Embracing Our Roots with Debra J Stone and Junauda Petrus
  Join us for an intergenerational conversation with Debra J Stone and Junauda Petrus. This event is free and open to all; please register (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/embracing-our-roots-with-debra-j-stone-and-junauda-petrus-tickets-2001400747512) to let us know you will attend.   About the seriesEmbracing our Roots: Rooted and Rising pairs artists and arts activist Elders with next-generation arts leaders in conversation, mining the continuum of cultural knowledge and experience that built today's arts communities. In this program, More Than a Single Story (https://morethanasinglestory.com/) partners with two other Black-led organizations; In Black Ink (https://inblackink.org/) and the Givens Collection of African American Literature (https://www.lib.umn.edu/collections/special/givens).   About the speakersDebra J Stone is a Jerome Hill Arts Fellow in Literature 2023-25, a recipient of several Minnesota State Arts Board grants, and The Loft Mirrors and Windows Fellow 2023 for writing books for BIPOC children and young adults. Her debut novel, The House on Rondo, was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in the Middle Grade Fiction category. Her novel was also a finalist in the Children's category for the Midwest Independent Publishers Association Midwest Book Awards. The House on Rondo, is published by the University of Minnesota Press. Debra resides in Minneapolis with her husband and dog Ruby, a rambunctious Red Heeler Australian Cattle Dog. You can find more information about Debra and her writing on her website (https://www.debrajeannestone.com/) and her Instagram account (https://www.instagram.com/debra2036).  Junauda Petrus is an abolitionist, writer, filmmaker, runaway witch, soul sweetener and performance artist of Black Trinidadian and Crucian descent, born on Dakota/Anishinaabe land (Minneapolis). Her work fuses ancestral dreaming, poetics, and radical imagination to envision and enact liberation and sweetness in various artistic realms. She is the 2025–2026 Poet Laureate of Minneapolis and author of TheStars and The Blackness Between Them (Coretta Scott King Honor), and Can We Please Give The Police Department to the Grandmothers? (Minnesota Book Award Finalist). Her interdisciplinary work includes plays, immersive performance, aerial dance, and film projects centering abolition and healing. She has created work with the Kennedy Center, Heart of the Beast Theatre, Intermedia Arts, and Pillsbury House Theatre, and is a Jerome Fellow and two-time Jerome Travel and Study Grant recipient and a 2026 Artist and Culture-Bearer Fellowship.