Milkweed Presents Creature Conservation hosted by Claire Wahmanholm

Milkweed Editions in conjunction with the University of Minnesota Press present Creature Conservation hosted by Claire Wahmanholm, featuring Charles Baxter, Kimberly Blaeser, and Sean Hill.

The event will feature readings from the new collection Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation out with University of Minnesota Press out on January 21. Claire Wahmanholm will then host a panel that centers on craft and art activism for creature conservation.

ABOUT THE HOST

Claire Wahmanholm is the author of Meltwater, Redmouth, and Wilder, which won the Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry and the Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2019 Minnesota Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Ninth Letter, Blackbird, Washington Square Review, Copper Nickel, Beloit Poetry Journal, Grist, RHINO, Los Angeles Review, Fairy Tale Review, Bennington Review, DIAGRAM, The Journal, and Kenyon Review Online, and have been featured by the Academy of American Poets. She lives in the Twin Cities.

ABOUT THE GUESTS

Charles Baxter is the author of seven novels, six collections of short stories, and three
nonfiction books on fiction. He edited the stories of Sherwood Anderson for the Library of
America. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his fiction
has been widely anthologized and translated. He lives in Minneapolis.

Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets is a poet, photographer, and scholar. She is the author of six poetry collections including Ancient Light, Copper Yearning, and Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. Her photographs and picto-poems have appeared in exhibits such as “Visualizing Sovereignty,” and “No More Stolen Sisters.” An enrolled member of White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist whose accolades include a Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. She is an MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts and Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee.

Sean Hill is the author of Dangerous Goods, a Minnesota Book Award-winner, and Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, named one of the Ten Books All Georgians Should Read. His poems have appeared in such journals as The Oxford American, Poetry, Tin House, and the Harvard Review, and several anthologies, including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, The Art of Angling: Poems about Fishing, and Villanelles. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, Hill has received fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, the Bush Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Born and raised in Milledgeville, Georgia, he received an MFA from the University of Houston. Hill lives in southwestern Montana with his family and is an Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Montana.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Creature Needs is a polyvocal call to arms about animal extinction and habitat loss that harnesses the power of literature and scientific research to move us, and stir our hearts and minds, toward action and change. A collection of new literary works by prominent writers paired with excerpts from recent scientific articles that inspired and informed them, this innovative anthology engages the collaborative, cross-disciplinary spirit and energy that is necessary to address the impact of humans on all other animals on our planet. A collaboration with the nonprofit organization Creature Conserve, Creature Needs is a path-setting fusion of literary art and scientific research that deepens our understanding of the interdependence between life and habitat, illuminating the stark choices we face to conserve resources and ensure that the basic needs of all species are met.