Carolyn Holbrook is a writer, educator, and longtime advocate for the healing power of the arts. Her memoir in essays, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify (U of M Press, 2020) won the 2021 Minnesota Book Award for memoir and nonfiction, and was an honoree for the 2021 Society of Midland Authors Literary Award in Biography & Memoir. She is a co-author of MN civil rights icon, Dr. Josie R. Johnson’s memoir, Hope In the Struggle (U of M Press 2019). She is co-editor with David Mura of an anthology, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (U of M Press).
Her personal essays have been published widely, most recently in A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota (MNHS Press 2016) and Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (MNHS Press 2015). Her work is supported by the MN State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. She was awarded a 50 over 50 award from AARP/Pollen Midwest and won the Minnesota Book Awards Kay Sexton Award in 2010 . She teaches at the Loft Literary Center and other community venues, and at Hamline University, where she won the Exemplary Teacher award in 2014. She is the Artistic Director of More Than a Single Story, which she founded in 2015.