Laureate Writers Series Presents Mary Moore Easter, Poet and Dancer

Tuesday | October 3 | 7 pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St.

On Tuesday, October 3rd, at 7 pm, poet Mary Moore Easter will read from her work at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse, 162 W 2nd St. The reading will be followed by a book signing and then an open mic. Bring some of your work to share. This event is free and open to the public. 

Mary Moore Easter has published four books of poetry: Walking From Origins (chapbook, 1993), The Body of the World (Minnesota Book Award Finalist, 2019), Flutes of Our Bones (2020), and Free Papers—Poems Inspired by the Testimony of Eliza Winston, a Mississippi Slave Escaped to Freedom in Minnesota in 1860 (2021). She has also published a memoir, The Way She Wants to Get There—Telling on Myself (2022) that chronicles her life as a dancer and choreographer as well as a poet. Her poetry speaks “the language of dance.”  

Mary Moore Easter was born in Virginia, to parents on the faculty of Virginia State College (now University) and was immersed in their artistic and intellectual interests as she was in the limitations segregation imposed on her black world. She holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence and an M.A. in Music for Dancers from Goddard. Her adult career as an independent dancer/choreographer and Founder and Director of Carleton College’s dance program overlapped with writing as a Cave Canem Fellow. Her awards include an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Bush Artist Fellowship in Choreography, multiple McKnight Awards in Interdisciplinary Arts, The Loft Literary Center’s Creative Non-Fiction Award, and residencies at Ragsdale and the Anderson Center. 

This First Tuesday Laureate Writers Series event is co-sponsored by the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest and the Blue Heron Coffeehouse. To learn more about the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, please visit sonnetcontest.org or email entries@sonnetcontest.org.

Photo: Mary Moore Easter.

River Arts Alliance serves as fiscal sponsor of the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest.