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April 28, 2011
 North Hennepin Community College English faculty Lightsey Darst recently won the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry for her debut collection, Find the Girl, which examines the dangerous transition from girlhood to womanhood and America’s fascination in missing and exploited children. Reviewers have found her book compelling:
“[A] dark but beautiful first book… This is a vital poetry of the Deep South ripe with bones, blood and bogs, Snow Whites, Gretels and debutantes all stirred into a harrowing stew of lust, dusk and summer.”
- New York Times
“A unique and dynamic collection of poetry.”
- Feminist Review
“[Darst] dives in, turning gruesome forensics into the filigree of poetry, and examining the strange pall that dead-girl culture . . . throws over the adolescence of real girls.”
- MinnPost
The 23rd Annual Minnesota Book Awards ceremony was attended by nearly 750 people. Approximately 300 nominees from across the state participated in 8 different categories – Children’s Literature, General Nonfiction, Genre Fiction, Memoir and Creative Nonfiction, Minnesota Story, Novel and Short Story, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature – plus a Reader’s Choice category. Of the nominees, 32 finalists were selected by a panel of judges and only 9 people were presented with awards.
In addition to being a writing instructor at North Hennepin and a published poet, Darst is also an instructor at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, dance critic, and writer for Mpls-St. Paul Magazine and MNartists.org. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Florida State University. And she is a fellowship recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts.
Find the Girl, published by Coffee House Press, can be purchased at local bookstores and on Amazon.com. Darst has been featured on Minnesota Original and her segment can be found at www.mnoriginal.org/art/?p=2399. More of her work can be found on her website at www.lightseydarst.com. Her poems have also appeared in the Antioch Review, Diagram, Gulf Coast, Monkey Bicycle, and New Letters, just to name a few.
The Minnesota Book Awards is a project of The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library and the City of Saint Paul, in consortium with the Saint Paul Public Library and the City of Saint Paul. Outreach partners and supporting organizations include MELSA, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minnesota Department of Education-State Library Services, and Minnesota Educational Media Organization. For more information, visit www.thefriends.org.
To learn more about NHCC’s programs, including the new Associate of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, visit www.nhcc.edu/programs. |