Zetta Elliott, author of more than 20 books for children and founder of the black feminist imprint Rosetta Press, will be in the Twin Cities this week for workshops and readings.
Over the course of the week, Elliott will work with students at Bancroft and Lucy Laney elementary schools, lead a workshop on independent publishing, speak to library students at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, and give a reading and take part in a panel discussion at the Loft Literary Center.
Elliott was born in Canada and moved to the United States to pursue her Ph.D. in American Studies at NYU. She has taught at Ohio University, Mount Holyoke College, Hunter College, and many other places.
She has published essays in Huffington Post, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly and her poetry has been anthologized. Her children's picture book "Bird" won Lee & Low's New Voices Award and her novel "Ship of Souls" was on Booklist's top 10 list for science fiction.
Public events include a discussion at 7 p.m. Tuesday (Sept. 13) at St. Catherine University about how racism and power affect the publishing industry; and a reading and panel discussion at 7 p.m. Saturday (Sept. 17) at the Loft. The panel will include Elliott, Chaun Webster of Ancestry Books; Andrea Jenkins, curator of the University of Minnesota's transgender oral history project; Junauda Petrus, performance artist and dancer; Shalini Gupta, executive director of the Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy; Sarah Park Dahlen, assistant professor of library science at St. Catherine; and R. Vincent Moniz, an American Indian writer and activist.
