Genre:
Memoir/Creative Nonfiction
Donna Sidwell DeGracia
Donna Sidwell DeGracia is a physician assistant and an educator whose life and work have taken her from distant corners of the globe to intimate conversations about aspects of life that patients may not have shared with anyone else. Sometimes it is her own experiences as a patient, or as one acculturating to a new…
Rosemond Owens
Rosemond Sarpong Owens loves the Lord, loves people, loves life, and loves to laugh. She is a storyteller with an infectious enthusiasm about life. She attended Wesley Girls’ High School in Cape Coast, Ghana, the University of Ghana, and University of Minnesota. Across the globe, she has developed a rainbow coalition – an amazing tribe…
Gary Kaunonen
Gary Kaunonen, Ph.D., is a historian of culture, labor, and immigration and a documentary filmmaker based in Willmar, Minnesota. His work includes the 2018 Hognander Minnesota History Award winner, Fanned Flames: A History of the 1916 Minnesota Iron Ore Strike, and two award-winning books about Michigan, Challenge Accepted: A Finnish Immigrant Response to Industrial America…
Carolyn Holbrook
Carolyn Holbrook is a writer, educator, and an advocate for the healing power of the arts. Her memoir, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify, won the 2021 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. She is co-editor with David Mura of the anthology, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from…
Kim Todd
Kim Todd writes about history and science. She focused on forgotten stories—uncovering events and people that, while overlooked, continue to shape our world. She is the author of four books of literary nonfiction: Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s “Girl Stunt Reporters”; Sparrow; Chrysalis, Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis; and Tinkering with…
Staci Drouillard
Staci Lola Drouillard is a Grand Portage Band of Ojibwe direct descendant. She lives and works in her hometown of Kitchibitobig—Grand Marais, on Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior. Her first book Walking the Old Road won the Hamlin Garland Prize in Popular History, the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for nonfiction and was a finalist…
Alex Messenger
Alex Messenger is a Duluth, Minnesota, author, marketer, and photographer who, at seventeen, was mauled by a grizzly bear. In the decade afterward, he’s worked as a wilderness guide, marketing specialist, photographer, and volunteer search-and-rescue operator. His love of adventure, nature, and cultures has taken him all over the globe, but the north woods and…
Raki Kopernik
Raki Kopernik is a first generation American, queer, Jewish writer. She is the author of The Things You Left and The Memory House, both Minnesota Book Award finalists, and The Other Body chapbook. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and has been shortlisted and nominated for several other awards, including the Pushcart Prize for…
D. Allen
D. Allen is a queer and genderqueer poet and multidisciplinary artist living in Minneapolis. They completed an MFA in Poetry at the University of Minnesota in 2017 and were a 2019-20 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. They have received a 2019 20% Theatre Company Q-STAGE: New Works Fellowship, a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant,…
Judy McConnell
Judy McConnell is the author of two memoirs, a novel, and a book of short stories. After obtaining a B.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Southern California and a master’s degree in Training & Development from the University of Minnesota, she went on to career as a Training Specialist and writer of training…