CRAIG BOWRON: Physician discusses “Turn Your Head and Cough,” in conversation about men’s health with William Kent Krueger. 7 p.m. Wednesday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls
H.M. BOUWMAN: Launches her new middle-grade novel, “Scattergood,” a historical novel set in rural Iowa, in conversation with young adult author Anne Ursu. 6 p.m. Tuesday, Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul.
LISA GENOVA: Introduces “More or Less Maddy,” about a young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder who rejects a “normal” life for a career in stand-up comedy, in Valley Bookseller’s Literature Lovers’ Night Out series. Free. 3 p.m. Saturday, Minneapolis Central Library, 300 Nicollet Mall, Mpls.
NAOMI COHN: Reads from “The Braille Encyclopedia” in Friends of the St. Paul Public Library’s Fireside Reading series. 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Rondo Community Library, 461 N. Dale St., Mpls.
MINNESOTA MYSTERY NIGHT: Hosts Jeff Sauve, retired St. Olaf College historian, author of “Murder at Minnesota Point” and Channel 11 crime reporter Lou Raguse, author of “Vanished In Vermillion,” about the 1971 disappearance of two young girls in Vermilion, S.D. 7 p.m. Monday, Lucky’s 13 Pub, Mendota. $13 cover charge. Reservations can be made only online: buytickets.at/minnesotamysterynight/1507907. Pre-program dinner service begins at 5:30 p.m.
MUBANGA KALIMAMUKWENTO: Presents “Obligations to the Wounded: Stories,” in conversation with Sheila O’Connor. 7 p.m. Tuesday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.
READINGS BY WRITERS: Hosts poets Dralandra Larkins, J.P. White, Dobby Gibson and Freya Manfred. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, University Club, 420 Summit Ave., St. Paul.
MARCIE RENDON: Hosts a story time with crafts based on her children’s book “Stitches of Tradition,” about an Ojibwe grandmother and her granddaughter sharing the cultural tradition of sewing ribbon skirts to honor previous generations and celebrate women and the power of indigenous craft and community. Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Ojibwe Nation. 6 p.m. Thursday, Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul.
Bruce White (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society Press)
Melanie Benjamin (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society Press)
WHITE/BENJAMIN: Bruce White and Melanie Benjamin discuss, “They Would Not Be Moved: The Enduring Struggle of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe to Keep Their Reservation,” which tells of how the Mille Lacs Band held onto 61,000 acres set aside for them in the Treaty of 1865. Known as “the non-removable band,” the Mille Lacs band fought Euro-Americans who encouraged the people to move elsewhere as well as loggers and settlers who also wanted the land. White has dedicated more than four decades to researching Native history in Minnesota and North Dakota. He has written expert reports used in court cases testing treaties and the application of laws relating to Native people. His expert report in the 1994 Mille Lacs hunting and fishing case was quoted by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in her 1999 majority opinion upholding the rights of the Mille Lacs Band to hunt and fish in the ceded area of the Treaty of 1837. Benjamin, who wrote the book’s foreword, is former chief executive of the Mille Lacs Band. This is the first time they have appeared together discussing the book. 6 p.m. Wednesday, Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul.
What else is going on
It’s official. As of Saturday night, poet/baker Danny Klecko is engaged to Erica Christ, for whom he left St. Paul to start new adventures in Minneapolis, which he refers to as “Babylon.” Never one to do things quietly, Klecko surprised Christ by asking her to marry him in front of an audience of poets, storytellers and musicians at Cheap Theatre, a theater company Christ has run for 30 years in the Black Forest Inn performance space. He got his future bride onstage under the guise of playing a mock game show titled Real Book Fake Book, and slipped his proposal into one of the book titles. In the audience were Christ’s parents, Joanne and Erich, owners for 60 years of the Black Forest Inn. Rumor has it there will be an August wedding at an undisclosed place. “We’re right for each other,” Klecko says. “She’s 10 times smarter than I am. She’s shy and I’m not.”
Adding more good news, Klecko’s poem “She Was Often the Only Bright Spot in My Otherwise Grim Days” was published Jan. 12 in the New York Times Metropolitan Diary feature. This marks the sixth time Klecko’s writing has appeared in the Times in less than two years.
Klecko is calling his latest project Exhausting Jesus, for which he is spending 100 hours in one-hour sessions at Minneapolis Institute of Art looking at Ary Scheffer’s 1851 painting Christus Consolator — Christ the Comforter. The project is inspired by Patrick Bringley’s book “All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me” and the New York Times challenge to readers to spend 10 minutes looking at an Edward Hopper painting. Klecko, who loves outsized challenges, took it one step further to 100 hours at MIA. Who knows what he’ll see after so much time sitting with Jesus?
We are always happy to hear from Peter Rachleff, former Macalester College history professor and co-founder of East Side Freedom Library. We’re passing along his suggestion for reading about F. Scott Fitzgerald in this centennial year of “The Great Gatsby.” Rachleff recommends “A Rotten Crowd: America, Wealth, and One Hundred Years of The Great Gatsby” by John Marsh (Monthly Review Press). James L. West III, one of the nation’s pre-eminent Fitzgerald scholars, writes of Marsh’s book: “(He) has provided us with a cogent, informed, and quite personal reading of ‘The Great Gatsby.’ He has much new to say about the novel. His engagement with Fitzgerald from a left point-of-view demonstrates the remarkable adaptability and relevance of this novel to our times, and to the current condition of our country.”
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