Three Minnesota-based writers will discuss what science and poetry have offered one another in their work, each with reference to a specific poetry/multimedia project: Anna’s community-sourced seven-word nature poems; Natalie’s incorporation of found and archival materials in long-poem artist’s books on disasters close to home; and Carolyn’s series of poems recalling science fair projects to interrogate a childhood reliant on the oil industry.

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Anna Farro Henderson is a writer and a PhD scientist. For her first book, Core Samples: A Climate Scientist’s Experiments in Politics and Motherhood, a 2024 Foreword INDIES winner, she did over fifty-five public speaking events at bookstores, public libraries, and universities. Her publications have appeared in Science, Lit Hub, and Orion, among others (she previously published as E.A. Farro). She has taught at University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Mitchell Hamline Law School, the Grand Marais Art Colony, Write on Door County, the Loft Literary Center, and numerous libraries. She is online atwww.annafarrohenderson.com.

Natalie Vestin is a writer, artist, and infectious disease research scientist from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her essays and art have appeared in Pleiades, The Iowa Review, The Normal School, and elsewhere. She’s received residencies from Kolaj Institute / the Knoxville Museum of Art, Kasini House and Tulane University Special Collections, Light Grey Art Lab, the Collegeville Institute, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Her research currently focuses on antimicrobial resistance in humans and coronaviruses in domesticated animals.

Poet and essayist Carolyn Williams-Noren has cohabitated with scientists her entire life. Her poetry collection, Oil Courses (2026), which reckons with her childhood close to the oil industry in Alaska, won the 2025 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. Carolyn’s work has been in AGNI, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, Willow Springs, and many other journals. She lives in Minneapolis, where she freelances as a copy editor and writer and sends subscribers a handwritten, hand-drawn recipe comic called “This is good.” See more atwilliams-noren.com.