Mona Susan Power: Featured Author and Open Mic (Theme: Wóohitika—Courage)

Join us on October 29, 2026 for poetry and community! Arrow Broken Poetry Collective is honored to welcome Mona Susan Power as our featured artist.

Mona Susan Power is the author of four books of fiction, including The Grass Dancer (a National Bestseller awarded a PEN/Hemingway Prize), Roofwalker (a collection of stories and essays awarded the Milkweed National Fiction Prize), Sacred Wilderness (a novel which received the Electa Quinney Award), and A Council of Dolls (winner of the Minnesota Book Award and High Plains Book Award, longlisted for the National Book Award and the Carol Shields Prize). She’s a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is also the recipient of several grants in support of her writing which include an Iowa Arts Fellowship, James Michener Fellowship, Radcliffe Bunting Institute Fellowship, Princeton Hodder Fellowship, USA Artists Fellowship, McKnight Fellowship, and Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowship.

Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies including The Best American Short Stories series, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, and Granta.

Mona is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna Dakhóta), born and raised in Chicago. During her childhood she was a member of the Chicago Indian Village movement, a group organized to protest the conditions of Native people lured to urban areas with promises of secure jobs and good housing, that seldom materialized. In 1979, a documentary following the experiences of this group was nominated for an Academy Award. Mona attended the Oscar ceremonies that year as a guest of the director, Jerry Aronson. She currently lives in Minnesota, where she’s working on other novels, including The Year of Fury.

The free event will begin at 7:00 p.m. and will be held at the The Village Hall in Marine on St Croix. Open Mic will begin at 8:30 p.m. Everyone is invited to share their work and will be allotted three minutes to perform.

October’s theme is Wóohitika—Courage. It takes courage to be resilient and strong despite challenges. Dakọta people do not view themselves as mere victims but as resilient and strong people, drawing upon a courage that has been practiced by Dakọta people for generations to resist, persist, and adapt. —Dakota Wicohan

This event is sponsored by the St. Croix Valley Foundation and Marine Library Association, with support from the Brookside Bar & Grill, Christ Lutheran Church, and Marine Mills Folk School.