Awaiting our St. Anthony Park walking tour with author Andy Sturdevant. Photo: Susannah Schouweiler

“This might just be my favorite of all the events we’ve had here,” said Micawber’s bookshop owner, Hans Weyandt, by way of introduction for our reader-cum-neighborhood guide: local artist, raconteur and first-time author Andy Sturdevant, whose charming essay collection, “Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow,” was released by Coffee House Press just this fall. This past Saturday afternoon, we’d all turned out for his cultural walking tour of the St. Anthony Park neighborhood, followed by a reading back at the bookstore.

A native of Louisville, Ky., Sturdevant brings a newcomer’s zeal and sharp eye for odd regional details to his personal essays, criticism and confabulations to do with Minnesota’s distinct cultural and civic history. Reviewing the collection for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Patricia Hagen writes: “More than anything, ‘Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow’ feels like a long ambulatory conversation with an exceptionally interesting friend. Sturdevant’s voice — inquisitive, witty and intelligent — invites us in at every turn.”

Our guides, author Andy Sturdevant and photographer Carrie Elizabeth Thompson. Photo: Susannah Schouweiler

With a grant from the Carolyn Foundation and in partnership with Works Progress Studio, Coffee House Press celebrated the publication of Sturdevant’s book by commissioning a variety of related projects from 12 area artists. On a Tumblr created for the two-month long “Andy Experience,” publisher Chris Fischbach describes the experiment this way: “These small projects range from a temporary bike-in/bus-in cinema in one of the vacant lots along East Lake Street, a short video reimagining Andy’s life and work if he’d moved to Orlando instead of Minneapolis, a gameshow-as-performance highlighting famously co-opted early American flags, and other artist projects inspired by Andy’s wide-ranging essays.”

Sturdevant’s debut collection of essays was released in September 2013 by Coffee House Press and is available at bookstores everywhere.

Full disclosure: I worked closely with Sturdevant for years and count him as a dear friend and colleague. (In fact, we originally published a number of the pieces included in his book on mnartists.org, where I serve as editor. Fun fact: He’s also Artist Resources Director for Knight Arts grantee Springboard for the Arts.) I’m an unabashed fan of his writing. And the book’s many related collaborative projects seem to me an ingenious way to gin up sustained interest in the volume and to put into practice the insights on place and cultural community Sturdevant brings to bear in his various essays.

So, joined by friend and photographer Carrie Elizabeth Thompson (who’s responsible for most of the illustrative photos in the book) for Saturday’s walking tour, Sturdevant first guided our group to what used to be the home of Frank Wing, who was a notable cartoonist in his day and an early mentor to one of St. Paul’s most famous sons, “Peanuts”-creator Charles Schulz. We passed by Saul Bellow’s old digs, then stopped in what is now a parking lot near the Speedy Mart; in the ’90s,  it was also the site of a brief but vicious turf battle between teenaged townies spoiling for a fight and the interloping skater kids from nearby neighborhoods – our little band got a first-hand account of the brawl from then participant/observer, photographer Carrie Thompson. The author regaled us with trivia bits about the artist behind the rough-hewn wooden sculpture of Christ gracing the front of St. Anthony Park Lutheran Church. And as we walked, Sturdevant filled us in on the populations – furniture factory workers and university professors, railroad magnates and artists – who have called this now-genteel “urban village” home.

Walking tour with reading to follow. Photo: Susannah Schouweiler

The author has another of these reading/walking tours scheduled for December 8, in and around Magers and Quinn Bookstore in Minneapolis. If you’re free, I can’t think of a more congenial way to spend a weekend afternoon (details here).

To find out more about Sturdevant’s essay collection, “Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow,” and to keep track of upcoming readings and events, visit the Coffee House Press website. You can browse through the related artists’ projects via the affiliated Tumblr, “Andy Sturdevant’s Potluck Supper.” Read more by and about Andy Sturdevant on his personal website.