Danny Klecko
Presenter:
“How to Find an Audience For Your Poems”
JDanny Klecko was born in Los Angeles. During his youth, he moved to Minneapolis where he discovered at a young age that he was destined to be a baker. Eventually he went on to study bread courses at Dunwoody Technical College in Minneapolis and the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas.
Few people have baked as many loaves as Klecko. When President Gorbachev of Russia visited St. Paul in 1990, Klecko was commissioned to bake a loaf of bread that would be issued as a symbol of peace. From 2006 to 2009, he worked for American government agencies that placed him on loan to Russian industries where he worked his way from the Siberian Arctic down to the Black Sea.
Klecko spent the first decade of his 45-year career running ovens on the night shift. Many times when he waited for the loaves to bake, he wrote poems. He expanded into books as well, having written close to a dozen at this time.
His book Hitman—Baker--Casket Maker won the 2020 Midwest Book Award. Klecko recently launched the second book of his F. Scott Fitzgerald trilogy in Asheville, North Carolina where he was the keynote speaker at the Zelda Fitzgerald Festival. He has also partnered with St. Paul Public Libraries where he runs a Fitzgerald short stories quarterly meeting.
His work has been featured in the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times. In spite of these accomplishments, Klecko is an ardent fan of “all things 651,” referring to the St. Paul zip code. He lives in a St. Paul mansion across the street from the home where F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his first novel. He met his wife in 8th grade at Bible camp. They have two children and two grandchildren.
About his presentation, Klecko will share proven strategies that have helped his poems gain audience and media attention. This is the first time he has taught this course and, as he says, “You won’t want to miss this!”