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Multiple authors will be here to present their work from the Rural American Writers' Center. The Rural America Writers’ Center of Plainview, Minnesota, states that its mission, in part, is “to provide activities and programs so that writers may develop their individual and collective creative abilities and skills, and to enhance the culture of rural and small town America….” The Center is accomplishing these goals, admirably.   Poetry writing and creative non-fiction classes are offered along with workshops led by established writer/teachers like Gary Holthaus, Ken McCullough, John Rezmerski and Emilio Degrazia.  One of the Centers' "Writer's Helping Writers" workshops was lucky enough to have the late Bill Holm give the keynote speech and "play the black piano".

Join us for another "Dinner with the Author."  Larry and Colleen will provide a 4 course meal featuring spring ingredients.  Wow!  A night to tickle your brain AND your tongue! Please arrive at 6:30pm, dinner will be served promptly at 7:00pm.

About Connie:

 Connie Wanek was born in 1952 in Madison, Wisconsin. She is the second of six children. Her family moved to a small farm outside Green Bay when she was very young, and they relocated to Las Cruces, New Mexico when she was twelve. In 1990 she moved with her husband, Phil, and her daughter, Hannah, and son, Casey, to Phil's home town, Duluth, Minnesota, where she now lives. 

         As a child in the country outside Green Bay, she attended a one-room school, where a single teacher taught all eight grades (no kindergarten) to seventeen students. Connie and her sisters read a great deal, and drew and wrote poems and stories. Later, in high school and college, Connie retained her interest in the arts, and also she participated in sports, especially tennis, which she played seriously for many years, along with her father and brother.

        Poetry was a constant, whatever her circumstances and enterprises. While raising two children, she worked in a family solar heating business, and later she learned the skills necessary to restore old houses. Also, she worked for years at the Duluth Public Library, from which she retired in 2007.

        Her first book, Bonfire, won the New Rivers Press new voices award and was published in 1997. Her second, Hartley Field, appeared in 2002 from Holy Cow! Press. On Speaking Terms, her third book, was released on January 15, 2010, by Copper Canyon Press. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry East, Water-Stone, and many other publications over the years. In 2006, then Poet Laureate Ted Kooser named her a Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress. She also served as a co-editor with Joyce Sutphen and Thom Tammaro on the comprehensive anthology, To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present, which appeared in 2007 from New Rivers Press, and which has won several awards.