The Atwood Library on the St. Cloud State University campus is hosting a poetry reading. The following poets will take part:

Freeman Ng is the author of Bridge Across the Sky, a YA novel-in-verse based on the Chinese immigration experience through Angel Island in the early 1900s (Atheneum Books for
Young Readers, 2024); Basho’s Haiku Journeys, a haiku picture book (Stone Bridge Press, 2021); The House We Sheltered In and The Masks We Wore, a pandemic picture book; Haiku Diem, a daily haiku feed; and Trumpbert, a political webcomic. He’s also the editor and illustrator of The Shape a Wing Makes, selected poems of Fran Claggett Holland paired with Freeman’s digital art, and the co-author, with Peter Dale Scott, of Poetry And Terror: Politics and Poetics in Coming To Jakarta, a discussion of Scott’s seminal book-length poem that combined autobiography with an exposé of the 1965 Indonesian Massacre (Bloomsbury USA, 2019). Ripples, a picture book about gravitational waves and friendship written by Freeman and illustrated by Daniel Miyares, is forthcoming from Neal Porter Books in fall 2027.

Dralandra Larkins is an award-winning spoken-word poet, multi-genre writer, and audiobook author of Before I Lie (2025). A COMPAS teaching artist, she is a recipient of the Loft Literary Center’s Teaching Artist Fellowship, the Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, and Springboard for the Arts’ Weathering Together artist grant. She has performed for the NAACP, Button Poetry, MN State Capitol, Mill City Museum, MN Black Business Ball and the MN Black Authors Expo. Her work weaves together rhythm, intimacy, and vulnerability to create a haven for healing rooted in her background as a social worker. She is the co-editor of Cracked Walnut’s anthology, Rewilding Hope (2023), and The Nations Underground: Writing with Our Ancestors with Cabello-Hansel (2024) and currently coordinates literary programming at Friends of the St. Paul Public Library including Club Book, Moving Words, and the Fireside Reading Series. Follow her journey: dralandrawrites.com.

Janna Knittel is the author of Real Work (Nodin, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 Minnesota Book Award in poetry, and the chapbook Fish & Wild Life (Finishing Line, 2018). In addition to several journals, Janna has also published poems in the following anthologies: Blue, A Humana Obscura Anthology (2025); The Experiment Will Not Be Bound (Unbound Edition, 2023); Broad Wings, Long Legs: A Rookery of Heron Poems (North Star, 2024); and Waters Deep: A Great Lakes Anthology (Split Rock, 2018). Janna’s second full-length book in-progress is tentatively titled The Last Cormorant.

The event includes a Q&A with the poets. It will take place in the Valhalla Room at the SCSU University Library.