SATURDAY
9:00 am Registration Opens
9:30 to 12:30 pm 2018 Poetry Contest Results
12:30 to 1:30 pm Lunch
1:45 to 2:45 pm Panel Discussion: Project Poetry
3:00 to 4:00 pm Workshop: Bryan Thao Worra
4:15 to 5:15 pm Poetry Workshop Stations
5:15 to 5:45 pm Break/ Hotel check in
5:45 to 6:45 pm Dinner
7:00 to 8:00 pm Keynote Speaker Bryan Thao Worra
8:00 to 8:30 pm Book Signing and conversation with Keynote
9:00 to 10:00 pm Open Mic
SUNDAY
8:00- 9:00 am Board Meeting/Open Mic
9:15-10:15 am Poetry Critique Workshop
10:30-11:30 am Workshop: See More Perspective
11:30-12:30 pm 2018 Poetry Contest Final
HOTEL INFO: MUST reserve by Sept 20th to get this rate
10 Rooms have been secured at: Minneapolis Marriott Southwest
5801 Opus Pkwy Minnetonka, MN 55343
Phone: 888.887.1681
Please mention at Registration The League of MN Poets to receive the discount
of $95.00 + tax. (please note, there is no cancellation policy at discounted rate).
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| Bryan Thao Worra is a Lao American writer, who holds over 20 awards for his writing and community leadership including an NEA Fellowship in Literature. He was a Cultural Olympian representing Laos during the 2012 London Summer Games. In 2009 he received an Asian Pacific American Leadership Award from the governor’s Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans. He is currently the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, a 40-year old international literary organization celebrating the poetry of the imaginative and the fantastic.
He also holds a 2011 Youth Media Innovation Award from the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center and won the 2014 Elgin Award for Book of the Year from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association for his collection “Demonstra” (Innsmouth Press, 2013).
He came to the United States in 1973 as the adopted child of an American pilot flying in Laos during the Southeast Asian conflicts, and grew up across the US including Montana, Alaska, Michigan, and Ohio. He studied under both Lutheran and Waldorf education systems in grade school. While he has been writing and creating since he was young, his journey as a poet is typically considered to have begun in 1991. This year marks the 20th anniversary since he moved to Minnesota and began some his most significant work as a poet, working to help many refugee communities reconstruct their literary voice in diaspora.
He has presented at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Loft Literary Center, Intermedia Arts, Kearny Street Workshop, the Institute for Contemporary Art, among many others, and recently as a Visiting Artist with University of Merced Center for the Humanities. One of the co-founders of the National Lao American Writers Summit, he is the author of 6 books, with work appearing internationally in Australia, Canada, Scotland, Germany, France, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Korea, and Pakistan. You can visit him online athttp://thaoworrawordpress.com
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This is Boom-Bap from the stars at the pyramids. A dance party with indigenous kings, quantum physicists, and your little cousins. These are lyrics that school, uplift and capture the imagination. They reprimand wackness. This is the love story between heritage and irreverence, the make out session between education and rebellion. A fist fight between what is and whats possible. A heavy blow from sound logic upon hateful ignorance. Love over fear.
SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE has been described as a “Chicago Institution”, “Walking creativity” and “The hardest working, most unjustly slept on artist in the Twin Cities”….This award winning hip hopper is a Twin Cities Native, Chicago transplant, MC, Poet, Producer, Engineer, Educator, Visual Artist, Actor, Thinker, Lover and one heck of a cook. He received a 2013 VERVE Grant from Intermedia Arts, a 2017 Cedar Commission from The Cedar Cultural Center, and was a semi-finalist of the Saint Paul Challenge for the Million dollar idea to make Saint Paul Great.
SEE MORE is currently on the TruArtSpeaks and COMPAS Arts MN artist rosters teaching rap, spoken word, hip hop music production, and social justice. He serves on the board of the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, where he is excited to continue to find new ways to connect with and contribute to Minnesota’s art and music scenes.
SEE has done years of youth work through hip hop and spoken word dealing with social justice, identity, and community engagement issues, has performed at countless venues and festivals and spoken at and facilitated workshops at various social justice conferences and retreats.
SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE aims to inspire, uplift and open doors to possibility and imagination with an invitation to self discovery through meditations on community, history, and the expression of pure imagination.
He has shared stages with the likes of Brother Ali, Umar Bin Hassan of The Last Poets, Dead Prez, Sage Francis, Michal Franti, Atmosphere, De La Soul, The White Stripes and many more. |
