Authors / Interviews / Awards & Prizes

Poetry: A Global Enterprise

Milkweed Staff — 09/19/2024

Weijia Pan’s debut collection of poems, Motherlands, was selected by the late Louise Glück as the winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize in 2024. Among other things, the book is a transnational exploration of personal, familial, and cultural trauma, as well as the more universal trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pan’s poetry draws on countless juxtapositions (of two countries, two languages, past and present, and national loyalty versus personal transparency), questioning “home,” nostalgia, and self-exile in order to express himself through the lens of a dual citizen. In the following interview conducted by Milkweed Editions, Pan opens up about the…

Minneapolis, MN —

In person: Kinsale Drake book launch with Heid E. Erdrich

Please join us as we welcome debut poet KINSALE DRAKE to Milkweed Books to read from her collection The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket. She will be joined by Minneapolis Poet Laureate HEID E. ERDRICH.

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket traverses the Southwest landscape, exploring intricate relationships between Native peoples and the natural world, land, pop culture, twentieth-century music, and multi-generational representations. Oscillating between musical influences, including the repercussions of ethno-musicology, and the present/past/future, the collection rewrites and re-rights…

Minneapolis, MN —

In person: Kenzie Allen book launch with Kimberly Blaeser

Please join us as we welcome debut author KENZIE ALLEN to Milkweed Books to read from her collection Cloud Missives. She will be joined in conversation by poet and founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets, KIMBERLY BLAESER.

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Intimate, dissecting, and liberating, Cloud Missives is a poetry collection of excavation and renewal. Like an anthropologist, Kenzie Allen reveals a life from what endures after tragedies and acts of survival. Across four sections, poems explore pop culture—the stereotypes in Peter Pan, Indiana Jones, and beyond—fairy tales, myths, protests, and…

Minneapolis, MN —

In person: Okwudili Nebeolisa book launch with Donika Kelly

Please join us as we welcome debut author OKWUDILI NEBEOLISA to Milkweed Books to read from his collection Terminal Maladies. He will be joined in conversation by poet DONIKA KELLY.

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Okwudili Nebeolisa’s debut poetry collection, Terminal Maladies, serves as an intimate exploration of the relationship between a mother and son and their emotional journey during her battle with cancer. Throughout the book, Nebeolisa attempts to reconcile his guilt of starting a new life in the United States, far away from his mother and his home in Nigeria.

Depicting tender moments, Terminal Maladies

Helen Whybrow

Helen Whybrow is the author of A Man Apart and Dead Reckoning. She is also the editor of the anthologies Hearth and Coming to Land in a Troubled World.

Minneapolis, MN —

In Person: Prose Open House

Join Coffee House Press and Milkweed Editions as we celebrate prose writing with a Prose Open House!

Doors will open at 5:30pm, readings begin at 6:00pm

Shop for books, enjoy live readings, and meet and mingle with fellow Twin Cities literature lovers!

Writer Lineup:
Victoria Blanco
Jennifer Bowen
Greg Hewett
Jana Larson
Juliet Patterson
Erin Sharkey

Authors

Rest in Peace, Darrel J. McLeod

Milkweed Staff — 09/06/2024
CREDIT ILJA HERB

Milkweed Editions is deeply saddened to share that Darrel J. McLeod passed away late last week after a sudden illness. He was 67. Darrel was an uncommonly beautiful and gentle soul whose stories about finding his voice as a two-spirit, Indigenous man moved readers across the globe. Along with his activism and service to Indigenous causes, particularly in Canada, his books brought forth vital stories of heritage, compassion, forgiveness, and hope.

“I am saddened by the news of Darrel’s passing, if also profoundly grateful to have called him a friend. He was an exceptionally beautiful human being.”—Daniel Slager, Publisher…