St. Cloud – Minnesota Writers Off the Page: Joyce Sutphen

To celebrate National Poetry Month, MHC’s Off the Page is bringing together two of Minnesota’s Poet Laureates, Joyce Sutphen and Gwen Nell Westerman. Sutphen will be reading from her most recent collection, “Paper Camera: Poems, Poets, and Poetry,” which examines the many facets of poetry itself; reading, memorizing, writing, and what poetry can do for us. She will be joined in discussion by the current Poet Laureate, Gwen Nell Westerman. Following the discussion, audience members are invited to participate in a Q&A session, and have further informal conversation with the featured speakers. Light refreshments will be provided, copies of “Paper Camera: Poems, Poets, and Poetry” will be available for purchase, and the evening will finish with a book signing.

About the Speakers
Joyce Sutphen grew up on a farm near St. Joseph, Minnesota, and currently lives in Chaska. She has degrees from the University of Minnesota, including a Ph.D. in Renaissance Drama. Her first book, “Straight Out of View,” won the Barnard New Women’s Poets Prize (Beacon Press, 1995, republished by Holy Cow! Press in 2001). “Coming Back to the Body” (Holy Cow! Press, 2000) was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, and “Naming the Stars” (Holy Cow! Press, 2004) won the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. In 2005, Red Dragonfly Press published “Fourteen Sonnets” in a letterpress edition, and in 2006 Sutphen co-edited the award-winning anthology “To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present” (New Rivers Press). Her poems have appeared in “Poetry,” “American Poetry Review,” “Atlanta Review,” “Minnesota Monthly,” “Water-Stone,” and many other journals, and she has had work featured in Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry,” and on “The Writer’s Almanac.” She has also been a guest on A Prairie Home Companion, hosted by Garrison Keillor. In 2011 she was named the second Minnesota Poet Laureate by Governor Mark Dayton, following the tenure of Robert Bly. Her newest collection is “Paper Camera: Poems, Poets, and Poetry,” published by Nodin Press, 2025.

Gwen Nell Westerman is a poet, visual artist, and scholar. Her roots are deep in the landscape of the tallgrass prairie and reveal themselves in her art and writing. She is an enrolled citizen of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, and her father’s family is from the Heipa District. Her mother’s family is from the Flint District of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Neither of her parents spoke English when they were sent as small children to boarding schools in Oklahoma and South Dakota. Singing and writing for as long as she can remember, Gwen understands from experience the important ways language and the land shape who we are. She was appointed as the Poet Laureate of Minnesota by Governor Tim Walz in 2021.

This event is presented in partnership with Paramount Center for the Arts, a multidisciplinary community arts facility whose mission is to engage, educate, enrich, and entertain through inspiring arts experiences. This event is part of the Minnesota Writers Off the Page series, bringing the inspirational voices of Minnesota’s authors directly to readers.

Registration

This event is free, however registration is required.

Registration Questions: registrations@mnhum.org

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