Minnesota Humanities Center

St. Paul - Our Ancestors Are Us: An Asian Adoptee Life Writing Workshop
2023-10-01 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Chicago) | Minnesota Humanities Event Center, 987 Ivy Avenue East, Saint Paul, MN, 55106, United States
As part of the Minnesota Humanities Center’s writing and reflection offerings, we are excited to collaborate with Jennifer Kwon Dobbs to host Our Ancestors Are Us: An Asian Adoptee Life Writing Workshop, a project funded by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council.
Adoption from Asia involves a child’s removal from their kinship of birth and oftentimes disconnection from their ancestral culture and ways of knowing. This interactive workshop creates a generative, adult adoptee-centered space in which to explore the unique ways that adoptee memory and experience can be empowering sources of creativity and literary witness. Participants will learn and share writing strategies to compose works of their own about their lives lived, unlived, and imagined otherwise as adoptees.
Lee Herrick – Special guest Lee Herrick is the California Poet Laureate. He is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award; Gardening Secrets of the Dead; and This Many Miles from Desire. Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted as an infant, Lee teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe.
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs 허수진 – Born in Wonju, Republic of Korea and adopted in Oklahoma, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs 허수진 is the author of Interrogation Room (White Pine Press, 2018), Paper Pavilion (White Pine, 2007), and the chapbooks Notes from a Missing Person (Essay Press, 2015) and Necro Citizens (hochroth Verlag, 2019). Her work has received the 2023 American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Lief and Inger Sjöberg Prize for literary translation among other honors. Currently, she is senior poetry editor of AGNI and professor and chair of English at St. Olaf College. www.jkwondobbs.com.
Registration
This event is open to all adult Asian diaspora adoptees who want to write or who identify as writers. Registration is limited to 40 participants.
Snacks are included, and a journal will be provided.
Registration Questions: registrations@mnhum.org
Register Now

