Reading: Hieu Minh Nguyen’s Not Here

UPDATE: TIME CHANGE | This event will begin at 7:30 p.m.

Join us for heartbreaking, life-affirming poetry courtesy of Hieu Minh Nguyen, reading from his acclaimed second book of poetry, Not Here. Reading in the Target Performance Hall followed by signing and reception. Dont miss your change at a limited edition print of Hieu’s poem “Heavy” from Monica Edwards Larson of Sister Black Press! LEARN MORE.

 Free and all are welcome, but please RSVP

“Nguyen’s voice feels simultaneously young and ageless, uncertain and wise. His poems are pitched somewhere between page and stage, as if said aloud right into your ear.” —NPR

 “Nguyen attempts a courageous exorcism of shame in his brilliant and disquieting second collection, exposing the baggage of living as a queer person of color in a white-supremacist, classist, heteronormative society… Nguyen communicates with stunning clarity the ambivalence of shame, how it can commandeer one’s life and become almost a comfort.” —Publishers Weekly

 “These dazzling poems by Vietnamese-American poet Hieu Minh Nguyen are exactly what we want to be reading next year, as they provocatively address the in-between spaces in life, those areas between love and longing, pain and pleasure, belonging and alienation. Nguyen’s imagery is a sensory wonder, evocative of the depths of trauma and the dizzying heights of hopefulness and desire.” —Nylon

Being queer and Asian American; families we are born into and ones we chose; nostalgia, trauma, and history––all dissected fearlessly. Not Here is a flight plan for escape and a map for navigating home; a queer Vietnamese American body in confrontation with whiteness, trauma, family, and nostalgia; and a big beating heart of a book. Nguyen’s poems ache with loneliness and desire and the giddy terrors of allowing yourself to hope for love, and revel in moments of connection achieved.

 

 HIEU MINH NGUYEN was born in 1991, a child of Vietnamese immigrants, his debut collection of poetry, This Way to the Sugar, was a finalist for both the MN Book Awards and the Lambda Literary Awards. Nguyen has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kundiman, the Vermont Studio Center, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Loft Literary Center. His poems have appeared in Poetry, the Offing, BuzzFeed, the Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. He lives in Minneapolis.

 SISTER BLACK PRESS is the Minneapolis-based letterpress, book arts, and design studio of Monica Edwards Larson. It started in 2000, with the acquisition of a Vandercook SP15 proof press and two beautiful cabinets of lead type from the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Clyde, MO. Upon the discovery of an original poem locked in the bed of the press, a black and white photograph and an apron marked S. Lillian Black… a press name was born. LEARN MORE.