Please join us for the annual release of Minnesota literary journal, Whistling Shade. We’ll be hearing readings from local authors and poets Carol Rucks, Mark Rhoads, and Janna Knittel.

Carol Rucks has been published in West Branch, Muse, Poetry Quarterly, Whistling Shade, San Pedro River Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry collection Evidence of Rain, published by Nodin Press, and Wavelength, published by Kelsay Books. She lives in Minneapolis.

Mark Rhoads recently retired from Bethel University where he taught in the music department for 35 years. His poems have been published in The Christian Science Monitor, The Deronda Review, Contemporary Rhyme, Snakeskin, Plainsongs, Ballard Street Poetry Journal, and Whistling Shade. In 2015 he published a collection of poems titled No Gathering In of This Incense.

Janna Knittel is the author of Real Work (Nodin, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 Minnesota Book Award in poetry, and the chapbook Fish & Wild Life (Finishing Line, 2018). Janna still calls the Pacific Northwest "home" despite living in Minnesota since 2004.