Staples - Including An Indigenous Lens that Honors the Past, Present, and Future
2023-10-05 08:30 - 15:00 | Sourcewell, 202 12th Street NE, Staples, MN, 56479, United States
Did you know that Minnesota is home to 11 federally-recognized tribes? Do you know whose ancestral lands your school is now occupying? In this session of Excavating Excellence: A Speaker Series and Cohort offered by Sourcewell, we will excavate a perspective that is too often minimized, misrepresented, or sometimes completely absent: the perspective of our nation’s first people. Join us as we hear first-hand accounts from a panel of regional, native voices sharing about schooling experiences. In addition to our panel, we will hear from experts from the Minnesota Humanities Center and Understand Native Minnesota as they lead us through how to find and implement resources from an Indigenous lens that honors the past, present, and future.
This session is part of the Excavating Excellence Speaker Series offered by Sourcewell.
Registration
Registration Questions: education@sourcewell-mn.gov
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St. Paul - Feeding Our Souls: The Essence of Latino Joy
2023-10-05 18:00 - 20:00 | Minnesota Humanities Event Center, 987 Ivy Avenue East, Saint Paul, MN, 55106, United States
The aroma of inviting cuisine continues to fill the halls of the Minnesota Humanities Center (MHC) as we commemorate Latino Cultural Heritage Month through food. MHC’s very own head chef and kitchen manager Lorena Bonilla and distinguished chef and owner Nettie Colón at the RedHen Gastrolab Concepts will prepare and serve comfort foods from their rich culture joined by emcee and poet Lupe Castille. Participants will have a chance to partake in the flavors through engaging “taste circles” of the delectables and share memories of the power of food from their own experiences.
Chef Lorena Bonilla joined the Minnesota Humanities Center’s (MHC) Event Team in 2002. In 2010 she became the Head Chef and Kitchen Manager responsible for overseeing the MHC Event Center kitchen and making sure that customer satisfaction is high, and food is delicious! She is responsible for the daily operation of the kitchen, caters over 300 events, and feeds thousands of people a year! She is the recipient of several culinary awards for her masterful creations served at MHC. When Chef Lorena is not cooking at MHC, she is spending time with family and friends at home where she enjoys making traditional meals with them. At age five Chef Lorena and her family moved from Zacatecas, Mexico to Bakersfield, California where her father worked at Dole Fresh Vegetables Company. She recalls how the family always had access to a variety of fresh vegetables. “My Mom is my greatest cooking inspiration,” says Chef Lorena, “I grew up watching her make delicious food for the family. When I was around 12 years old, I started chopping the many vegetables for her to make Mexican style dishes. I loved my own special role in the kitchen.”
Chef Lorena admits that she likes eating just as much as cooking. Her favorite thing to make and eat is Mexican soup – especially what she calls pesole which includes hominy added with chicken or pork. Sopa de fideo is a Mexican noddle soup that happens to be her son’s favorite dish when made by her. The Fajita Buffet is one of the most raving reviewed menu items at the MHC Event Center. Chef Lorena’s incredible fajitas are made just right – grilled chicken and beef served with seared peppers and onions, refried beans, Spanish-style rice pilaf, warmed tortillas, tortilla chips, and a condiments bar including lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, sour cream, salsa, and guacamole.
Chef Nettie Colόn is a Minneapolis transplant by way of New York and Puerto Rico and spent her early years living a reverse West Side Story. Born in New York City and raised in Puerto Rico, Nettie Colón spent her formative years learning traditional cooking methods of the island with her grandmother, Maria Brigida Llanes de Jesus, and her friends. For all 48 grandchildren on her mother’s side, time spent on her grandmother’s farm in the remote central mountain town of Utuado offered an idyllic childhood. She got the love of cooking from her abuela, and to this day, that influence is very much alive in every dish that she prepares.
Her love of traveling comes from the time spent hopping around the island to eat with her family. Chef Nettie’s father is from Cayey, where the sector of Guavate aka “The Pork Highway” is located. That is how she came to realize that people do travel for food, especially in Puerto Rico. This passion of traveling for food has led her to work all over the United States & abroad, with culinary adventures to West Indies, Wales, Spain, France, Sardinia, Southern Italy, Yucatan Peninsula, Costa Rica & Panama. She was Chef de Cuisine at Lucias Restaurant & Wine Bar for a decade. She also taught the history of Mayan cuisine in the Biosphere Reserve of Sia’an Ka’an in Tulum, Yucatan for 9 years where she fell in love with traditional Mayan cooking methods including Pibil, which lead to exploration of underground techniques from around the world such as Pachamanca, Curanto, Hangi and others.
She is Chef/Owner of The Red Hen Gastrolab Concepts (Red Hen Gastrolab, Red Hen Chinchorro & Red Hen Table) which is committed to the preservation of the relationships built around food traditions in the kitchen and at the table. She is also Resident Chef at The Break Room Minneapolis at The Historic Machine Shop, a James Beard Foundation Chefs Boot Camp Alumni, BA Craftmade Aprons “Project Black & Blue” Advocate, Market Chef & Mill City Farmers Market Charitable Fund Board Member of The Mill City Farmers Market.
Lupe Castillo @1heartspeakslupe (She/Her) creator of HeartSpeaks: Voices of Cultura Healing & Writing Circles is a proclaimed XicanaIndia from the Southern lands. Lupe is a Poet, whose recent written work is documented in the Northside Green “Our Urban Canopy” Art/Coloring Book, published in June, 2023 and featured at the 2023 State Fair. As a Culture Bearer, HeartSpeaks provides activated radical collaborations in writing and spoken word artistry. Lupe is also a co-founding member of Palabristas, a Spoken Word LatineCollective. Lupe is deepening her work as an Artist by partnering with other BIPOC & LatineArtist Collectives in the Twin Cities and beyond. She facilitates community gatherings and offers writing guidance where participants write about their connections to home, family, significant others, spirituality, Indigenous Identities, Murals and Cultural Arts.
Registration
Due to the focus of this program, the fee is waived for Latino community members residing in Minnesota. You are invited to register with promo code COMMUNITY23.
Registration Questions: registrations@mnhum.org | MHC Cancellation Policy
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St. Paul - Poetry Sparks! Youth Writing Workshop
2023-10-06 17:30 - 20:00 | Minnesota Humanities Event Center, 987 Ivy Avenue East, Saint Paul, MN, 55106, United States
Are you a young person (13-19 years of age) who writes poetry or aspires to start writing poetry? Do you want to connect with other youth writers? Then join us for the Poetry Sparks! Youth Writing Workshop with Minnesota’s Poet Laureate Gwen Nell Westerman, and former St. Paul Youth Poet Laureate Chavah Gabrielle. During this in-person session, you’ll have a chance to work with Gwen and Chavah to create a new piece of writing, or workshop a piece you’ve been developing. You’ll also get a chance to read aloud and practice performing some poetry. We hope that once you’ve perfected your piece, you’ll sign up for the Youth Voices Open Mic evening on November 4th. Grab a friend and pen some lines with the Laureates!
This event is free however registration is required; a light dinner will be provided; participants must 13-19 years of age*.
(We are also holding a virtual option on October 13, 2023 from 6:00-8:00 p.m. over Zoom – sign up for one or both!)
*Youth is ages 13-19 as defined by the National Youth Poet Laureate organization.
Registration
Registration Questions: registrations@mnhum.org
Register Now

Online - Poetry Sparks! Youth Writing Workshop
2023-10-13 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Are you a young person (13-19 years of age) who writes poetry or aspires to start writing poetry? Do you want to connect with other youth writers? Then join us for the Poetry Sparks! Youth Writing Workshop with Minnesota’s Poet Laureate Gwen Nell Westerman, and former St. Paul Youth Poet Laureate, Chavah Gabrielle. During this virtual session, you’ll have a chance to work with Gwen and Chavah to create a new piece of writing, or workshop a piece you’ve been developing. You’ll also get a chance to read aloud and practice performing some poetry. We hope that once you’ve perfected your piece, you’ll sign up for the Youth Voices Open Mic evening on November 4th. Grab a friend and pen some lines with the Laureates!
This event is free however registration is required; participants must 13-19 years of age*.
(We are also holding an in-person session on October 6, 2023 from 6:00-8:00 p.m. at the Minnesota Humanities Center. Sign up for one or both!)
*Youth is ages 13-19 as defined by the National Youth Poet Laureate organization.
