Past Readers

Carrie Devall writes science fiction and fantasy short stories as well as literary fiction and poetry, and attended the Clarion West speculative fiction workshop in 2007. She won first prize in the 2010 Odyssey Con Speculative Fiction Contest, and her poem “Highsmith” made the short list in the Chroma Magazine Fall 2009 queer literary competition. Her book reviews and essays have appeared in the blog and newsletter of Aqueduct Press, a feminist science fiction publisher. After spending her formative years as a rowdy queer, anti-racist and AIDS activist, she has practiced public interest law in San Francisco, Tucson, and the Twin Cities.

In Saint Paul, Minnesota Susan Kimberly is the former just about everything. She is a former Deputy Mayor under Norm Coleman, President of the City Council, Director of the Planning and Economic Development Department under Randy Kelly, an advisor and speech writer for Mayor George Latimer and the Sewer Commissioner. She has worked in the nonprofit and corporate world as well. She currently serves as the Interim President and CEO of the Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce. Long ago, she graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and worked for two newspapers during the late-1960s and early 1970s. Last year she began writing again. She is currently working on an autobiographical novel entitled The Third Incident, and a humorous telling very loosely based on her Peace experience entitled The Last Night of Western Civilization. A year ago, she returned to the village where she had served as a volunteer, and will read from her blogs back to the United States that tell the story of that trip, which include a very brief visit back into the closet—a very unusual experience for the very out Susan Kimberly.

Ellen Lansky was born in Minneapolis and grew up in Overland Park, Kansas. She played sports in high school, and then took up English. She attended the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul (BA); SUNY-Binghamton (MA), and the University of Minnesota (PhD). Her short fiction has appeared in Sugar Mule, Evergreen Chronicles, Common Ground, Vinyl Arts, New North Artscape, and Stiller's Pond, and her scholarly work on women writers and alcoholism has appeared in Dionysos, Literature and Medicine, and several anthologies. Currently, she teaches literature, composition, and creative writing at Inver Hills Community College, and she lives in Minneapolis with her daughter.

Catherine Lundoff is the award-winning author of Crave: Tales of Lust, Love and Longing and Night’s Kiss: Lesbian Erotica, and editor of Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories. She is also the co-editor, with JoSelle Vanderhooft, of the anthology Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic (Drollerie Press, forthcoming). She teaches writing classes at The Loft Literary Center. For more information on Catherine, please visit her website.

Kevin "Kaoz" Moore is a native Clevelander and award winning writer, actor, poet and educator. He began his spoken word performance career in 1998 as part of Black Poetic Society, and Evolutionary Writer's Theatre ensembles. He has been involved in countless plays, documentaries and television productions, and roles in two independent films, Rock Robbers and Venus. He represented Cleveland, Ohio in the 2002 and 2003 National Poetry Slam competition, self-published a book of poetry entitled The Y2Kaoz Project, and created Project MayhemV-1.5, a spoken word/hip-hop demo disc. He made his playwriting debut with Baba King at the Ohio Theater. Also to his playwriting credits is Unseen: The Book Of Job, which premiered at the Cleveland Playhouse. Kevin currently heads the Health Education/HIV Prevention initiative at Pillsbury United Communities. He will be releasing both The Tyler Durden Mixtape and his follow up full length project The Intervention in 2010.

Eighteen year -old Sol Ras is a local artist and genuine people lover on a mission to create positive change any where she goes. She is an individual who takes creative agency and decides to write her poetry or create it on the spot, so the final product is always a novel creation. Sol has worked with various school districts locally and nationally, using poetry as a means to communicate messages of injustice, love, and everything in between. Sol is a part of the University of Minnesota Student Based Diverse Arts Coalition, Voices Merging. In addition to facilitating workshops, and performing at venues across the nation, Voices Merging also hosts the largest amateur open mic in the Twin Cities every 2nd and 4th Monday while school is in session. Currently, they are planning a hip-hop conference titled "From Vices 2 Verse: A New Era of Hip Hop and Action" which is focused on addressing several topics, including issues of sexuality, sexism, and healing hip hop. Feel free to ask Sol for more information about any of these projects.

Miles Walser fell onto the Twin Cities slam scene this year and isn’t looking back. He’s a student at the University of Minnesota, avoiding the day when he’ll have to decide what he wants to do when he grows up. This year he competed in the Great Plains Poetry Pile-Up and is a member of the 2010 U of M Slam team. He lives in Minneapolis with one roommate, two fish named after J.D. Salinger characters, and a kitchen full of dirty dishes. His mother would be proud.