(Courtesy of the author)
Rain Taxi Review hosts an evening titled BANneD Books on May 3, its second annual event at Granada Theater in Minneapolis. This fundraiser for the nationally circulated literary journal will be a program of words and music, including musicians The Muatas, Willie Wisely and author/artist Zak Sally, former bassist for the Minnesota band Low, as well as readings by multi-talented Dessa and poet Danny Klecko.
Carolyn Kuebler (Courtesy of Rain Taxi Review of Books)
Special guest will be Carolyn Kuebler, who will launch her debut novel, “Liquid, Fragile, Perishable,” at the event. Kuebler has deep roots in the Twin Cities, having co-founded Rain Taxi Review of Books with Randall Heath. When she left Minnesota in 1999, Eric Lorberer took the helm of the Minneapolis-based publication that also sponsors readings and the popular Twin Cities Book Festival.
Kuebler, who edits the New England Review at Middlebury College in Vermont, recalled for her Melville House publisher her years in Minnesota:
“When I moved after college I had no idea what an indie press was, much less that the Twin Cities were such a hotbed for them. But I spent a formative decade there in the 1990s, and had my first publishing internship at Milkweed Editions while I worked downstairs at the Coyote Cafe. I later became a bookseller at Borders in Uptown (Minneapolis) a few years and wrote book reviews and other features for the late great City Pages. I then made my way to the Hungry Mind bookstore in St. Paul, where I was second-in-command for events — which at the time happened multiple times a week. David Unowsky was great at giving us a lot of creative freedom there, so I also made lots of displays and ordered lit journals. Most significantly, and thanks to Eric Lorberer most lastingly, in 1996 I started Rain Taxi with a couple of friends, and we published the first issue in 1997. I look back on that time as a kind of literature and publishing grade school, with a very self-directed program. I used to love riding my bike from Minneapolis to St. Paul, swimming and walking around the lakes and checking out shows at First Avenue and 7th Street Entry. The John Ashbery bridge from the Walker Art Center to Loring Park epitomized my sense of what the cities were all about.”
Kuebler’s novel, “Liquid, Fragile, Perishable,” tells the story of three young women in a small Vermont town with characters including newly transplanted New Yorkers who are among well-to-do couples building giant houses in the rural area, an old-school and decent Christian beekeeper whose wife keeps their daughter on a tight leash so she isn’t contaminated by girls at the local high school, young people from a hardscrabble family with few morals, and a lone and aging woman who believes she can live by herself even if it means walking six miles carrying groceries. All their lives are affected when the newcomers’ son falls in love with the beekeeper’s daughter.
The novel, one of Oprah Daily’s most anticipated reads of 2024, earned a starred review in Kirkus: “At times dark, at other times beautiful, Kuebler’s debut shines in its precision. It picks apart each character’s thoughts in an unusual clipped stream-of-consciousness narrative. The characters’ points of view fit together like an elaborate quilt, gradually coming together into a satisfying whole.”
Event details: 7 p.m. Friday, May 3, Granada Theater, 3022 Hennepin Ave., Mpls. General admission $30; VIP ticket for two $150. Tickets can be purchased in advance at: raintaxi.com/rain-taxi-fundraiser.
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