Writers Series
Twin Rivers’ Writers series
Twin Rivers is excited to launch our new Writers Series! Join us as we sit down with writers to discuss their work, experiences, process, future, and more.
Each event will consist of a moderated conversation with the author and a Q&A with the audience. Mark your calendar with the dates below so you don't miss out on this exciting new series!
The Writers Series is underwritten by Bryan & Tami Paulsen and the Carl and Verna Schmidt Foundation.
2025 WRITERS SERIES DATES:
Tuesday, 4.29.25, 6:00-7:30
Featured Author - Shannon Gibney
www.shannongibney.com
Shared Spaces at Emy Frentz - Ward Collective
523 South Second Street, Mankato, MN 56001
Tuesday, 6.10.25, 6:00-7:30
Featured Author - John Thavis
www.johnthavis.com
Shared Spaces at Emy Frentz - Ward Collective
523 South Second Street, Mankato, MN 56001
Wednesday, 8.13.25, 6:00-7:30
Featured Author - John Otis
www.johnthavis.com
Shared Spaces at Emy Frentz - Ward Collective
523 South Second Street, Mankato, MN 56001
Tuesday, 10.7.25, 6:00-7:30
Featured Author - New York Times Bestselling Author
Watch for announcement on 8.1.25
Shared Spaces at Emy Frentz - Ward Collective
523 South Second Street, Mankato, MN 56001
Shannon Gibney
Tuesday, 4.29.25, 6:00-7:30
Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, and activist. She is author of several books, including The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption, which received a Michael L. Printz Honor and a Minnesota Book Award; See No Color and Dream Country, both winners of Minnesota Book Awards; Where We Come From (co-authored), winner of the 2023 Carter G. Woodson Award; and Sam and the Incredible African and American Food Fight, a children’s picture book about a cross-cultural family. A Bush Artist and McKnight Writing Fellow, Gibney teaches at Minneapolis College, where she was named Educator of the Year in 2023. She lives with her two children in Minneapolis.
John Thavis
Tuesday, 6.10.25, 6:00-7:30
John Thavis is a journalist, author and speaker in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Thavis grew up in Mankato and graduated from St. John’s University in 1973. His studies in archeology led him to Italy, where he found a career in journalism during the “Red Brigades” terrorism of the late 1970s. He became news editor of the Rome Daily American and later, as a reporter for the Associated Press, ABC News and Catholic News Service, he covered the Vatican beat for 30 years, traveling with Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI to more than 60 countries. He served three years as president of the Association of International Journalists Accredited to the Vatican -- the only American ever elected to that position. He has won numerous journalistic awards and has lectured on Vatican affairs in the United States and Europe.
In 2012 Thavis retired from his Rome position to devote full time to writing, and moved with his family back to Minnesota. His book, The Vatican Diaries, was published in 2013 by Viking-Penguin and immediately became a New York Times bestseller. A second book, The Vatican Prophecies: Investigating Supernatural Signs, Apparitions, and Miracles in the Modern Age, has been lauded as “a compulsory read for any Catholics who may think they understand the mysterious side of their faith.” He worked as an on-air commentator for ABC News during the papal conclave of 2013, and has been a collaborator on a number of video projects, including the 2018 CNN series, “Pope: The Most Powerful Man in History.” His blog at www.johnthavis.com features analysis of Vatican affairs.
John Otis
Wednesday, 8.13.25, 6:00-7:30
John Otis grew up in Mankato where his parents were English professors at MSU. He got his start in journalism at East High School by writing music reviews for the student newspaper. He graduated from Macalester College, interned at the Twin Cities Reader and worked as city hall reporter for a newspaper in upstate New York. He then quite his job and, with limited Spanish, jumped aboard a Greyhound for Mexico.
For the past 35 years John has reported on Latin America for The Houston Chronicle, The Miami Herald, Time Magazine and The Wall Street Journal and is currently the South American correspondent for NPR. He has covered guerrilla wars, drug cartels, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and dictatorships in Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua. He was also sent to Afghanistan and Iraq to cover U.S. military operations in those countries.
As a consultant for the Committee to Protect Journalists, John also investigates press censorship, death threats, arrests, and killings of journalists in Latin America.
He is author of the book, Law of the Jungle (HarperCollins, 2010)—a history of Colombia’s guerrilla war told through the prism of Colombian soldiers who, while searching for American hostages, stumbled upon $20 million buried in the rainforest.
John has been honored by the Inter American Press Association and the Overseas Press Club of the Americas, and won Columbia University’s 2024 Maria Moors Cabot Gold Medal for distinguished reporting on Latin America.
He lives in Bogotá with his wife, a Colombian journalist, and their two sons.
New York Times Bestselling Author
Watch for announcement on 8.1.25
Tuesday, 10.7.25, 6:00-7:30
