About Us
Into a Darker Wilderness podcast sits at the intersection of nature and Black history, expanding our definitions and seeking new understandings of our relationships with and through time, nature, and history. Into A Darker Wilderness is co-hosted by Erin Sharkey, editor of A Darker Wilderness anthology, and Michael Kleber-Diggs, poet and author of Worldly Things and contributor to A Darker Wilderness.
Each episode offers engaging dialogue with writers across the United States, unpacking the ways that Black folks have stewarded natural spaces despite pervasive structural racism. Into A Darker Wilderness Podcast celebrates the little and big impacts that Black folks have had on nature writing, all while inspiring listeners to cultivate new relationships with the outdoors.
Erin Sharkey
Erin Sharkey (she/they) is a writer, arts and abolition organizer, cultural worker, and film producer based in Minneapolis.
Creator of the anthology A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (Milkweed Editions, 2023), she also co-hosts the podcast Into a Darker Wilderness. She is the co-founder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental arts collective called Free Black Dirt and is the producer of film projects including Sweetness of Wild, an episodic web film project, and Small Business Revolution, which explored challenges and opportunities for Black-owned businesses in the Twin Cities in the summer of 2021.
Sharkey has received fellowships and residencies from the Loft Mentor Series, VONA/Voices, the Givens Foundation, Coffee House Press, the Bell Museum of Natural History, and the Jerome Foundation. Sharkey was awarded the Black Seed Fellowship from Black Visions and the Headwaters Foundation. She has an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.
Erin is a steward cooperative member of the Fields at Rootsprings Retreat. Rootsprings is a land-based Cooperative stewarding space for healing and development of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) artists, activists, healers, and community centering Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer (LGBTQ) folx in Central Minnesota.
Michael Kleber-Diggs
Michael Kleber-Diggs (KLEE-burr digs) (he / him / his) is the author of Worldly Things (Milkweed Editions 2021), which won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, the 2022 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in Poetry, the 2022 Balcones Poetry Prize, the 2021 Poetry Center Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award.
His essay, “On the Complex Flavors of Black Joy,” is included in the anthology There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis, edited by Tracy K. Smith and John Freeman (Penguin Random House 2021). Another essay, “There Was a Tremendous Softness,” appears in A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, edited by Erin Sharkey (Milkweed Editions, 2023); with Erin, he co-hosts the podcast Into a Darker Wilderness.
His poems and essays often explore themes of intimacy, community, empathy, and grace, practices he believes are distinct and interdependent. Among other places, Michael’s writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Alaska Quarterly Review, Sierra Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Spillway, Great River Review, Water~Stone Review, Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, Potomac Review, and several other journals and anthologies.
Michael is a past Fellow with the Givens Foundation for African American Literature, a past-winner of the Loft Mentor Series in Poetry, a Minnesota AARP 50 over 50 Honoree, and a Poets & Writers Five Over 50 honoree. Since 2016, Michael has been an instructor with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. He also teaches Creative Writing at Augsburg University and Hamline University where he works with both undergraduate and graduate students.
His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times and Best of the Net once and has been supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Michael is married to Karen Kleber-Diggs, a tropical horticulturist and orchid specialist. Karen and Michael have a daughter, Elinor, who lives in New York City and works as a professional dancer.
Davi Gray
Davi Gray (she/they) is a queer, trans, nonbinary poet, writer, performer, multihyphenate artist, activist, and abolitionist.
They live in Bde Óta Othúŋwe (Minneapolis), on unceded lands of the Dakota and Ojibwe, where she works through the ReEntry Lab to connect writers and other artists leaving incarceration with literary and arts communities ready to receive them.
Davi has work published in Poetry, Water~Stone Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere, and can often be found performing around the Twin Cities. She is currently producing the podcast Into a Darker Wilderness, hosted by Erin Sharkey and Michael Kleber-Diggs, and her first poetry collection, This Body, This Fruit, will be published by Trio House Press in February 2027. You can find more on Davi and her work, including publications and upcoming events, at https://DaviGray.com.