Approaching the Gate is the Winner of the 2015 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for Poetry

About the Book: 

Lynette Reini-Grandell's long-anticipated debut collection of poetry quickens with forward movement, be it in a car that pushes towards the stars—or with a horse that suddenly spooks, leaving the speaker "knocked down, / breathless, / turning to the sight of a thousand-pound horse / rushing the gate / and leaping over my head." Several of the poems probe the experience of her grandparents who emigrated from Finland and settled on a farm in northern Minnesota in the early twentieth century. The urge to move forward is matched with a deep love and reverence for creatures living in their natural world, for the buzz of the city, for unmet ancestors and kindred spirits, and most especially for her transgender husband.

About the Author:

Lynette Reini-Grandell has published her work in Ache, Evergreen Chronicles, Poetry Motel, and on MNArtists.org. Her poem "Radio Girls" appears in the anthology It's Animal but Merciful and was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize. She is the recipient of a 2011 Minnesota State Arts Board grant for poetry, a 2010 What Light Poetry award winner, received a 2009 Intermedia Arts Writer-to-Writer Mentorship, won the 2003 SASE/Ache prize for fiction, and edited Rifle Sport Alternative Art Gallery’s only literary journal, Magazine.