Lynette Reini-Grandell is the author of the memoir Wild Things: A Trans-Glam-Punk-Rock Love Story (Minnesota Historical Society Press, March 2023) as well as two books of poems: Wild Verge (Holy Cow! Press, 2018) and Approaching the Gate (Holy Cow! Press, 2014, winner of the 2015 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for Poetry).  Other work has appeared in Alligator Juniper, The Understanding between Foxes and Light, MNArtists.org, Poetry Motel, Revolver, Poetry City U.S.A., and Seminary Ridge Review, among others.  She has been nominated for a Pushcart and received grants for her work from the Finlandia Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board.  She performs with the Bosso Poetry Company and the jazz/poetry collective Sonoglyph. Her work is often inspired by Finnish folk culture and song, and she frequently collaborates with Nordic Roots artists in multimedia performances. She lives in Minneapolis on the ancestral homeland of the Dakota people.

She is a 2010 What Light Poetry award winner, received a 2009 Intermedia Arts Writer-to-Writer Mentorship, won the 2003 SASE/Ache prize for fiction, and edited Rifle Sport Alternative Art Gallery’s only literary journal, Magazine. 

Her poems are on the walls of the Carlton Arms Hotel in Manhattan, in an installation created with her husband Venus, a transgender artist and musician.  A feature-length documentary about their relationship, Venus of Mars, by Emily Goldberg, has toured film festivals around the world. More information about the documentary can be found at venusofmars.com.

She has performed poetry and fiction at countless spoken word venues, among them Prøve Gallery, Intermedia Arts, Patrick's Cabaret, Kieran's, the Turf Club, the Poetry Café (London), Cacophony Chorus, the Love Ugly, Ricochet Kitchen, Soul Invictus (Phoenix), El-Chango (Bisbee), and the Minnesota State Fair. She appears regularly with the Bosso Poetry Company and is on J. Otis Powell’s CD, Theology:  Love and Revolution. When not reading, she accompanies other writers and burlesque performers on jazz violin.

She co-hosts “Write on Radio,” on KFAI (kfai.org), a radio show interviewing local and national writers about their work. 

Lynette Reini-Grandell holds a BA from Carleton College and an MA and PhD in English from the University of Minnesota.  Her dissertation is titled "The Modern Sound:  American Poetry and the Rise of the Recording Industry, 1920-1940." 

She is an English professor at Normandale Community College where she frequently advises the Creative Writing Club and the student literary magazine, The Paper Lantern. She also sings in a church choir, and has been variously vice president, president, past president of the Minnesota Council of Teachers of English.