Susan Jaret McKinstry and I will be reading at Zenith Bookstore in Duluth, Minnesota on the first evening in May–an appropriate coda to National Poetry Month 2025. Zenith Bookstore was founded by former Northfielders Bobby and Angel Dobrow. If you–or a poetry lover you know–will be in Duluth that evening, we would love to see you there.

Full Details:

Thursday May 1st, 2025 from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m

Here is some text from the Zenith Bookstore’s Event Page. (Please feel free to share!)

“Join us as we welcome educator and poet Susan Jaret McKinstry and author and poet Leslie Schultz on Thursday, May 1st at 7pm. Susan will share her new chapbook Tumblehome and Leslie will read from her latest book Geranium Lake: Poems on Art and Art-Making. They will discuss their books, poetry, and answer questions from attendees. Books will be available for purchase at the event.”

Tumblehome by Susan Jaret McKinstry is structured like a musical composition. It moves in three sections as it interweaves and deepens themes of home, time and loss. The poems contemplate vast human history and the small space of our lives in distinct voices and episodes, with closely-observed objects – coins, stones, birds, water – reappearing and echoing to create a harmonic poetic travelogue.

Named for a bold pink pigment that fades over time, Leslie Schultz’s vibrant collection Geranium Lake: Poems on Art and Art-Making is an ekphrastic extravaganza as well as a meditation on age, time, and beauty. Schultz’s refreshing curiosity is evident as she engages with individual works of art and with larger issues of looking, curation, and display.

Susan Jaret McKinstry is a professor of 19th c British literature, narrative theory, journalism, and creative writing at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She has published poems in Plain Songs I & II, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, and many others. Susan yearns for the sea and has been lucky to teach and write in Ireland, Scotland, Norway, London, Florence, and Moscow.

Leslie Schultz has six collections of poetry. Her poetry has appeared widely in such journals as Poet Lore, Mezzo Cammin, Midwest Quarterly, and others. In addition to poems, she publishes photographs, essays, and fiction; makes quilts and soups; and happily mucks about in a garden plagued by shade, rabbits, and walnut trees.