Andrea Jenkins Minneapolis Poet

Our May event will submerse guests in a multi-sensory experience of the work of Andrea Jenkins. She will present work called "Art is Life, Is Life Art, Life is Art, Art/Life is..." featuring poetry, performance and visual art, culminating with a preview reading of her script-in-progress voice/Love. voice/Love examines the different types of love in our lives, focusing on familial and romantic relationships, and is being developed with support from the Many Voices Fellowship at the Playwright Center. As always, we’ll end with a group discussion and feedback for the artist, followed by ping-pong and karaoke.

Andrea's work is concerned with the interplay of words, mediums and genres that can be mashed together to create a new narrative. She views her work as collage, working primarily with paper and mixed media as a visual form of curation. Taking various images that have been artfully produced for the purpose of consumerism and mixing them with social justice messages and images brings attention to the issues of inequality towards African Americans, women, Transgender women, and LGBT issues.

Andrea is a South Minneapolis-based playwright, curator, visual artist, poet, writer, spoken word artist, performer, trans activist and Bush Leadership Fellow. In addition to the Many Voices and Bush Leadership Fellowships, she was awarded Naked Stages and Verve Grants in 2010, and in 2002 she received the Loft Mentor Series Award for Poetry. Since 2006 she has co-curated the Queer Voices series at Intermedia Arts, which is the longest running GLBT reading series in the country. She is a former board member of OutFront Minnesota, Forecast Public Art, SMARTS, District 202, P-Fund, The Minnesota HIV Planning Council, The Funding Exchange, and the National Writers Union. She holds a B.A. in Human Services from Metropolitan State University, a M.S. in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University, and a MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University. Andrea regularly performs throughout the Twin Cities and is the author of two chapbooks, "tributaries: poems celebrating black history" and "Pieces of a Scream." Her work has been published in several newspapers, journals, and anthologies. When she’s not lending her skills to almost every area of the Twin Cities art scene, she is the Minneapolis 8th Ward Senior Policy Aid in the office of Councilwoman Elizabeth Glidden.

When: Saturday, May 19th

Time: 6:30 pm - doors open

7 pm - event begins, followed by discussion, ping pong and karaoke!

Suggested Donation: $5 - 10

Where: The Third Place

Wing Young Huie Photography Gallery

3730 Chicago Avenue South, Studio B

Minneapolis, MN 55407

Queer Voices, one of the nation's longest-running reading series, marks its season premiere tonight at Intermedia Arts. As part of their new Beyond the Pure series, Queer Voices is intended to be "a safe place for GLBT writers and audiences to explore the day-to-day material of life without internal or external censorship."

Local freelance writer and Loft Mentor Series Fellowship award winner Andrea Jenkins curates Queer Voices with John Medeiros, author of the memoir Self, Divided which was awarded the Outstanding Creative Nonfiction Thesis of the Year. Jenkins and Medeiros have found an impressive roster of authors to begin the season.

Tonight's session will include readings by locals Kristin Johnson, Christine Stark, Michael Kiesow Moore, and William Reichard, who all have impressive bodies of work. Johnson, who teaches at Metropolitan State University, has won the Mystery Writers of America Helen McCloy Award. Stark also teaches writing at Metropolitan State University and is a 2010 Loft Mentorship winner. Moore is a Loft Literary Center instructor and a Minnesota State Arts Board fellowship recipient. He currently curates the new Birchbark Books Reading Series in Minneapolis. Reichard revised and edited the award-winning memoir, The Evening Crowd at Kirmser's: A Gay Life in the 1940's, by the late Ricardo Brown. Reichard has also written an anthology, American Tensions: Literature of Social Justice, which will be released in spring 2011.

To read more about visiting artists and find information on future readings, visit Intermedia Arts.

Queer Voices is at 7 p.m. at Intermedia Arts (2822 S. Lyndale Ave., Minneapolis). There is a $5 suggested donation at the event to support the series.

By Coco Mault