Virtual Poetry at the Library Series, Winter 2022:  Sean Hill and Michael Kleber-Diggs

Sunday, March 6, 3:00-4:00 pm, ET

ZOOM Registration 

Join award-winning poets Sean Hill and Michael Kleber-Diggs for luminous, moving poetry on Black Lives in America with family at its heart and visions for the world in balance.

Born and raised in Milledgeville, Georgia, Sean Hill is the author of Dangerous Goods, awarded the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, (Milkweed Editions, 2014) and Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, named one of the Ten Books All Georgians Should Read in 2015 by the Georgia Center for the Book, (UGA Press, 2008). Hill has been honored with numerous awards including fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, The MacDowell Colony, the University of Wisconsin, Stanford University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems and essays have appeared in Callaloo, Harvard Review, New England Review, Orion, Oxford American, Poetry, Terrain.org, Tin House, and numerous other journals, and in almost two dozen anthologies including Black Nature and Villanelles. His poems have also been featured as part of the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series and on The Slowdown podcast hosted by Tracy K. Smith. Hill has taught at several universities, including the University of Alaska – Fairbanks and Georgia Southern University. Hill has also served as the director of the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference at Bemidji State University since 2012. He lives in Montana with his family and is currently a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Montana.

Michael Kleber-Diggs is a poet, essayist, and literary critic. His debut poetry collection, Worldly Things, won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize (Milkweed Editions, 2021). His essay, “On the Complex Flavors of Black Joy,” is included in the anthology There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis, edited by Tracy K. Smith and John Freeman. Among other places, Michael’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Great River Review, Water~Stone Review, Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, Potomac Review, Hunger Mountain, Memorious, and several anthologies. Michael is a past Fellow with the Givens Foundation for African American Literature, a past-winner of the Loft Mentor Series in Poetry, and the former Poet Laureate of Anoka County libraries. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and has been supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Since 2016, Michael has been an instructor with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. He also teaches Creative Writing in Augsburg University’s low-res MFA program and at Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists. Michael is married to Karen Kleber-Diggs, a tropical horticulturist and orchid specialist. Karen and Michael have a daughter who is pursuing a BFA in Dance Performance at SUNY Purchase.

This event is sponsored by The Friends of the Concord Free Public Library.