Join us for a special reading and disucssion feating Charlie Quimby, author of Inhabited, and Mikkel Beckmen, Director of the Office to End Homelessness for Minneapolis and Hennepin County. Inhabited is a novel that deals with a community’s conflicting attempts to address its chronic homeless population. Following a reading of the book, Charlie Quimby and Mikkel Beckmen will lead a discussion that brings a local, informed perspective on the realities and issues treated fictionally in the novel. The evening promises to be thought-provoking, mind-expanding, and meaningful.
"[Inhabited] spotlights the complex forces behind the spaces we call home." —MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
About the Book:
Meg Mogrin sells pricey houses, belongs to the mayor's inner circle, and knows more than she's letting on about her sister's death. Isaac Samson lives in a tent and believes Thomas Edison invented the Reagan presidency. When their town attracts a game-changing development, Isaac is displaced by the town's crackdown on vagrancy. As Isaac struggles to regain stability, Meg contends with conflicting roles of assisting the developer while serving on the homeless coalition. Isaac's quest to return a lost artifact soon intrudes into Meg's tidy world, digging up a part of her past she'd rather remained buried. Inhabited, a sister novel to Charlie Quimby's acclaimed Monument Road, returns to the Grand Valley of western Colorado to explore the dimensions of loss, the boundaries of compassion, and the endurance of love.
Bios:
Charlie Quimby is the author of two novels set in Western Colorado—Monument Road and Inhabited—and is a co-author of Planning to Stay, a guide that helps communities assess themselves and take control of future development. Before devoting himself to writing fiction, he was president of Words At Work, the Minneapolis marketing communications firm he founded, from 1988 to 2005. His speechwriting and annual reports won national awards, and he co-authored publications on urban planning, quality management, design education and how citizens can influence defense policy. While in communications at Honeywell, he wrote an article that won the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review. In 2004 he started his blog, Across the Great Divide, in response to the country's widening political divide. Currently, he is a volunteer with Peace House Community and People Serving People in Minneapolis and Catholic Outreach Day Center in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Mikkel Beckmen believes that housing is a human right. Since July of 2013, Mikkel has served as the Director of the Office to End Homelessness for Minneapolis and Hennepin County. The Office to End Homelessness is charged with coordinating the community’s implementation of the 10 year plan to end homelessness, ‘Heading Home Hennepin’. In August of 2016, Mikkel began working in the newly-created position of Housing Coordinator at Hennepin County. Previously, Mikkel served for 8 years as the Executive Director of St. Stephen’s Human Services in Minneapolis. In addition, he spent 5 years at the Corporation for Supportive Housing assisting communities throughout MN in developing supportive housing and has also managed shelter and housing programs for Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army. Mikkel is a graduate of Luther College and resides in Minneapolis, the town he loves and grew up in.
