Poetry Night with Dralandra Larkins & Friends

Dralandra Larkins is an award-winning spoken-word poet and educator, she is a multi-genre writer, and audiobook author of Before I Lie (2025). A COMPAS teaching artist, and a recipient of the Loft Literary Center Teaching Artist Fellowship, the Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, and Springboard for the Arts’ Weathering Together artist grant. She’s performed for the NAACP, Button Poetry, Mil City Museum, TruArtSpeaks,MN State Capitol, MN Black Business Ball and the MN Black Authors Expo. Her work weaves together rhythm, intimacy and vulnerability to create a haven for healing rooted in her background as a social worker. She is the co-editor of Cracked Walnut's anthology, Rewilding Hope(2023) and The Nations Underground: Writing with Our Ancestors with Cabello-Hansel (2024), and currently coordinates literary programming at Friends of the St. Paul Public Library including Club Book, Moving Words, and the Fireside Reading Series. Follow her journey: dralandrawrites.com

Rosetta Peters is a poet, an author, a public speaker, and an activist. She is of Crow Creek and Yankton Dakota descent. A procrastinator to the point of detriment and lover of the natural world. She is the author of "Blue Hummingbird Dance" and "Writer’s for the People An Anthology."

Ben Westlie is the author of Run From Your Now a Minnesota Book Award Finalist in Poetry 2025. His poetry has appeared in DASH, The Fourth River, MUSE, Superpresent, ArLiJo, Atlas and Alice and The Talking Stick. A selected poet for Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25 edited by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Sagirah Shahid is a Black Muslim poet from Minneapolis, MN. Her poetry and prose are published in Mizna, About Place Journal, Paranoid Tree, Prose Online, and elsewhere

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