loftyouthprograms

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Check out our interview with Loft Teaching Artist Kelsey Daly!

Kelsey Daly is a writer and photographer living in Minneapolis. She worked as an assistant for the Veteran’s Book Project, a series of workshops that helped survivors of war and refugees write autobiographical books, as well as the Positive Stories Project at the Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo, which sought stories of heroism across the ethno-religious divides of the 1992-1995 conflict. She is currently finishing her first YA fantasy novel, Quillfall, which was the recipient of a 2020 Minnesota State Artist Initiative Grant.

This summer Kelsey will be teaching two summer writing camps:

Wilderness Writing Crash Course for Ages 13-17 

and

Finding Fantasy in the Every Day for Ages 12-14

For more information visit us at loft.org/youth-programs or give us a call at 612-379-8999

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Hey young readers and writers! Are you familiar with Red Balloon Bookshop? Red Balloon is an independent bookshop in St. Paul, Minnesota, “dedicated to serving our community with books, gifts, and events that inspire, inform and entertain, helping children of all ages—and adults!—live imaginative and rich lives.”

Check out Red Balloon’s weekly storytimes located over on their facebook page. This week they read Interstellar Cinderalla by Deborah Underwood.

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Meet writer and Loft teaching artist Halee Kirkwood!

Halee Kirkwood is a descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and earned their MFA from Hamline University. Formerly a corporate mascot, janitor, and small-town library assistant, their work has been published in Up The Staircase Quarterly, Muzzle Magazine, ctrl+v, Cream City Review, and others. Kirkwood is a writing mentor and bubblegum poetry wrangler for the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and was an inaugural teaching fellow for the 2019 Desert Nights, Rising Stars writing conference at Arizona State University. Their mini-chapbook, Exorcising The Catalogue, was published in fall 2018 with Rinky Dink Press.

Find out more by following Halee on Twitter. This summer Halee will be teaching Writing About Nature in the Time of Climate Change for students aged 13-17.

View the full text of this interview on the Loft’s Writer’s Block Blog here.

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When did you start teaching? What path—career or otherwise—brought you here?

My first classroom experience began at Ashland Middle School in northern Wisconsin, where I was a teaching assistant for a slam poetry class and as a TA for the poetry and fiction courses at my alma mater, Northland College. After moving to the Twin Cities for graduate school, I was a TA at Normandale Community College and at Hamline University for the Runestone: Introduction To Publishing course and for the Senior Seminar in Creative Writing. My writing career has always incorporated a teaching practice. The two are intertwined for me.

How would you describe your teaching style?

I am a process-based and adaptive teacher. I think of the classroom as a generative space and love creative hands-on projects. I pay attention to student needs and desires and am not strictly committed to my idea of how the class should go—if there's reading, lessons, or conversations that would be more beneficial for a class than what I had planned, I am happy to adapt to that challenge. I treat each student as a peer and want to see everyone succeed in what they've defined as success for themselves.

When it comes to imagining and creating classes, where do your ideas come from? What in particular inspires you?

Many of my class ideas generate from overcoming a challenge in my own writing practice. For example, in summer 2019 I taught a course on revision at the Loft, which came from a handful of exercises I created for myself to overcome blocks I had in a draft of a poem. I am inspired to create reading lists from themes I see overlapping in literature, of which I then craft a small course around.

What's the ideal environment for your classroom? What atmosphere are you hoping to establish?

I aim to create an environment where we all cheer when our peers succeed! Connecting students that are doing similar work, or work that complements each other, is a great joy. I want students to take the energy of the course with them after the last day of class. I wish to connect students with opportunities outside of the class to keep that creative momentum going. Above all, I want to create a friendly environment where learning and creating is a pleasurable experience!

Regardless of what your class is specifically focusing on, what's the main goal you have for your students?

My main goal is to give students multiple ways of looking at and approaching their creative practice. I believe in looking at a subject from all possible angles—especially the strange angles—and aim to develop that same sense of multidimensional wonder in my students.

What are goals you have for yourself? These could be teaching goals, writing goals, career goals, community goals, etc.

My main goal at this point is to publish my first book! You know that feeling when you've been on a long, impossible drive and your destination is just over the crest of one last god-forsaken corn field? That's where I am, and I honestly love that feeling.

Beyond my own selfish desires, I wish to hold space for BIPOC, queer, and disabled writers, to connect folks with opportunities and resources that will help them sustain a creative practice and realize their dreams. I wish to contribute to the canon of nature writing that BIPOC folks are already doing the great work of re-writing and re-claiming environmentally-focused literature. I want to see previous students accomplish so many things—whether that means finally reaching a creative breakthrough on a poem that seemed blocked or landing that dream job at an independent press. This makes me ecstatic!

What have been some of your own favorite educational experiences?

