CRACKED WALNUT PRESENTS LITERARY BRIDGES

LITERARY BRIDGES READING

May 5, 2024. 2:00 PM

Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 Snelling Ave. S., St Paul

“April showers bring...The MAY Literary Bridges Reading!” says co-host/curator, Stan Kusunoki. “Expect some fresh faces and ideas from this awesome group of writers!” A musical interlude will be provided by Carole Seline.

A. E. Wynter is Black writer from New York. She currently lives in Minneapolis, where she has curated multimedia art exhibits and organized many community events, including readings, open mics, and most recently, Reinvention: An Online Writing Workshop Series. Wynter has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, and was a fiction fellow in the 2021-2022 Loft Mentor Series. Her in-progress novel Far Cry From A Woman was a finalist in the 2021 Miami Fellowship for Emerging Writers, and she received first place in the 53rd New Millennium Award for Poetry. Other poems have appeared in West Trade Review and Water~Stone Review. Most recently, Wynter was a 2023 resident at the Carolyn Moore Writers Residency.

Erin Sharkey is a writer, arts and abolition organizer, cultural worker, and film producer based in Minneapolis. She is the editor of A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (Milkweed Editions ’23). Erin is a founding coop member of the Fields at Rootsprings, a retreat and respite space in central MN, and co-founder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental arts collective called Free Black Dirt. She is the producer of film projects, including Small Business Revolution, which explored challenges and opportunities for Black-owned businesses in the Twin Cities in the summer of 2021. Sharkey has received fellowships and residencies from the Loft Mentor Series, VONA/Voices, the Givens Foundation, Penumbra Theatre, Coffee House Press, the Bell Museum of Natural History, Black Visions, Headwaters Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. She has an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.

Christian Avey, an aspiring author and artist, writes about inclusion and resilience. He believes that connecting to the reader means breaking away from stereotypes and embracing intersectionality. Christian is a graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in interactive game design. He is also the online moderator for the Loft’s Open Voices Writing Group.                                         

Penelope Simison has been writing poetry for more than 20 years, with stories of  people she’s met along the way and her observations about their lives. She’s finished a  manuscript, Precarious, that include experiences of growing up in a small Midwestern  town, historical places and times, and the fraught environments of contemporary life.  And she’s working on getting it published. She lives in St. Paul.

Jo Cassiday-Maloney started writing poetry in 4th grade and more intentionally around the time I turned 20. It is how I process my feelings, how I make sense out of a too-often senseless world, how I explore life’s deepest questions and seek to invite others into their own creative and sacred process. My husband and I are both retired clergy, attending a progressive UCC church, where we join with others in trying to vision and shape a new world that’s more just for all. We have two adult children and two young grandchildren.

MUSICAL GUEST

Carol Seline is a musician and photographer who makes her home in Saint Paul Minnesota. As a musician/composer she recorded and performed in the Twin Cities and throughout the midwest. As a radio producer, she created nationally syndicated shows about the history and culture of jazz. As a photographer, she has had her photos featured at Praxis Gallery In Minneapolis and in the online gallery , Decagon, based in NYC. Seline’s artistic work is inspired by her curiosity about humans and the environments they create both emotionally and physically. Seline loves staying busy. Sailing is a new found love and she is active as a crew member on sailboats here in the Twin Cities as well as in her hometown of Milwaukee on Lake Michigan. You can find her photographs and blog posts here: https://seline.photography