Open Book is a book and literary arts center in Minneapolis, Minnesota housing three nonprofit organizations: The Loft Literary Center, Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Milkweed Editions. It also has the Ruminator Books and the Coffee Gallery. It includes a 50,000 square foot space on four floors. [1] The building has approximately 10,000 visitors a month and includes an Orchestra Hall and a theater. [2] [3]
Opened May 21, 2000, [4] Open Book was founded by Linda Myers of The Loft Literary Center, Peggy Korsmo-Kennon of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Emilie Buchwald of Milkweed Editions in an effort to create a more permanent home for their respective organisations. [5] [6] It was fully funded by contributions they received from individuals, corporations and foundations and was not funded with government money. [2]
Former Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak described the center as an "important anchor" for creative growth in the Washington Avenue area. [7]
In 2015, they received a $10,000 MetLife Foundation Innovation Space Award. [2]
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, together with the adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and the Cowles Conservatory, it has an annual attendance of around 700,000 visitors. The museum's permanent collection includes over 13,000 modern and contemporary art pieces including books, costumes, drawings, media works, paintings, photography, prints, and sculpture.
The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United States. Its permanent collection includes world-famous works that embody the highest levels of artistic achievement, spanning about 20,000 years and representing the world’s diverse cultures across six continents. The museum has seven curatorial areas: Arts of Africa & the Americas; Contemporary Art; Decorative Arts, Textiles & Sculpture; Asian Art; Paintings; Photography and New Media; and Prints and Drawings.
Bryan Thao Worra is a Laotian American writer. His books include On The Other Side Of The Eye, Touching Detonations, Winter Ink, Barrow and The Tuk Tuk Diaries: My Dinner With Cluster Bombs. He is the first Laotian American to receive a Fellowship in Literature from the United States government's National Endowment for the Arts. He received the Asian Pacific Leadership Award from the State Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans for Leadership in the Arts in 2009. He received the Science Fiction Poetry Association Elgin Award for Book of the Year in 2014. He was selected as a Cultural Olympian representing Laos during the 2012 London Summer Olympics. He is the first Asian American president of the international Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, and the first Laotian American member of the professional Horror Writers Association.
May Lee-Yang, also known as May Lee, is a Hmong American playwright, poet, prose writer, performance artist and community activist in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. She was born in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand and moved to Minnesota as a child with her family. She is also the executive director of the non-profit organization Hmong Arts Connection.
Bao Phi is a Vietnamese-American spoken word artist, writer and community activist living in Minnesota.
Sun Yung Shin is a Korean American poet, writer, consultant, and educator living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Minneapolis is the largest city in the US state of Minnesota, and the county seat of Hennepin County.
Milkweed Editions is an independent, nonprofit literary publisher founded in Minneapolis in 1980. It releases eighteen to twenty new books each year in the genres of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Milkweed Editions annually awards three prizes for poetry: the Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, the Jake Adam York Prize, and they are a partner publisher for the National Poetry Series. In 2016, Milkweed Editions opened an independent bookstore focused on the sale of literary works.
Alex Lemon is an American poet and memoirist.
Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) is the largest and most comprehensive independent nonprofit book arts center in the United States. Located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, MCBA is a nationally recognized leader in the celebration and preservation of traditional crafts, including hand papermaking, letterpress printing and hand bookbinding, as well as the use of these traditional techniques by contemporary artists in creating new artists' books and artwork.
David Mura is an American author, poet, novelist, playwright, critic and performance artist whose writings explore the themes of race, identity and history. In 2018, Mura published a book on creative writing, A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity & Narrative Craft in Writing, in which he argues for a more inclusive and expansive definition of craft.
The Loft Literary Center is a nonprofit literary organization located in Minneapolis, Minnesota incorporated in 1975. The Loft is one of the nation’s largest and most comprehensive independent literary centers, and offers a variety of writing classes, conferences, grants, readings, writers' studios and other services to both established and emerging writers.
John Caddy is an American poet and naturalist.
Deborah Keenan is an American poet.
George Anthony Rabasa is an American writer and author of four novels and a short story collection. Rabasa has received such honors as The Loft Career Initiative Grant, The Writer’s Voice Capricorn Award, and two Minnesota Book Awards.
Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a Minnesota-based Lao American spoken word poet, playwright, and community activist. She was born in 1981 in a refugee camp in Nongkhai, Thailand. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Minnesota, Morris. She is currently pursuing a Master in Liberal Studies focused on public policy and arts and cultural leadership at the University of Minnesota.
Margaret Hasse, is a poet and writer who has lived and worked in Minnesota since graduating from Stanford University in 1973. Three of her collections of poems have been published: Milk and Tides, In a Sheep's Eye, Darling, and Stars Above, Stars Below Milk and Tides was a finalist for a 2009 Minnesota Book Award and won the Midwestern Independent Publishers' Association award in poetry.
Quatrefoil Library is a member-supported, 501(c)(3) non-profit library for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. It is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where it was founded by David Irwin and Dick Hewetson in 1983. It is the second LGBT lending library in the United States. In the beginning, it was not only an educational resource center but also a safe space for LGBT people. The library houses over 15,000 books, 7,000 DVDs, a collection of first editions and rare books, and books in Braille. It hosts poetry readings, panel discussions, book launches, and other events, open to all.
John Engman (1949–1996) was an American poet from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Miriam Karmel is an American novelist and writer. Her first novel, Being Esther (2013), is one of only a few involving characters in their eighties.