Photo by Simi Kang

Bao Phi with his daughter

This evening, two acclaimed local poets will be giving a reading sponsored by BIrchbark Books at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Performance poet Bao Phi, author of Sông I Sing, and Ed Bok Lee, winner of the poetry Minnesota Book Award 2012 for Whorled, have known each other for many years. For a brief time they even performed slam together. Recently, they released their poetry books together.

"We both work from an urgency," Phi says. "We both love language, and exploring these things about our identity, how we are perceived, and how that fits into the larger scheme of things."

Phi says he's planning to do a mix of new material and excerpts from his book.
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Photo by Emily Lloyd

"6 Words Minneapolis" at Shoebox Gallery

Emily Lloyd is on a mission to gather six-word memoirs from Minneapolis residents. So far, she has collected about 750, but she knows that's just barely scratching the surface.

The poet-turned-public-artist has been working on her "6 Words Minneapolis" project for about a year, gathering the super-short memoirs through social networking sites, submission posters in coffee shops, and from commenters online. She prints them on black paper with white letters, and has displayed them in libraries, at the Midtown Market, and at the Shoebox Gallery on Chicago Avenue by Lake Street.

This weekend, she'll be installing a new exhibit on Franklin Avenue near Nicollet for the Artists in Storefronts Project. We recently spoke to Lloyd about her project, and what she hopes to achieve by collecting the short-form stories of as many Minneapolis residents as possible.  More >>

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Photo courtesy Bosso Poetry Company

Kevin Brixius

​Bosso Poetry Company is the exact opposite of a high-brow, snooty poetry reading. The monthly series takes place at Dusty's Bar in northeast Minneapolis, an old-school, blue-collar dive where the beer is cheap and the sandwiches are to die for.

On Thursday, Bosso is celebrating its third anniversary. The event, started by Kevin Brixius, had a short spout of shows at the Cedar in 2000. However, Jeffrey Skemp, who does a lot of the organizing for the group, says that Bosso started doing its monthly gig at Dusty's at the suggestion of one of the bartenders.

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Photo by Kevin McLaughlin.

Suli Holum in Chimera, one of the pieces from Playlabs 2010.

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Photo by Rosalie Winard

Terry Bisson

​This weekend, the Twin Cities Anarchists Book Fair returns with lectures, workshops, and lots of materials covering a wide range of leftist and radical topics. One of the guest speakers is Terry Bisson, an award-winning science-fiction author who has written and edited several non-fiction books about radical individuals and topics.
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Design by Jeff Peterson

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Photo by Jason Albus

Jeff Kamin at Books & Bars

​​It's perhaps a little ironic that the next Books & Bars event is Harry Potter Day, as Daniel Radcliffe recently announced that he has a drinking problem. Coincidence? Possibly. Regardless, while we ponder the cruel toll that fame takes on child stars, this is also our chance to obsess about J.K. Rowling's fantastical series in anticipation of the final movie.  More >>

​Five years ago Ted Travelstead, a fiction writer and Opium Magazine founding editor, had the notion to do a comedic literary reading in New York City. His boss at the time gave him the following advice: "You have to do it different, or you have to do it better." He ended up sitting down with a few of his friends, thinking about why they didn't like the readings they had went to. Eventually they decided it was because events were usually inconsistent in quality; while one author could be good, the next might be just awful.

They decided to fix this problem with Literary Death Match, which is coming to the Aster Café this Sunday. More >>

​Forty to fifty dollars may seem like a steep price to pay to attend a lecture by an author; for that amount one could buy a ticket to see a stadium performance by an aging rock band. Or half a floor-level ticket to see Taylor Swift. Or a teeny, tiny corner ripped off a scalped ticket to see Adele at First Ave. For some reason it's easier to justify the price paid to stand through a four-hour show in a cavernous venue packed with obnoxious drunk people, than to spend a pleasant morning surrounded by nice old ladies drinking coffee in a peaceful suburban arts center, and to be inspired by a brilliant and prolific writer and philanthropist.

Perhaps it's time to rethink our priorities.

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