Next Tues, our MFA student Zeke Caligiuri is co-hosting (with @davigray.com) this cool reading presented by @reentrylab.org @moonpalacebooks.bsky.social and Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop:

Raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota’s historic Rondo neighborhood, Lt. Sunnie (she/her) is a powerhouse in the Midwest music scene with over a decade of experience. She has headlined major events across the region, delivered charged up halftime show performances, completed a milestone 10-stop tour, 1/9

Lester Batiste (he/him) is a savage writer in living color who writes for political, social, economic change and Black futures. Born in Chicago, IL, he holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast writing program, and an M.S.Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania. 1/8

Cecily McMillan (all pronouns) is a social justice organizer, political consultant, and published author. After enduring a Kafkaesque trial following her arrest at Occupy Wall Street in 2012, she served 58 days at Rikers Island. Since their release, McMillan has become… 1/8

Ashembaga (Ashe) Jaafaru (ashe or she/her) is an actor + dancer + writer + producer + director who creates art for liberation of the mind, body and SPIRIT. As the founder of Little Creatures, she will continue to write + produce imaginative stories. Upcoming productions include… 1/5

Rosetta Peters (she/her) is a Dakota poet, an author, a public speaker, and an activist. A procrastinator to the point of detriment and lover of the natural world. 🎤 Please join us on Tuesday, March 3rd, at 7:00pm, at Moon Palace Books, for our next 5×5 Reading, featuring 5 fantastic artists: 1/4

12th Annual Transformative Justice and Abolition Criminology Conference: February 13th, 2026. Panel of scholar-activists, artist-philosophers, poets, and abolitionists discussing a wide range of topics. Register: savethekidsgroup.org/feb-13-2026-... FB event page: www.facebook.com/share/1AM1cX...

My current PoeS.A project is "JustUs," a crowd-sourced poem on justice. My work is supported by a Camille Gage memorial fellowship. I loved and admired Camille and so this is a great honor. She always met moments of injustice with art-in-action. I'm humbled by her memory.

"The criminal legal system doesn't interrupt gender violence, but rather extends it, concentrates it, and hides it behind prison walls where it disappears from public view." -Kwaneta Harris, a former nurse, business owner, and expat, now an incarcerated journalist

Please join us on Tuesday, March 3rd, at 7:00pm, at @moonpalacebooks.bsky.social, for our next 5×5 Reading, featuring five fantastic artists: Rosetta Peters, Ashe Jaafaru, Cecily McMillan, Lester Batiste, and Lt. Sunnie. Each featured artist will take five minutes to share work. 1/5

ICE is active in south Minneapolis today- Multiple cars cruising around East Phillips, Midtown Phillips. Meanwhile, signal is having issues, so folks should be outside! See ICE? Form a crowd and get loud. Let neighbors know if ICE is nearby by making noise.

Tonight (2/3/26) at @moonpalacebooks.bsky.social: I know Isha and Heid are incredible, and am excited to hear more from the others too. The "Better Things" lineups are always so cool, pulling from many different corners of the Twin Cities literary landscape:

Isha Camara (she/her) is a Gambian-American poet and visual artist from South Minneapolis, Minnesota. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Masters at Randolph College in Creative Writing. Her work has been featured in MUZZLE Magazine, Poets.org and… 1/6

Author of nine books of poetry and prose Heid E. Erdrich (she/her) is a curator and teacher. Erdrich edited the anthology New Poets of Native Nations and co-edited the newly published Boundless: Abundance in Native American Art and Literature. She served as the inaugural Minneapolis Poet… 1/7

Jeffrey Dorr-Slowey (he/him) is a 46-year-old Indigenous father. He is the principal and owner of Amik Agabow Consulting, LLC, as well as a community organizer with TONE UP and an inaugural fellow with the Just Lead Fellowship. … 1/6

BakiBakiBaki (they/them) is an Afro-indigenous multidisciplinary artist who believes freedom lives at the crosscurrents of art and spirituality. Through zines/self publishing and puppetry BBB leads community workshops, … 1/6

Ari Tison (Bribri) (she/her) is an award-winning poet and the author of YA hybrid poetry & prose novel Saints of the Household (FSG/Macmillan), winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Amelia Walden Award, and a finalist for the William C. Morris Award. 1/6

Please join us on Tuesday, February 3rd, at 7:00pm, at Moon Palace Books, for our next 5×5 Reading, featuring five fantastic artists: Ari Tison (Bribri), BakiBakiBaki, Jeffrey Dorr-Slowey, Heid E. Erdrich, and Isha Camara. Each featured artist will take five minutes to share work. … 1/5

Coming up Tuesday at @moonpalacebooks.bsky.social: I'll be facilitating a short workshop on "narrative interventions," a space to think creatively about our stories, but ALSO the concrete projects that can propel those stories, that create space for them to “live” in the world. Plus an open mic!

