In conversation with McKnight Distinguished Artist Carolyn Holbrook

NINA MOINI: The McKnight Foundation has named its Distinguished Artist of 2025, one of the largest and most prestigious awards in the state. The recipient is Carolyn Holbrook, an author and arts advocate who has founded three arts organizations over the years, all designed to create space for writers and amplify the voices of writers of color. Our Emily Bright spoke with Holbrook.

EMILY BRIGHT: Before you were a writer, before you were making space for other people to write, you had to make space for yourself as a young, single parent. So talk to me about that origin story.

CAROLYN HOLBROOK: Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, I've always wanted to be a writer. But after I was divorced with a bunch of small children to raise, and I was living in South Minneapolis, in the Whittier neighborhood, the guy who ran the community center, [? Lawrence ?] [? Hutera, ?] was a performing artist.

And he had so much going on at the park with the arts that I just asked him one day if he'd be willing to sponsor a writing program. I wasn't in any shape mentally, emotionally to go back to school, but I still just wanted to learn to write. And places in the area, like the Loft and whatever, didn't have scholarship programs.

So there wasn't anything available for a young, single mom with children. And he told me that if I could find someone to teach it, he would make it happen. We had no idea that there was such a powerful literary community in the Twin Cities. This was in the early '80s.

And, I mean, I just thought, and so did he, that there would just be a few women from the neighborhood who just wanted to take writing classes. But on the first night of class, there were people lined up to come in. So yeah. So that's how it all started.

And [LAUGHS] it just went from there. I was program director at the Loft for a few years. And then I created an organization called SASE, The Write Place-- S-A-S-E, as in Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope. I just kept trying to develop my own writing as well.

And so here we are today. It's kind of wonderful crazy.

EMILY BRIGHT: Well, you're incredibly entrepreneurial when it comes to making a way to uplift people who want to write, especially BIPOC writers. How does that work build upon the work of your family before you? I know that's something you talk about in your memoir.

CAROLYN HOLBROOK: Yeah. [LAUGHS] My mother, my maternal grandmother, and my maternal great-grandparents were all entrepreneurs. I just come from a long line of entrepreneurs, especially female entrepreneurs. My great-grandparents owned a boarding house in Lincoln, Nebraska, for Pullman porters.

And the porters weren't allowed to stay in hotels. And so they just said, well, we'll just do this. And so as far as I know, that's what started it. And I'm really curious to know who came before them. Because that doesn't just happen.

That entrepreneurial streak, I don't think it just happens. I think it comes from a long line. And then my grandmother studied under Madame CJ Walker's rival. And so she developed a line of hair care products.

And then my mother, when we came to Minneapolis, she wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps. So she went to beauty school here. She had a couple of beauty salons, and then she and my stepfather opened a beauty school here, the first beauty school in the Twin Cities for African American people.

And then she started the cosmetology program in the Minneapolis Public Schools. So it's in my blood. I just happened to go the nonprofit, writerly way.

EMILY BRIGHT: So you're being honored both for your work as a writer and as an arts organizer. And those are both incredibly demanding of one's time and energy. So how do you manage that push-pull over the years between those two things?

CAROLYN HOLBROOK: It's not easy, but it's just something I'm just driven to do. When you feel pulled to just keep doing things for the community, at least in my case-- I can't speak for anyone else-- I just have to do it.

EMILY BRIGHT: What can be accomplished when people come together to tell stories and listen to stories?

CAROLYN HOLBROOK: So much can be accomplished. When you're in a group with people or just even one or two other people that have the same mindset or are struggling with, well, I shouldn't be taking the time to write, I've got kids or I've got this or whatever, I've got to make a living-- and just to be able to hold each other.

When some of us are down, we help each other up. When we're up, we hold each other up. And that's it. That's kind of it in a nutshell.

EMILY BRIGHT: I want to ask you about More Than a Single Story. That's a nonprofit organization that you founded that's been going for 10 years now.

