Better Things 5x5 Reading & Open Mic

Flyer with text reading: “Better Things - a 5x5 reading for social change - the reading everybody will be talking about the next day. Moon Palace Books, 3032 Minnehaha Avenue, July 7th, 2026, 7 pm.” Small photos of each of five readers, labeled by name: Nen G. Ramirez, folaṣade, Tony Burgess, Desdamona, and Joe Davis.

5 x 5 Reading + Open Mic

Please join us on Tuesday, July 7th, at 7:00pm, at Moon Palace Books, for our next 5×5 Reading, featuring five fantastic artists: Nen G Ramirez, folaṣade, Tony Burgess, Desdamona, and Joe Davis.

Each featured artist will take five minutes to share work. After the main reading, there will be a short break for refreshments, followed by an open mic period.

All are welcome to show up and participate in the open mic! (List is first come, first serve.) This reading, and the open mic afterward, will be hosted by Davi Gray and Erin Sharkey; both reading and open mic will feature ASL interpretation.

Masks are required at Moon Palace Books and are available on-site. This is a free event.

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 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.

There is a Facebook event, or you can add it to your Google Calendar or download an ICS file to add it to other calendars, but you can also just show up! We’d love to have you there — all are welcome at this free event.

Nen G Ramirez (they/he) is a nonbinary Chicanx writer from Adrian, Michigan. They are the author of All Women Are Born Wailing (Black Lawrence Press, 2023), which was awarded the 2022 Acentos Book Prize. Ramirez received their MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota, where they currently teach. They also play keys and perform spoken word poetry in Twin Cities emo bands Virginia’s Basement and Cute Intentions. Their writing has been featured in Poem-a-Day, POETRY, Electric Literature, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere.

Photograph of Nen G Ramirez, a Chicanx person with light skin and black hair with green splashes. In this photo, they are sitting in a park; their face has multiple piercings and their eyelashes are enormous.

Photograph of folaṣade, a Black person with medium-dark skin. In this photo, they are wearing a lavender sweatshirt, thin necklace, large-framed glasses, and their hair up in a topknot. She has a satisfied smile and is in a room with books and art.

folaṣade (they/she) (b. 1992) is a blackqueer neuro/quirky poet, curator, and organizer concerned with the immediate survival and ongoing liberation of people of the global majority. intuitively guided by her ancestors, folaṣade nurtures a reverence for indigeneity and the erotic within her slow moving body. they have self-published three poetry chapbooks, plus their most recent poetry zine titled the river is a memory (Moody, 2025). their first solo-curated exhibition as i lay changing opened in January 2026, adding to her growing body of co-curated exhibitions and film programs.

folaṣade has additionally published writing with Saint Paul Almanac, Blue Earth Review, The Kitchen, Hair+Nails and MN Women’s Press, and has additional essays, poems, and musings on her substack titled folaṣade’s journal. folaṣade is the curator of The Center For Afrofuturist Studies and is co-curator of Studio AGD. she further stewards a mutual aid project called community tithes. folaṣade was born and raised on ohlone + muwekma lands, currently living on anishinaabe lands with her cat parsley.

Tony Burgess (he/him) was a long-standing member of MPWW during 25-plus consecutive years of incarceration, and is a plumber by trade with a BA in Communication Studies and minors in Sociology and Business Management. He is also a graffiti artist, B-boy, practitioner of Wing Chun Gung-Fu for over 35 years, and an advocate for people suffering under incarceration and poverty.

Photograph of Tony Burgess, a white man with tanned skin. In this photo, he's got very short black-tending-to-silver hair, shaved on the sides, with a mustache and small goatee; he's wearing a dark blue jacket and stands in front of a window of words.

Photograph of Desdamona, a middle-aged white woman with very long wavy brown hair. In this photo, she's on stage singing into a microphone and wearing a black top and a bracelet; behind her, a blurred background including another singer.

Desdamona (she/her) is an internationally known Spoken Word & Hip Hop artist who has traveled the US & abroad delivering her seamless mixture of Spoken Word, Hip Hop lyricism and melody to the stage for a dynamic & engaging performance. When she’s not on stage she spends her time working in schools, prisons and community centers. Des co-founded B-Girl Be in 2005, a first-of-its-kind celebration of women’s contributions to Hip Hop culture, and has been a champion for young & marginalized voices, providing space for artists to hone their skills.
Desdamona has toured France extensively and has been invited to be on numerous French releases ranging from jazz and experimental music to hip hop and electronic styles. She has opened for such acts as Saul Williams, Ursula Rucker, GURU, The Digable Planets and KRS One. In 2014, she was chosen as a lead in a nationally run ad campaign for K-Mart. Des has received multiple MN State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants, The Verve Grant, A Knight Arts Challenge Grant and received awards from the MN Music Academy and the MN Spoken Word Association.

Joe Davis (he/him) is an award-winning spoken word artist and bestselling author who uses poetry to power possibility.

He is the founding director of Finding Your Freedom Practice, a wellness ecosystem teaching body-centered practices through spoken word, writing, music, theater, film, and dance. Joe holds a Master of Arts degree in Theology of the Arts and also heads a multimedia production company, a soul funk band, and a racial justice education program. His work has been featured on BET, MPR, CNN, VH1, and the Twin Cities CW.

Based in Minneapolis, he tours internationally to join schools, faith spaces, nonprofits, businesses, and correctional facilities to practice envisioning and embodying a world of collective liberation and human flourishing. To connect, book, or learn more, visit JoeDavisPoetry.com.

Photograph of Joe Davis, a Black man with medium brown skin and black hair. In this photo, he's wearing a hat, a beard and mustache, and all-black clothes, including a T-shirt which says, "I just wanna make dope art and love my people."

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.

Photograph of Davi Gray, a white trans nonbinary woman with gray eyes. In this picture she is wearing pink hair, a jeweled stud in her right nostril, and a black shirt. She's standing in front of a blurred wood background and staring off to camera right.

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 is an Ojibwe woman; in this photo, she has mid-length brown hair, a dark blue hoodie, and is touching a tree.

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.

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