Spout Press Presents Locker Room Talk: Women in Private Spaces | Concert & Reading Celebration

Spout Press invites you to celebrate Locker Room Talk: Women in Private Spaces, the winner of the 2025 Minnesota Book Award for Best Anthology. We will hear readings from contributors Kao Kalia Yang, Alison McGhee, Casey Jarrin and more as well as performances by local musical guests Kith and Kin, Squinny, and Whispered the Rabbit.         

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Locker Room Talk listens in on the epic and ordinary moments that happen when women are together. Subverting the traditional idea of “locker room talk,” this anthology illuminates the conversations women share with family, friends, and strangers, whether at the sinks of a nightclub ladies’ room, on a bus heading to the Women’s March, or in the kitchen of an elder relative. Together, they reveal the myriad ways women care for themselves, each other, their communities, and our world. Join us for a night of literature, music, and celebration. Copies of Locker Room Talk will be available for purchase.

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Whispered the Rabbit blends progressive folk, rock and punk to take you on a lore-inspired journey through secret gardens, cosmic storms and historic dance battles.

 

WtR creates its tone poems out of a mutual love for storytelling. After a year of adventures, their first album “Vol.I” was released digitally and on vinyl in Sept 2023, chased by a montage of incredibly fun shows and a second tour in Ireland + the UK in 2024.

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Vol. II is WtR’s focus for 2025, crafting new tones and character into a landscape of timeless themes woven together by folklore and nature. Look for a staggered
digital release of seasonally inspired tracks + Vol. II’s full vinyl release later this year.

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Kao Kalia Yang (she/her) is a Hmong American writer.

She is the author of the memoirs The Latehomecomer: A

Hmong Family Memoir, The Song Poet, and Somewhere in the Unknown World. Yang is also the author of the children’s books A Map into the World, The Shared Room, The Most Beautiful Thing, Yang Warriors, From the Tops of

the Trees, The Rock in My Throat, Caged, and The Diamond Explorer. She coedited the groundbreaking collection What God Is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Native Women and Women of Color. Yang’s work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN USA literary awards, the Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize, as Notable Books by the American Library Association, Kirkus Best Books of the Year, with a Heartland Bookseller’s Award, and garnered seven Minnesota Book Awards. She lives in Minnesota with her family. Kao Kalia Yang teaches and speaks across the nation.

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Alison McGhee (she/her) is a New York Times bestselling

writer of poems, essays, and books for all ages,

including the Pulitzer-nominated Shadow Baby and the

internationally beloved picture book for adults, Someday.

She is the recipient of many awards, and her work

has been translated into more than twenty languages. She is the mother of three grown children and lives in Minneapolis and California.

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Casey Jarrin (she/her) is a writer, artist, educator, survivor, and outrageous dreamer in the age of Tinder and

drones, Reddit and pandemic. Her work explores intergenerational trauma, feminist prehistories (and futures!), and art as empathy machine. Her poems, fiction, and essays have appeared in US, UK, and Irish journals (Banshee, Washington Square Review, Belfield Literary Review, KGB Literary Magazine, Eire/Ireland, Bright Lights Film), and the Walker Art Center’s Third Man Project. She received the 2022 Goldsmith Prize, 2021 York Poetry Prize and Fingal Poetry Prize, and has been shortlisted for a MacDowell Fellowship in Fiction. Raised in 1980s NYC by fierce women-artists-queers-dreamers, she earned her Yale BA and Duke PhD, taught literature and film at Macalester College, and in 2015 launched Live Mind Learning. She’s now completing her debut poetry manuscript, The Naked Dinner, and a mixed genre collection, Ice Cubes Melting in Your Hand. She lives in Saint Paul with her black cat Lucius and partner Erik. Website: caseyjarrin.com | Instagram: @drj_liveeye