Donte Collins ’18 was named the “Most Promising Young Poet” by the Academy of American Poets this fall. His poem, “what the dead know by heart,” previously won Augsburg’s John R. Mitchell Prize, which qualified him for the prestigious award.
Collins is a theater major who is active in the local, regional, and national spoken word and poetry scene.
Collins told Minnesota Public Radio that he plans to use his $1,000 prize from the award to self-publish his first collection of poetry, a chapbook called “autopsies.”
The opening this week of Sweet Maladies by Zakiyyah Alexander represents four years of work by the Augsburg College Theater Department to diversify its program and to attract more diverse and often underrepresented voices to the theater.
The cast of The Titanic Orchestra didn’t know Barbra Berlovitz, an icon in the Twin Cities theater scene, before they auditioned for the play she is guest directing at Augsburg this spring. None of the students had attended a production at the Tony award-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune, where Berlovitz was the co-artistic director for 25 years. But the entire cast agrees that working with her has been a valuable experience in their development as actors.
By Wendi Wheeler ’06 
By Wendi Wheeler ’06