We invite you to an evening of music and readings to inspire hope and justice for the earth featuring a diverse group of writers from across the country.

Audacious Inspiration 4 Climate Justice: Readings and Songs 4 the Earth

Join us for a special evening of stories, essays, and music celebrating collective action for climate justice. The Audacious Creative Climate Justice Writers features acclaimed Indigenous, LatinX, and Black female writers, organizers, and community leaders from across the country. Now in its third year at The Acreage, the ACCJW is closing their 10 day residency with a community reading and music event free to the public. Don't miss this amazing opportunity to hear from the this dynamic group of writers and musicians.

Readings by Priscilla Solis Ybarra, Lachelle Cunningham, Sharon Day, Carolyn Finney, Ámate Pérez, Erin Sharkey.

Music by Sara Thomsen.

Priscilla Solis Ybarra (she/ella) is a writer and professor. She is author/co-editor of two award-winning books: Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment and Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial. Ybarra's writing and teaching explore the intersections of literature, ecology, and social justice, with a focus on amplifying Latinx environmental perspectives.​ Recent publications include an essay in the minnesota review titled “Steps Toward Kinship: Chicana Indigeneity, Multispecies Justice, and the Nibi Walk.” She is Professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Mellichamp Chair in Racial Environmental Justice at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Lachelle Cunningham (she/her) has been a dynamic force on the Twin Cities’ food scene and is known for cooking globally inspired comfort food that thwarts unhealthy stereotypes and fuses in global flavors. She began her culinary career by launching Chelles’ Kitchen in 2012 and soon became known for her work as the founding Executive Chef of Breaking Bread Cafe (2015) in North Minneapolis, where she received many accolades for her food creativity and social justice work. In 2018, Chef Lachelle began building Healthy Roots Institute, with a mission focused on healing and social justice through food education, culinary arts and entrepreneurship. Through Healthy Roots Institute, Chef Lachelle curates cooking workshops and retreats, teaches culinary arts, food business classes and also provides human resources, menu development and operations consulting to local restaurants and food service establishments. Her greater vision is to grow Healthy Roots Institute for greater capacity to impact people through food, culinary education and entrepreneurship.

Sharon M. Day, an Ojibwe leader and enrolled member of the Bois Forte Band, is a writer, artist, grandmother, and musician. She is a second degree M’dewin. As the founder and executive director of the Indigenous Peoples Task Force, she has provided culturally grounded health services to Native communities since 1987. In 1998, the M’dewin were called to help the Mendota Dakota people save a spring that is sacred to the Dakota. The road was built 200 feet from the spring, but the spring still flows. In 2003, when Grandmother Josephine Mandamin walked Lake Superior, Sharon walked two days on the eastern shore near Lake Superior Provincial Park in Ontario. Since then, she has led many water walks, leading several each year. She is an editor of the anthology, Sing! Whisper! Shout! Pray! Feminist Visions for a Just World; Edgework Books, 2000. She has written several plays for Ikidowin Acting Ensemble and Pangea World Theater. Some of her music is recorded on the CD Nibi Walk River Songs.

Carolyn Finney, Ph.D. (she/her) is a storyteller, writer, and cultural geographer who works at the intersection of the arts, education and lived experience to confront the truth of our past so that we can stand in better relationship with each other, this Earth, and our collective possibility. She has been a Fulbright scholar, Canon National Parks Science Fellow, a Mellon recipient and served on the National Parks Advisory Board under the Obama administration. Her work includes numerous essays, documentary film work, a performance piece and her first book Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors. She is a scholar/artist-in-residence in the Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College. 

Ámate Pérez (she-we) is a decolonizing Nahuah for Kuzcatlan (El Salvador) and the founding director of Decolonizing Race and the Latinx Racial Equity Project. She is also a race equity and liberation trainer, an organizational development consultant, a social justice warrior and a writer. She works with movement building organizations, non-profits, unions, government agencies, and foundations to increase their impact and organizational effectiveness. Ms. Pérez has directed multiple national and international organizations. Prior to her social justice experience, Ámate worked as a print and radio journalist. Ms. Pérez and her family fled the Salvadoran civil war in the early 1980s, grew up in the Central American community in Los Angeles, and benefited from the 1986 immigration reform law. She has a BA from UCSD and a master’s in journalism from UCB. Ámate is queer, a martial artist, and a mother. She now lives in Inverness, CA on unceded and occupied Coast Miwok and Tamal Indian territory.

Erin Sharkey (she/they) is a writer, arts and abolition organizer, and cultural worker based in Minneapolis. Sharkey edited the anthology A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (Milkweed Editions). She holds an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and teaches at Minneapolis College, as well as with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop (MPWW). Sharkey is a cooperative member-owner of the Fields at Rootsprings Retreat, a land-based cooperative focused on the healing and development of BIPOC artists, activists, healers, and communities centering LGBTQ folx in Central Minnesota.

Sara Thomsen (she/her): “Thomsen’s soulful voice, poetic lyrics and unforgettable melodies cut through to the heart and the soul of human experience,” proclaims the Minnesota Women’s Press.  With a voice rich as the best mid-west soil, Sara's songs carry you inward and outward—in, to the particulars of your own life, and out—into the shared humanity of us all. Her performance style is easygoing and full of humor and depth, capturing the audience’s engagement. Sara’s music gently enfolds and unfolds the listener. Dubbed in her local press as “one of Northern Minnesota’s best kept secrets,” Thomsen's home base is in the Lake Superior region near Duluth, MN. “The Twin Ports folk singer picks up the torch carried by the balladeers of decades past: Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Holly Near, Ronnie Gilbert, and Peter, Paul, and Mary” writes the Duluth Reader Weekly. “She could make Conan the Barbarian drop his sword and collapse blubbering.” Here and Gone is the title of her new 2026 release. Thomsen has produced nine previous albums: Song Like A Seed, Somewhere to Begin, Everything Changes, By Breath, Fertile Ground, Arise (solo albums), Winter Wanderings (duo album with her spouse Paula Pedersen), Three Altos: One Voice and Three Altos: Camaradas (vocal trio albums with Paula and Rabbi Amy Bernstein).