5 x 5 Reading + Open Mic
This event took place on Tuesday, March 3rd, at 7:00pm, at Moon Palace Books and featured Rosetta Peters, Ashe Jaafaru, Cecily McMillan, Lester Batiste, and Lt. Sunnie.
After the main reading, there was a short break for refreshments, followed by an open mic period. This reading, and the open mic afterward, were hosted by Davi Gray and Zeke Caligiuri; both reading and open mic featured ASL interpretation.
Better Things is a series of events sponsored by the ReEntry Lab, in partnership with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop (MPWW) and Moon Palace Books. The ReEntry Lab is an organization working to connect writers and other artists leaving incarceration to a community that’s ready to receive them.
This activity was made possible by the voters of Minnesota through grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
Rosetta Peters (she/her) is a Dakota poet, an author, a public speaker, and an activist. A procrastinator to the point of detriment and lover of the natural world.
Ashembaga (Ashe) Jaafaru (ashe or she/her) is an actor + dancer + writer + producer + director who creates art for liberation of the mind, body and SPIRIT. As the founder of Little Creatures, she will continue to write + produce imaginative stories.
THEATER Regional: Maybe You Could Love Me (Theater Mu); A Raisin in the Sun (South Coast Repertory); School Girls; or the African Mean Girls Play (Arkansas Repertory Theater & Jungle Theater); for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf (KC Repertory Theatre & Penumbra Theatre); The Convert (Frank Theater);. FILM/TELEVISION Rhythms of Blackness, Keon, Zuri’s Tree OTHER Mlima’s Tale (assistant director) w/ Ten Thousand Things Theater, HEFFA! by Eponine Diatta (director), Love is Like by Ibimina Dominque Thompson + Mariah Hanson (creative director/AD), SOULQUAKES by Marggie Ogas (dancer/collaborator), BAD AFRICANS: A GUIDE TO BEING OSHEY AND BARDEST IN A FUCKED UP WORLD by Ibimina Dominque Thompson (director)
UPCOMING MARA, QUEEN OF THE WORLD (Mara), Over 30% (director), Don’t Ask Me How I’m Doing (Short Film – AD/Creative Director).
Cecily McMillan (all pronouns) is a social justice organizer, political consultant, and published author. After enduring a Kafkaesque trial following her arrest at Occupy Wall Street in 2012, she served 58 days at Rikers Island. Since their release, McMillan has become an ardent prisoner rights advocate, highlighting the connections between poverty and incarceration. McMillan’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Al Jazeera America, and The Huffington Post. Their memoir The Emancipation of Cecily McMillan was published in 2016 by Nation Books.
For more than two decades, McMillan has been organizing actions and building organizations to promote racial and gender justice; to protect workers’, immigrants’, and students’ rights; and to fight for queer liberation and against nuclear proliferation. She has also worked in electoral politics in roles from canvasser to campaign director, most recently serving as Communications & Outreach Coordinator for Rep. Leigh Finke’s successful campaign to become the first openly trans person elected to the MN State Capitol.
Lester Batiste (he/him) is a savage writer in living color who writes for political, social, economic change and Black futures. Born in Chicago, IL, he holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast writing program, and an M.S.Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania. Influenced by Gwendolyn Brooks, Carl Sandburg, and Toni Morrison, Lester strives to weave traditional forms and techniques with the vibrancy of African American experience and speech. Rich details are enhanced by the musical tones from Lester’s childhood on the Southside of Chicago to his present on the Northside of Minneapolis. Lester’s work has appeared in print in The Stone House Anthology (2014), the Southern Griot Journal (2012), Tulane Review (2017), A Garden of Black Joy (2020), and digitally in the Brushfire Literary and Arts Journal (2020), Hidden Peak Press (2022), The Indianapolis Review (2023), and The Bitchin’ Kitsch (2023). In 2025, he received the BIPOC Emerging Writer award from Blue Earth Review. Lester’s debut poetry collection, Angel and Night’s Youngest, is forthcoming in 2026 with the Black Spring Press Group (UK).
Raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota’s historic Rondo neighborhood, Lt. Sunnie (she/her) is a powerhouse in the Midwest music scene with over a decade of experience. She has headlined major events across the region, delivered charged up halftime show performances, completed a milestone 10-stop tour, and brought her commanding vocals to an 11-piece band on some of the nations biggest stages. Lt. Sunnie is celebrated for headlining her own acclaimed EP releases—Big Feelings and Who She Think She Is?!—and for captivating audiences at signature events nationwide!
From co-producing multidisciplinary productions to collaborating with a renowned rap collective and gracing stages with an 11-piece band, Lt. Sunnie’s journey is marked by fearless creativity and relentless dedication. As an alum of esteemed programs like the Ordway GreenRoom Fellowship and TruArtSpeaks, she continues to break barriers and inspire radical spirits everywhere. Every performance is a testament to her sharp skills as an entertainer—delivering raw honesty, outstanding movement, influential and heartfelt storytelling that speak to the transformative power of music and community.
Lt. Sunnie’s artistry is a vibrant celebration of identity and radical joy—uplifting women’s voices and championing fierce individuality. Her unapologetically queer, Black, and big-bodied presence redefines the stage and invites everyone to celebrate their own story.
Learn more about Lt Sunnie at http://ellteesunnie.com
Zeke Caligiuri (he/they) is a writer and activist from South Minneapolis. He is the author of This is Where I Am (University of Minnesota Press), a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. Caligiuri has won multiple awards through the PEN Prison Writing Contest and is the cofounder of the Stillwater Writers Collective, the first all-prisoner created and facilitated collective in the country. He is a contributor to The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison as well as School, Not Jail: How Educators Can Disrupt School Pushout and Mass Incarceration. He is an editor and contributor to the recent anthology American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion (Coffee House Press, 2023). He is directly impacted by over two decades of incarceration and now does community outreach for the Minnesota Justice Research Center and is helping to build the Re-Enfranchised Coalition, empowering system-impacted people and reinvesting in the humanization of those still stuck within the captivity business.
Erin Sharkey (she/they) is a writer, arts and abolition organizer, cultural worker, and film producer based in Minneapolis. She is the editor of A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (Milkweed Editions ’23). Erin is a founding co-op member of the Fields at Rootsprings, a retreat and respite space in central MN, and co-founder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental arts collective called Free Black Dirt. She is the producer of film projects, including Small Business Revolution, which explored challenges and opportunities for Black-owned businesses in the Twin Cities in the summer of 2021. Sharkey has received fellowships and residencies from the Loft Mentor Series, VONA/Voices, the Givens Foundation, Penumbra Theatre, Coffee House Press, the Bell Museum of Natural History, Black Visions, Headwaters Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. She has an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and was a teacher for several years with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.
Davi Gray (she/they) is a queer, trans, nonbinary poet, writer, performer, artist, producer, activist, and abolitionist. They live in Minneapolis (Bde Óta Othúŋwe), within Mni Sóta Makoce, unceded lands of the Dakota and Ojibwe. Her work has been published in Poetry, Water~Stone Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere, and her first poetry collection, This Body, This Fruit, a finalist for the 2025 Louise Bogan Award, will be published in February 2027 by Trio House Press. She is a recipient of 2025 and 2026 Arts Experiences grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and can often be found performing around the Twin Cities. You can learn more about her work, including upcoming events, at davigray.com.
Louise Waakaa’igan (she/her) is an enrolled member at Odaawaa-Zaaga’iganiing in northern Wisconsin. Her first chapbook, This Is Where (Aquarius Press), was published in 2020. She is also the first-place winner of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop’s Broadside Competition (2016). Louise’s work has been previously published in PEN America, 21 Mythologies, The Moon Magazine, Night Colors, 27th Letter, Words in Gray Scale, and Doors Adjacent. She is ready to publish her second collection.
Better Things is a series of events sponsored by the ReEntry Lab, in partnership with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop (MPWW) and Moon Palace Books.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
The ReEntry Lab is an organization working to connect writers and other artists leaving incarceration to a community that’s ready to receive them. You can learn more about its mission, volunteer to help, and sign up for the newsletter at reentrylab.org.
* 5×5 format inspired by the 555 Reads series, developed by Elizabeth R. Tannen.