Sept. 24: Good Thunder Reading Series Features Ilya Kaminsky, Kayla Lutes

Thursday, September 24, 2020
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Opening event

Mankato, Minn. - Minnesota State University, Mankato will host poet Ilya Kaminsky and fiction writer Kayla Lutes Sept. 24 as the first and second writers who will virtually attend this year’s Good Thunder Reading Series.

All Good Thunder Reading Series events are free and open to the public, and this year the events will be held virtually on Google Meet. A registration link is available at gt.mnsu.edu/event-signup/.

The Sept. 24 event begins with a workshop from 10-11 a.m. Later that day, Kaminsky will hold a “Talk on Craft” from 3-4 p.m.

Events will conclude with Lutes holding a reading of her work from 7:30-8:30 p.m.

Kaminsky is this year’s Nadine B. Andreas Visiting Resident, and Lutes is the recipient of the 2019-20 Nadine B. Andreas Graduate Assistantship.

Kaminsky was born in Odessa in the former Soviet Union, and arrived in the U.S. in 1993, when his family was granted political asylum. He is the author of “Deaf Republic” (Graywolf, 2019), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf and LA Times Book Awards, and “Dancing in Odessa” (Tupelo Press, 2004), which won the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize and Poetry magazine’s Ruth Lilly Fellowship. He is the editor of the Ecco Anthology of International Poetry and editor-in-chief of Poetry International. His many honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Macdowell Colony. Currently, he holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Institute of Technology and lives in Atlanta.

Lutes is a master of fine arts degree candidate in fiction at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where she teaches creative writing as the Andreas Graduate Assistant. She co-manages the Blue Earth Review. She is inspired by history, travel and everyday grace. She has been published in the Asbury Review, Jessamine Journal and Woven Tale Press.

The Good Thunder Reading Series, in its 39^th year, is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

The 2020-21 Good Thunder Reading Series receives support from the Minnesota State University, Mankato Department of English, the College of Arts and Humanities, the Office of Diversity & Inclusion, the Nadine B. Andreas Endowment, the Eddice B. Barber Visiting Writer Endowment, the Robert C. Wright Endowment and individual donors. Additional assistance comes from the Emy Frentz Arts Guild and Barnes & Noble Bookstore at Minnesota State Mankato.

For more information contact Candace Black at 507-389-2680 or visit gt.mnsu.edu.

Minnesota State Mankato, a comprehensive university with 14,297 students, is part of the Minnesota State system, which includes 30 colleges and seven universities.