If one of your New Year's resolutions is to support independent media, here is a comprehensive list of independent newsrooms. This thread features 72 publications – almost all of which are nonprofit or worker-owned – with various ways to support their reporting.

A powerful anthem about keeping the flame of hope and resistance alive, by Carsie Blanton, a musician and activist who took part in the recent aid flotilla to Gaza: #SkyFundathon2026 www.youtube.com/watch?v=azTu...

“The rate of deaths per year in the correctional facilities has been on the rise even though the number of people being held in the prisons has declined, the records show. Last year the death count hit 144 — the highest number in the past seven years.”

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky We fail that test so badly.

A highlight from this 2025 recap thread; and for people interested in how words/art/culture can support movement work: Join us Jan 6 at @moonpalacebooks.bsky.social for a "narrative interventions lab" in collaboration with @reentrylab.bsky.social. More info: reentrylab.org/better-things

Please join us on Tuesday, January 6th, at 7:00pm, at Moon Palace Books (@moonpalacebooks.bsky.social), for our next Gathering and Open Mic. This gathering will feature a narrative interventions lab, facilitated by Kyle "Guante" Tran Myhre (@guante.info), hosted by @davigray.bsky.social…. 1/7

After a full year of work, this book is out! Cooking in Maximum Security, compiled by Matteo Guidi, is our latest Half Letter Press book and it's beautiful. How do people in Italian prisons cook? This book will show you their recipes and tools used to make them. halfletterpress.com/cooking-in-m...

✨COMING UP!✨ Please join us on Tuesday, December 2nd, at 7:00pm, at Moon Palace Books, for our next 5×5 Reading, featuring five fantastic readers: Tyra Payer, Jen Bowen, Fong L., Sun Yung Shin, and Bao Phi, followed by an open mic. Both reading and open mic will feature ASL interpretation. 1/3

I have a few ideas! @guante.info might have more too All the Threads Between Us: The Power of Poetry Clubs, Writing Circles, Open Mics, and Other Collective Efforts (Zine) guante.info/2024/04/18/p... Something to Share with Friends and Neighbors Asking “What Do We DO?” guante.info/2025/03/04/a...

Isha is also one of the best poets I know, and just got accepted into the winter residency for Tin House; in order to actually be able to go, though, she is trying to raise some money via commissions for her visual art. Get headshots, birthcharts, more: artistree.io/theicedraws

Kwaneta & Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause collaborated on a three-part series on menopause, incarceration, and the climate crisis for Scalawag. Part 1: scalawagmagazine.org/2025/10/cool... Part 2: scalawagmagazine.org/2025/10/the-... Part 3: scalawagmagazine.org/2025/10/burn...

Angela Davis calls Ending Isolation (out Sept 20) “a rekindling of our abolitionist impulses at a critical moment.” 📚 Preorder: www.amazon.com/dp/0745351271 #AngelaDavis #EndingIsolation #SolitaryConfinement #PrisonAbolition #BookRelease

Bao Phi (he/him) is a spoken word artist, poet, writer, and children's book author. His work can be found in two books of poetry both published by Coffee House Press, four children's books, all published by Capstone, and in anthologies such as Octavia's Brood, A Good Time for the Truth,… 1/6

Please join us on Tuesday, December 2nd, at 7:00pm, at Moon Palace Books, for our next 5×5 Reading, featuring five fantastic artists: Tyra Payer, Jen Bowen, Fong L., Sun Yung Shin, and Bao Phi, followed by an open mic. Both reading and open mic will feature ASL interpretation. 1/4

Tyra Payer (they/them) is a member of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe tribe, from Belcourt North Dakota. Tyra is a writer and entrepreneur who has a background of storytelling and Indigenous food systems. Outside, you can find Tyra vending at the farmers market or in the garden. 🎤 Please join us… 1/5

Here in MN, @releasemn8.bsky.social does important work with Southeast Asian communities, deportation defense, and more. They also have some of the best-designed merchandise of any movement org I've seen, and "every purchase goes directly towards the fight against deportation!" Shop:

Jen Bowen (she/her) is a writer, arts instructor, and editor. Her essay collection, THE BOOK OF KIN: On Absence, Love, and Being There, took nearly twenty-years to finish, but it's out now. Her work has received a Pushcart Prize, The Arts and Letters Prize, the Tim McGinnis Award… 1/6

Fong Lee (he/him) is a Saint-Paul-based artist. He is a celebrated poet, with publications through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and Asian American Writers Workshop, a beloved painter, and a published photographer. 🎤 Please join us… 1/5

신선영 Sun Yung Shin (she/they) is an award-winning poet, cultural worker, educator, and multi-genre author of 13 books for adults and children. She is a 2025 McKnight Fellow in prose. Her newest book for children is Revolutions Are Made of Love: The Story of James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs… 1/7