Laureate Writers Series – May 2018

Poet and Singer-Songwriter Diane Jarvenpa to perform at the Blue Heron

Tuesday | May 1 | 7:00pm
Blue Heron Coffee House | 162 W 2nd St

Diane Jarvenpa will read from her latest book The Way She Told Her Story as part of the Laureate Writers Series. She will also perform some of her songs. The event is free and open to the public. Beverages and treats are available before and after Jarvenpa’s performance, which will be followed by a book signing and an open mic. The theme for the open mic is “Spring.”

Diane Jarvenpa is the author of three previous books of poetry and a chapbook. Her book The Tender Wild Things received the Midwest Independent Publishers Association Book Award in poetry. As a singer/songwriter, she records under the name Diane Jarvi. Her recordings are heard on radio throughout Europe, Canada, Australia and the US. She has been the subject of two film documentaries and is known in Finland as The Minnesota Nightingale. Diane has been the recipient of numerous artistic grants and awards, including a McKnight MacPhail performing fellowship and the Finlandia Foundation’s Performer of the Year award. All of her recordings blend the artistry of her songwriting with her love of world music and poetry.

The Way She Told Her Story, her second book from New Rivers Press, is a collection of poems that illuminates the lives of Finnish-­American immigrants, especially women. Largely set in Finland and Minnesota, this collection provides another square in the quilt of this region’s literary and ethnic history. Author Kristen Dierking says “While this is a book about the Finnish immigrant experience, it’s also the universal story of loss and hope of all who arrived in this country as strangers. As Jarvenpa says, ‘there is a vagrancy in not belonging.’ Diane wraps the hard labor of forging new lives inside an exquisitely lovely language for landscape; this is nature writing that feels entirely new, perhaps because the bones of this story did originate in a different tongue. Please read these poems—I don’t know when I’ve read a book that is so consistently, achingly beautiful, both in language and thought."

This event is co-sponsored by Winona’s Fine Arts Commission and The Blue Heron and is free and open to the public.

The Laureate Writer’s Series is sponsored by the City of Winona’s Fine Arts Commission. The City of Winona is a partner of River Arts Alliance.