Join us at Quatrefoil Library for a poetry reading with four different poets!

Presented by Su Love in collaboration with Quatrefoil Library. Su Love is a fiscal year 2024 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Aurora Masum-Javed is a poet, educator, and writing coach. A former public school teacher, she holds an MA in Education from George Mason University and an MFA from Cornell University, where she also taught courses in creative non-fiction, short story, poetry, and composition. Her work can be found in various journals including Nimrod, Black Warrior Review, Aster(ix), Winter Tangerine, Frontier, Jaggery, and Callaloo. She has received fellowships from places such as the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, Caldera Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Kundiman, Callaloo, BOAAT, the Community of Writers, and Pink Door. A recent Philip Roth Resident and Hub City Writer in Residence, she is currently working on her first collection of poems. auroramasumjaved.com

Chavonn Williams Shen (she/they) is from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was a 2022 McKnight Writing fellow and a first runner-up for The Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction Contest. She was also a Best of the Net Award finalist, a Pushcart Prize nominee, a winner of the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series, a fellow with the Givens Foundation for African American Literature, and an instructor for the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. A Bread Loaf, Tin House, VONA, and Hurston/Wright workshop alum, her writing has appeared in: Diode, Anomaly, AGNI, and others. Her first book, Still Life with Rope and River, is published with Finishing Line Press (2024). chavonnwshen.com

Halee Kirkwood is a poet, teaching artist, and bookseller living in Minneapolis, MN. Kirkwood is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, and has received fellowships and grants from In-Na-Po (Indigenous Nations Poetry), The Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series program, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. The winner of the 2022 James Welch Prize, published with Poetry Northwest, Kirkwood has work published or forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, December Magazine, Ecotone Magazine, The Florida Review, Gulf Coast Journal, Water~Stone Review, Poem-A-Day, and others. Kirkwood earned their MFA in poetry from Hamline University. They are a direct descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. hskirkwood.wordpress.com

Of Su Love’s five published books of poetry, Weight of Light (Laurel Poetry Collective, 2004) was nominated by Jim Moore for the 2005 Pushcart Editors’ Book Prize, and Buddha, Proof (broadcraft press, 2011, reprinted by Red Dragonfly Press, 2013) was a finalist for the 2012 Minnesota Book Award. Most recently, The Memoir of Mona Lisa, was published by the Irish press Salmon Poetry (2019). Su’s current work centers on legacies of nuclear power. Fully funded residencies awarded to Su include Vermont Studio Center, Tofte Lake Center, and twice as a Pine Needles Artist in Residence at the St. Croix Watershed Research Station, a program of the Science Museum of Minnesota. She has received additional funding from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Arts Council, and Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council. Prizes include the Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize, selected by Elizabeth Alexander, and the Joy Harjo Poetry Award, selected by Dorianne Laux. Su co-directed the small literary press Laurel Poetry Collective, which was honored by Literary Witnesses. sulove.org

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