Participating in workshops where an instructor has us participate in unusual ways to learn about our own creative and emotional states of being are always my favorite. Take for example workshops taken with the poet Ross Gay during my time as a Loft Mentor Series fellow. Ross pushed us past the idea that we were "masters" of the craft and instead unleashed a spontaneous, uncertain type of creative play by having us make puppets out of whatever we had on our person at the time! Another example is a workshop I took with the poet T.C. Tolbert at the Desert Nights, Rising Stars writing conference at Arizona State University. T.C. had us move and listen to parts of our body with an intuitive and free-ranging sensibility. My favorite educational experiences have always been unconventional. I want to do strange things with remarkable people!

To you personally, what is the most important part of the literary arts?

Deep, honest listening and introspection. Listening to the world around you, your past, your future. Listening to your family and the multilayered histories there. Listening to your body, listening to your sense of love, listening to the communities you've found yourself living throughout your life. Odd listening. Listening with every part of your body and heart. Across genre and form, attention to the world at large is crucial—precise uses of craft and technique fall flat if you haven't done the hard work of listening, which often leads us to uncomfortable places. This is key in the literary arts. How have you transformed from the challenges set before you? And how do you hope to transform your world?

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Looking for more resources for young artists? Check out these free internet art classes by Draw Together!

Draw Together began as an impromptu art class on the internet to support kids and parents during the Covid-19 school closures. Part Mr. Rogers, part Bob Ross, part jumpy-castle party, the show quickly attracted viewers from over forty countries, all excited to draw with host and #1 New York Times bestselling illustrator (plus social worker and professional goofball) Wendy MacNaughton, aka “Wendy Mac.”

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Check out our interview with Loft teaching artist Kristi Romo!

The Loft's Spotlight series is designed to help you get a better sense of the teaching artists behind upcoming Loft classes. In this interview, Savannah Brooks speaks with Kristi Romo about her upcoming Loft offerings.

Kristi will be teaching two classes with us this summer:

Writing Funny Stories  

&

Writing Scary Stories

Visit https://loft.org/classes/youth-programs or give us a call at 612-379-8999 for more information!

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Synopsis: Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about.

With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can’t stop thinking about performing her poems. Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

Categories: poetry, religion, sexuality, family dynamics

Questions:

Poetry is how Xiomara expresses herself. How do you best express yourself?

Of the four main teenage characters—Xiomara, Xavier (Twin), Caridad, and Aman—who do you relate to the most? Why?

Xiomara and Aman quit talking when Aman doesn't stand up for her when she's harassed by some boys at school. Have you ever felt like a friend or crush didn't have your back when you needed them? How did you handle that?

Xiomara feels trapped within the confines of a religious she isn't sure she agrees with. What sort of pressures—social, political, academic, religious, etc.—do you feel in your life? Are there any you wish you could break free of?

How was your experience reading this novel-in-verse? Did you think it would have been different if it were written in prose?

Activity: COVID-19 has put a lot of events on hold, but a poetry slam is the perfect virtual get together. Invite your friends and family for a night of spoken word poetry, giving everyone the opportunity to share their writing in a group video chat. If you really want to get into it, you can set the stage—literally. Dress your best, frame your virtual stage with good lightning and curtains, and make snacks.

Thank you so much to Red Balloon Bookshop for partnering with us on this series! If you'd like to see all of the Family Book Club picks in one place, check out their FBC page. The full text of this post can be found at our website here.

Interested in joining us at the Loft this summer? Check out Reading and Writing with the Poet X, taught by Elizabeth Chen.

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Attention Young Writers!

Now in its ninth year, The Adroit Journal’s Summer Mentorship Program is an online program that pairs established writers with high school students (including graduating seniors) and gap year students (high school class of ’20 or ’21) interested in learning more about the creative writing processes of drafting, redrafting and editing.

The 2021 program will cater to poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction/memoir, and spoken word. The aim of the mentorship program is not formalized instruction, but rather an individualized, flexible, and often informal correspondence. Poetry and spoken word mentorship students will share weekly work with mentors and peers, while fiction and creative nonfiction/memoir mentorship students will share biweekly work with mentors and peers.

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Attention all young writers and artists! 

“Whether it is through visual or performance art -- painting, sculpture, photography, speech, music, spoken word, dance -- we are open to all mediums that explore our community members’ expression from struggling to healing during the upheaval of 2020 and beyond,” said Shreya Konkimalla, a member of both the Arts & Culture Commission and Mosaic. “We seek to celebrate all voices and perspectives in our community through a wide definition of The Arts. Creating space for an open and honest dialogue about experiences, challenges, backgrounds and history is crucial in building and strengthening a cohesive community.”

Artwork of all types will be considered for inclusion in the virtual gallery. Submissions can be of still images, video, written word and other forms. Talents and skills of all ages, backgrounds and experiences are welcomed. All submissions should include title, description of the work and creator’s name and age. Each submission will be reviewed using the Human Rights & Relations Commission’s rubric for evaluating inclusion in public art in City facilities. Categories include representation, gender inclusion, race/ethnicity inclusion, accuracy and feeling.

To learn more or submit a piece for possible inclusion in the gallery, visit BetterTogetherEdina.org. Submissions will be accepted all year. The first round of submissions will be reviewed by March 12. The Arts & Culture Commission and Mosaic hope to launch the virtual gallery by March 19.