Juliet Patterson will read from her newest work, Threnody, and singer/songwriter Wendy Lewis will perform. 

About the Artists:

Wendy Lewis is the founder/songwriter/singer of the indy bands Rhea Valentine, Mary Nail and Redstart, with whom she released five albums, won six MN music awards, and recieved an MSAB artist grant in 1998. She has collaborated with Bill Carrothers (Language of Crows '02) listed Top Ten in Paris and The Bad Plus (For All I Care '08), touring globally for two years. Lewis has also appeared on various artist recordings, including Barbara Cohen, Andrew Bird, Haley Bonar, Alpha Consumer, and The Great Depression, among many others.

Juliet Patterson's The Truant Lover was winner of the first Nightboat Books Prize. Her poems and essays have appeared widely in numerous magazines. Her recent awards include the Arts & Letters Susan Atefat Prize in Non-fiction, the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She lives in Minneapolis on the west bank of the Mississippi near the Great River Road. 

About Threnody: 

Part lamentation, part ode, Threnody (the word originates from the Greek, threnos, “wailing” and oide “ode.”), examines the beauty and violence of our present ecological moment with a lyric and meditative eye. Concerned with the precise relationship of components in the world these poems exist in the overlap between imagination and fact, truth and history, territory and map, the living and the dead.

“Juliet Patterson’s poems are entirely themselves; they use time and the eye and tongue—all the body, as thought and insight, inside and outside history.” – Jean Valentine