Anoka Ramsey Community College

Write Like Us

• 2022-2023 Anoka-Ramsey Scholarship Mentees

   

   

  Teresa Fernandez  Bio coming soon

  Eva Figueroa jusino Eva Figueroa is a creative writer and poet. She moved to Minnesota, from the Caribbean Island of Puerto Rico eight years ago and she learned English with hard work and perseverance. Currently, she is a PSEO student at Anoka Ramsey Community College and plays viola in her high school orchestra. Her poem "Dear Me.." is found in the anthology Young Writers’ Empowered (2022). She expresses her imagination through writing, painting, and pottery. When she is not studying, she enjoys spending time with family, and finding ways to be creative.

  Max Saguindang Maxine Saguindang is a short story writer that focuses on writing moments, experiences, or shenanigans in life through fiction. She is a student at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, a Filipina, a previous River Valley Girl Scout, and an artist who can’t draw a perfect circle.

• Local Author-Mentors

  LM Brimmer LM Brimmer is an artist & educator living on Dakota land in Minneapolis, MN. Co-editor of the anthology Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose and Pride (MNHS Press 2019), their essays and poetry have appeared in The Alliance of Adoption Studies and Culture Journal, The Public Art Review, La Raza Comíca, Impossible Archetype, Gasher Journal, The B'K', Quarterly West, Voicemail Poems  and elsewhere. They attend the low-residency MFA program at Randolph College.

  Michael Kleber-Diggs Michael Kleber-Diggs (KLEE-burr digs) (he / him / his) is a poet, essayist, literary critic, and arts educator. His debut poetry collection, Worldly Things (Milkweed Editions 2021), won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, the 2022 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in Poetry, the 2022 Balcones Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award. His poems and essays appear in numerous journals and anthologies. 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.

  Nicola Nicola is a Malaysian Eurasian 15 years in the American Midwest, a Protestant Seminary trained atheist, and a minor god in Tetris. They are a Twin Cities based freelance editor and teacher, most recently as a Loft Teaching Artist and an instructor at Hamline University. They received their MFA from Hamline and were a fellow for the 2018 VONA/Voices Workshop and the 2019-2020 Loft Mentor Series. Their stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in places like Southwest Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Brown Orient, and is forthcoming in Margins. In their free time they undertake a menagerie of projects, take too many pictures of their animals, and craft puns. See nicolakoh.com for more.

  Taiwana Shambley Taiwana Shambley (she/her) is a fiction writer, story organizer, and student & practitioner of Black Radical Tradition from Saint Paul, Minnesota. A firm believer in the premise that young people wield radical imaginations, Taiwana co-founded and launched End Youth Prisons MN in 2022, a youth-led, abolitionist campaign to end the state’s youth carceral system through a focus on shifting public narrative and applying radical theories. She’s an MFA student in Fiction at Warren Wilson College, graduating from Augsburg University with a B.A. in English and African American Studies in 2021. She’s a proud alumni of the Hip Hop organization TruArtSpeaks. Taiwana’s family has roots in Texarkana and St. Louis and her ancestors are indigenous to Nigeria, Cameroon, and Congo. Nowadays you might find her camping out in bookstores and coffee shops in her home of South Minneapolis. http://taiwanashambley.com

   

• National Author Events

  Write Like Us Literary Careers Symposium

  Write Like Us presents a panel of literary professionals featuring Bao Phi, Haylee Kirkwood, Carmen Gimenez, and Arleta Little in conversation with Write Like Us mentor Michael Kleber-Diggs.

  How did these literary professionals get to where they are today? These five writers are also publishers, editors, program officers, artistic directors, educators, and mentors, and they will talk about their professional journeys.

  Event Information

  Friday, April 14, 2023
  12 to 2:30 pm
  Fine Arts Building
  Normandale Community College

  The event is free and open to the public for both in-person and virtual streaming.

  Reserve in-person ticket

  RSVP for virtual event

  Carmen Maria Machado Reading & Conversation with Taiwana Shambley

  Minnesota State Write Like Us presents fiction writer and memoirist Carmen Maria Machado in conversation with Write Like Us mentor Taiwana Shambley for a reading and interview.

  Event Information

  Thursday, April 27
  7 to 9 pm
  F1200, Theatre
  Minneapolis College

  The event is free and open to the public for both in-person and virtual streaming.

  Reserve in-person ticket

  RSVP for virtual event

• Minnesota State Equity 2030

  The inaugural year of Write Like Us is funded by a $150,000 Minnesota State Multi-Campus Collaboration grant in support of Minnesota State’s Equity 2030 goals. Minnesota State is a consortium of thirty state colleges and seven universities in Minnesota. Equity 2030 aims to close the educational equity gaps across race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and geographic location by the end of the decade at every Minnesota State college and university.

  All Write Like Us activities follow Minnesota State guidance and mandates regarding COVID-19 protocol.

• Contact

  English Faculty 
  Melody Heide
  (763) 422-6074