Poetry day will feature two outstanding local poets, Connie Wanek and Joyce Sutphen. Each will read from a selection of her works with time for questions and an open mic for all interested thereafter.
Connie Wanek was born in Wisconsin, raised in New Mexico, and lived for over a quarter century in Duluth, MN. She is the author of seven books, including Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems from University of Nebraska Press, and an eight book is forthcoming in Spring, 2025. A book of poems for younger readers, co-authored with Ted Kooser, was published by Candlewick Books in 2022 and won the prestigious CLiPPA award in the UK. Wanek's poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other publications over the years. She was named a Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress, and received the George Morrison Artist of the Year Award. In 2017, a wildflower trail in Duluth’s Hartley Nature Center was named in her honor.
Joyce Sutphen grew up on a farm in Stearns County, Minnesota. Her first book of poetry, Straight Out of View (1995), won the Barnard New Women’s Poets Prize Press. Her second book of poems, Coming Back to the Body (Holy Cow! Press, 2000), was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, and her third book, Naming the Stars (Holy Cow! Press, 2004), won the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. Her recent books are Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), This Long Winter (Carnegie Mellon Press 2021), and That Other Life (Carnegie 2023), and Home Words (just published by Red Dragonfly Press). She served as the Minnesota Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2021, succeeding Robert Bly. She is professor emerita of literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.
Ginny Hanson was a poet and longtime member of MISF.