CAROLYN HOLBROOK: Mm-hmm.

EMILY BRIGHT: Tell me about the founding of that.

CAROLYN HOLBROOK: It's kind of a crazy story. Because I had given up on arts administration. I was just going to focus on my writing. And I was invited to give a reading. And I had started a group of Black women writers at that time.

And so I asked if I could bring some of them along, if we could read as a group. And during the Q&A, someone in the audience was just so surprised that five Black women, we all sounded so different. And I thought, oh, man, my work is not done yet.

And then I was sitting in my daughter's beauty salon, and we were naming off all the Black women writers we know. And by the time we got done, there were so many that I thought, oh, my gosh, this is going to have to be a series. We have Black women, Black African American women.

We have women with Caribbean backgrounds. We have women from East and West Africa. So how about we do a series of three? And we did them at the Loft. And each one, the audience, the space was packed. And that was the origin.

And I figured, well, I guess I can't stop with this. There goes the entrepreneurial bug again-- I couldn't stop-- and the drivenness to just do things for the community and with the community. And obviously, there was a need.

And so then we just started doing more and more panels. I went to my publisher at the U. And I asked them, would you consider doing an anthology? I think I would like to do essays and poems from some of the people who've done panels with More Than a Single Story.

And he said, yeah, let's play with that. And so I got a lot of people to start writing essays. And then the pandemic happened. And so we went back to those writers. And we said, oh, well, if you want to write about the pandemic instead of your essay, instead of the panel you were on, that's fine.

And then George Floyd was murdered. So we went back to them and said the same thing. Well-- you know? And then it just grew and grew and grew. And then we got funding to do a writing intensive for Black writers.

And I thought, oh, my goodness. So many people came, I couldn't believe it. But here we go again. I guess I'm not done yet.

EMILY BRIGHT: People just keep showing up.

CAROLYN HOLBROOK: Yeah, people keep showing up. And that says to me, oh, my goodness, there's still a need in this community for what I'm doing, as well as what others are doing. It's just really important for us to just keep holding each other up.

And in the current climate, we don't know where it's going. I mean, this is insane.

EMILY BRIGHT: Have you been hit by funding cuts?

CAROLYN HOLBROOK: Not yet, but we know it's coming, at least I think it is. Because, I mean, I make no bones about More Than a Single Story was created because there was a need for BIPOC people to connect with each other. And we've had stuff with all the BIPOC communities.

And I want to get back to that as well. We've just been focused on the Black community since George Floyd, but we still have other things going on. People keep asking me, when are you going to retire? I mean, I don't even what that word means. I love what I do, so it doesn't feel like work.

EMILY BRIGHT: What's next for you?

CAROLYN HOLBROOK: To finish my novel.

EMILY BRIGHT: Want to tell me a little bit about what it's about?

CAROLYN HOLBROOK: I can tell you what my obsession is. I'm really obsessed with health care in the penal system and what happens when a woman is incarcerated. What happens to her children and to the people that end up caring for them? There are three main characters, and one is an incarcerated mother.

One is the child. One is the caretaker. I have no idea where it's going to go. I have some ideas, but I don't know. But this gift that I have just been given will allow me to let go of my teaching gig and focus on the writing.

EMILY BRIGHT: I wish you much joy in the journey on that one. What else should I be asking you?

CAROLYN HOLBROOK: That's a good question. It's one of the questions that I have started asking. If I'm moderating a panel and blah, blah, blah, blah, I always like to ask, what are the questions you want to talk about that no one asks? I think the importance of-- and this is not new.

But the importance of us standing up and just holding onto and remembering that what we're going through today is not new and that people have been writing and creating art since time began. And they're not going to stop. No matter how much they try to stop us from creating, it's the artists and the writers who keep the world alive.

NINA MOINI: That was Carolyn Holbrook, the McKnight Distinguished Artist for 2025, speaking with our Emily Bright.