St. Paul – In Our Words: MN BIPOC Writers Series Launch with David Mura & Carolyn Holbrook
October 5 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm CDT
Free
Image by SpiritFolk
Join us for an engaging evening with Carolyn Holbrook and David Mura, celebrating their new radio series, In Our Words: MN BIPOC Writers, with guests Danez Smith and Anthony Ceballos.
Following the panel discussion between the authors, audience members are invited to participate in a Q&A session with the featured speakers. Light refreshments will be provided, copies of books from all authors featured in the In Our Words: MN BIPOC Writers series will be available for purchase, and the evening will finish with book signings.
This event is presented in partnership with AMPERS and the University of Minnesota Press. SubText Bookstore will be on site selling books from all featured authors in this series.
In Our Words: MN BIPOC Writers is a new radio series highlighting Minnesota’s Black, Indigenous and people of color authors, thinkers and activists, hosted by Carolyn Holbrook and David Mura. In conversations with authors across genre, region, and career, Carolyn and David explore these writers’ lasting legacy and emerging work, and how they’ve bent the arc of justice in Minnesota and across the country. In Our Words is produced by AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Humanities Center and the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.
Authors featured in the first season of In Our Words: MN BIPOC Writers are: Alexs Pate, Anthony Ceballos, Bao Phi, Carl Gawboy, Crown Sheperd, Heid Erdrich, Danez Smith, Jokeda “JoJo” Bell, Kennedy Gisege, Marcie Rendon, Marian Hassan, Rebecca Nichloson, Sarah Warren, Sun Yung Shin, and Swati Avasthi.
The Association of Minnesota Public Educational Radio Stations (AMPERS) is the largest statewide association of community radio stations in the United States. AMPERS supports 17 stations through revenue generation, training, member convenings, and original news, arts, and culture programming, such as In Our Words.
View Carolyn Holbrook’s Bio
Carolyn Holbrook is founder and Director of More Than a Single Story. Her memoir in essays, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify (U of M Press, 2020), won the 2021 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. She is co-editor with David Mura of the anthology, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (U of M Press & More Than a Single Story 2021), and is co-author with Arleta Little of Minnesota civil rights icon, Dr. Josie R. Johnson’s memoir, Hope In the Struggle (University of Minnesota Press, 2019). She was a Contributing Editor for Water~Stone Review (Vol. 24, 2021-2022 Hamline University). She has taught at Hamline University, Minneapolis College, The Loft Literary Center and other community venues. Her awards include the Minnesota Book Awards Kay Sexton Award, 2010; Hamline University Exemplary Teacher, 2014; 50 over 50, 2017; Celebrate the Sistas, 2020; Flowers Now!, 2024. She was the 2025 McKnight Distinguished Artist.
View David Mura’s Bio
David Mura was well into his twenties before he began to explore his Asian American identity. His Japanese American parents had been incarcerated in internment camps during World War II, and in response to their traumatic experience, they abandoned their Japanese roots to try to assimilate into white, middle-class America. When the Ordway Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, staged a presentation of Miss Saigon in 1992, Mura published “Secrets and Anger” in Mother Jones, a scathing critique of the play’s racist undertones. In response, Mura was ostracized from the local, dominantly white writing community, yet in its place he found a deeper connection with other BIPOC writers and eventually started an Asian American arts organization in the Twin Cities. Mura’s upcoming book, Exit, Miss Saigon, is a clear-eyed examination of a variety of issues affecting Asian Americans: anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, affirmative action, racial and sexual stereotypes in the media, interracial relationships and raising mixed-race children, the legacy of Japanese American internment, and the shortfalls of therapy in addressing race. It will be released on October 6, 2026.
View Danez Smith’s Bio
Danez Smith is the author of four collections including Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie, and most recently Bluff, a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. They are also the curator of Blues In Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. For their work, Danez won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Danez lives in the Twin Cities and teaches at the Randolph College MFA program Their fifth collection of poems, Love Time, will be published in September 2027.
View Anthony Ceballos’ Bio
Anthony Ceballos lives and writes in Minneapolis, where he can be found penning staff recommendations at Birchbark Books & Native Arts, a small, independent, Native owned bookstore in the Kenwood Neighborhood. In 2022 he was selected to be a participant in the inaugural Indigenous Nations Poets retreat in Washington DC, as well as their 2024 retreat in the Twin Cities and their 2026 retreat in Arizona. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in creative writing from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Randolph College in Virginia. He is a first-generation descendant of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. Glassful of Prayer is his first poetry collection.
Registration
This event is free, however registration is required.
Questions: programs@mnhum.org
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