END (2019), Neveragainland (2010), Walks & Weathers (2025)) and a book of short essays (The Dead and the Living and the Bridge (2025)). Holding MFAs in book arts and creative writing from the University of Alabama and a PhD in English literature from NYU, MC lives in St. Paul, MN with her partner, Jeff, and cat, Dakota.