Colorado poet Pattiann Rogers will speak at Literary Witnesses at 7 p.m. April 28 at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis. Rogers is the author of 15 books, including "Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems," published by Minneapolis' Milkweed Editions. The book was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award from the Academy of American Poets and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year.

Rogers has received the Lannan Literary Award, the Bock Prize for Poetry and many other honors. Her event is sponsored by Milkweed, the Loft Literary Center and Rain Taxi Review.

Also …

• "Scoop: Notes From a Small Ice Cream Shop," by Jeff Miller, will be published in May by Borealis Books. Miller, who grew up in Browerville, Minn., owns the McCormick House Inn and West's Hayward Dairy in Hayward, Wis. He'll launch the book at 7 p.m. May 8 at Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis.

• "Plant a Pocket of Prairie," a picture book by Phyllis Root and Betsy Bowen, will be published in May by the University of Minnesota Press. The Minneapolis author and Grand Marais illustrator will be at Birchbark Books in Minneapolis at noon on May 10, and at Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis at 2 p.m. May 18.

• Andrea Cremer will be at Red Balloon Bookstore in St. Paul at 6:30 p.m. April 22 to launch her new novel, "The Inventor's Secret," in which she imagines a world in which the British won the Revolutionary War. Cremer, who is from Wisconsin, taught at Macalester College in St. Paul and now splits her time between New York and St. Paul. She is the author of the "Nightshade" young-adult series.

Betsy Bowen

• St. Paul writer/musician Dean Alger will launch his book "The Original Guitar Hero and the Power of Music: The Legendary Lonnie Johnson, Music and Civil Rights," at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday at SubText bookstore in St. Paul. Alger will discuss the book about the underappreciated guitarist (which includes a companion CD), and Twin Cities musicians Papa John Kolstad and Harold Tremblay will perform.

• Coffee House Press of Minneapolis and poet Ron Padgett picked up a Los Angeles Times Book Prize recently for Padgett's "Collected Poems," published last fall.

• Reader query: The Star Tribune is looking for recommendations for summer books. Please send an e-mail to books@startribune.com with the subject line of SUMMER and tell us what book you recommend for summer, and why. Include your name and the city where you live. The package will run June 1.