Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, and two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.
Fleur Adcock is a New Zealand poet and editor, of English and Northern Irish ancestry, who has lived much of her life in England. She is well-represented in New Zealand poetry anthologies, was awarded an honorary doctorate of literature from Victoria University of Wellington, and was awarded an OBE in 1996 for her contribution to New Zealand literature. In 2008 she was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature.
Bryan Thao Worra is a Laotian American writer. His books include On The Other Side Of The Eye, Touching Detonations, Winter Ink, Barrow and The Tuk Tuk Diaries: My Dinner With Cluster Bombs. He is the first Laotian American to receive a Fellowship in Literature from the United States government's National Endowment for the Arts. He received the Asian Pacific Leadership Award from the State Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans for Leadership in the Arts in 2009. He received the Science Fiction Poetry Association Elgin Award for Book of the Year in 2014. He was selected as a Cultural Olympian representing Laos during the 2012 London Summer Olympics. He is the first Asian American president of the international Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, and the first Laotian American member of the professional Horror Writers Association.
Jared Carter is an American poet and editor.
Bao Phi is a Vietnamese-American spoken word artist, writer and community activist living in Minnesota.
Sun Yung Shin is a Korean American poet, writer, consultant, and educator living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Kirsten Dierking is an American poet from Minnesota. Common topics in her poetry include the healing aspects of nature, and feminist themes, with particular emphasis on the aftermath and recovery from sexual assault. Some of her more well known works include I Might Have Dreamed This, Sailing Lake Superior and Nuthatch.
Milkweed Editions is an independent, nonprofit literary publisher founded in Minneapolis in 1980. It releases eighteen to twenty new books each year in the genres of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Milkweed Editions annually awards three prizes for poetry: the Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, the Jake Adam York Prize, and they are a partner publisher for the National Poetry Series. In 2016, Milkweed Editions opened an independent bookstore focused on the sale of literary works.
Wang Ping is a Chinese-American professor, poet, writer, photographer, performance and multimedia artist. Her publications have been translated into multiple languages and include poetry, short stories, novels, cultural studies, and children's stories. Her multimedia exhibitions address global themes of industrialization, the environment, interdependency, and the people.
David Mura is an American author, poet, novelist, playwright, critic and performance artist whose writings explore the themes of race, identity and history. In 2018, Mura published a book on creative writing, A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity & Narrative Craft in Writing, in which he argues for a more inclusive and expansive definition of craft.
Patricia Hampl is an American memoirist, writer, lecturer, and educator. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and is one of the founding members of the Loft Literary Center.
Maura Stanton, is an American poet, and writer.
The Loft Literary Center is a nonprofit literary organization located in Minneapolis, Minnesota incorporated in 1975. The Loft is one of the nation’s largest and most comprehensive independent literary centers, and offers a variety of writing classes, conferences, grants, readings, writers' studios and other services to both established and emerging writers.
Rebecca Seiferle is an American poet.
Erin Belieu is an American poet.
Richard Robbins is an American poet. He grew up in Southern California and Montana. He graduated from San Diego State University, and University of Montana, with an M.F.A. in 1979, where he studied with Richard Hugo and Madeline DeFrees. He teaches at Minnesota State University, Mankato,
George Anthony Rabasa is an American writer and author of four novels and a short story collection. Rabasa has received such honors as The Loft Career Initiative Grant, The Writer’s Voice Capricorn Award, and two Minnesota Book Awards.
Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a Minnesota-based Lao American spoken word poet, playwright, and community activist. She was born in 1981 in a refugee camp in Nongkhai, Thailand. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Minnesota, Morris. She is currently pursuing a Master in Liberal Studies focused on public policy and arts and cultural leadership at the University of Minnesota.
Kelly Cherry is a novelist, poet, essayist, and a former Poet Laureate of Virginia (2010–2012). A resident of Halifax, Virginia, she was named the state's Poet Laureate by Governor Bob McDonnell in July 2010. She succeeded Claudia Emerson in this post.
John Lee Clark is an American deafblind poet, writer, and activist from Minnesota. He is the author of Suddenly Slow (2008) and Where I Stand: On the Signing Community and My DeafBlind Experience (2014), and the editor of anthologies Deaf American Poetry (2009) and Deaf Lit Extravaganza (2013). Clark was the recipient of a 2020 National Magazine Award. He is a prominent activist in the ProTactile movement.
