Milkweed Presents: Hosted by Diane Wilson

Join us for the final entry in our spring monthly reading and panel discussion event series Milkweed Presents, hosted by author Diane Wilson! Diane will lead readings and conversation about writing amidst climate change with Erin Sharkey, editor of , and special guest poet Halee Kirkwood.

Enjoy a social hour and book-signing in our brick-and-mortar indie bookstore—Milkweed Books—beginning at 5 p.m., followed by the reading and conversation in the Open Book Performance Hall beginning at 6 p.m.

About the speakers

Diane Wilson (Dakota) is the author of The Seed Keeper. She is also the author of a memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, which won a Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the One Minneapolis One Read program, as well as a nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life, which was awarded the Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Her most recent essay, “Seeds for Seven Generations,” was featured in the anthology A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota. Wilson has received a Bush Foundation Fellowship as well as awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the East Central Regional Arts Council. In 2018, she was awarded a 50 Over 50 Award from Pollen/Midwest. Wilson is the executive director for the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people. She is a Mdewakanton descendent, enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation, and lives in Shafer, Minnesota.

Erin Sharkey is a writer, arts and abolition organizer, cultural worker, and film producer based in Minneapolis. She is the cofounder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental arts collective called Free Black Dirt and is the producer of film projects including Sweetness of Wild, an episodic web film project, and Small Business Revolution (Hulu), which explored challenges and opportunities for Black-owned businesses in the Twin Cities in the summer of 2021. Sharkey has received fellowships and residencies from the Loft Mentor Series, VONA/Voices, the Givens Foundation, Coffee House Press, the Bell Museum of Natural History, and the Jerome Foundation. In 2021, Sharkey was awarded the Black Seed Fellowship from Black Visions and the Headwaters Foundation. She has an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and teaches with the Minnesota Pr*son Writing Workshop.

Halee Kirkwood is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, a Tin House Summer Workshop alumni, and an Indigenous Nations Poets (IN-NA-PO) fellow. They were awarded the 2022 James Welch Poetry Prize, published with Poetry Northwest. Kirkwood’s work can be found in Poetry Magazine, Ecotone, Gulf Coast, and others. Kirkwood is a direct descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, and is from the Twin Ports area.

Our Spring 2024 slate of Milkweed Presents includes:

February 14: Erin Sharkey

April 3: Claire Wahmanholm

May 23: Michael Kleber-Diggs

June 5: Beth Dooley

June 25: Diane Wilson

Milkweed Presents is a monthly event series featuring Milkweed authors as curators of conversation with local writers and community organizers on a topic of their choosing. These events are held in-person at Open Book in Milkweed Books and the Performance Hall.

Milkweed Editions is an independent publisher of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We believe that literature has the potential to change the way we see the world. Learn more at milkweed.org.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Open Book, 1011 South Washington Avenue, Minneapolis, United States