Clarence White
Clarence White is a writer, editor, typewriter poet, curator, arts administrator and a former bookseller at the Hungry Mind Bookstore. His publications are included in several editions of the Saint Paul Almanac, Suisun Valley Review and Public Art Review, and his essay “Smart Enough for Ford” appears in the anthology Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota. He works in essay when he believes that conversation is possible and in poetry when he is less hopeful. He is the co-curator of the 2016 and 2017 Banfill-Locke Reading Series and Silverwood Park’s 2014 Art on Foot. He is a past Givens Foundation Retreat Fellow and was a finalist for mnartists.org’s flash fiction contest miniStories. He lives in Saint Paul.
Michael Kleber-Diggs
Michael Kleber-Diggs is a poet, essayist, and literary critic. His debut poetry collection, Worldly Things, won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and is available through Milkweed Editions. Among other places, Michael’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Great River Review, Water~Stone Review, Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, Potomac Review, Hunger Mountain, Memorious, and a few anthologies. Michael is a past Fellow with the Givens Foundation for African American Literature, a past-winner of the Loft Mentor Series in Poetry, and the former Poet Laureate of Anoka County libraries.
Julia Klatt Singer
Julia Klatt Singer is a poet and painter. She is the poet in residence at Grace Neighborhood Nursery School. She is co-author of Twelve Branches: Stories from St. Paul, (Coffee House Press), author of In the Dreamed of Places, (Naissance Press), A Tangled Path to Heaven, Untranslatable, (North Star Press), and Elemental (Prolific Press) poems written to the periodic table. Audio poems from Elemental are at OpenKim (https://openkim.org/), as the element Sp. She’s co-written numerous songs with composers Craig Carnahan, Jocelyn Hagen, and Tim Takach. When not working, she can be found walking the dog.
Bill Meissner
Bill Meissner has been a lifelong baseball enthusiast and/or player. He grew up in Iowa and Wisconsin, and is the author of ten books, including two baseball-theme books: Hitting into the Wind, and Spirits in the Grass, a novel about a small-town ball player who discovers the remains of an ancient Native American burial ground on a baseball field, for which he won the Midwest Book Award, along with his two latest baseball-theme collections, Light at the Edge of the Field, forthcoming from Stephen F. Austin University Press in September and CIRCLING TOWARD HOME, grassroots baseball photography and prose, to be published January, 2022 by Finishing Line Press. His latest book of poetry is The Mapmaker’s Dream, from Finishing Line Press.
Meissner has won awards for his fiction and poetry, including an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, a Loft-McKnight Award for Poetry, A Loft-McKnight Award of Distinction in Fiction, a Jerome Fellowship, and a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship. His fiction and poetry has appeared widely in over 350 magazines during the past years, and his photographs have appeared in several magazines.
He has played baseball in little league, Babe Ruth League, amateur league, and written articles for the Minnesota Twins Magazine, Minnesota Monthly, and Baseball Cards Monthly, for which he interviewed such baseball stars as Nolan Ryan, Kirby Puckett, Ken Griffey Jr., Paul Molitor, Dave Winfield, and Don Mattingly.