Memoir / Creative Nonfiction

Memoir and/or Creative Nonfiction writers from Minnesota.

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Heidi Czerwiec

Heidi Czerwiec is an essayist and poet. She is the author of four chapbooks, the full-length poetry collection Conjoining, and the lyric essay collection Fluid States, winner of Pleiades Press’ 2018 Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose. She is the editor of North Dakota Is Everywhere: An Anthology of Contemporary North Dakota Poets. Her…

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Paula Cisewski

Paula Cisewski’s fourth poetry collection, Quitter, won the Diode Editions Book Prize. She is also the author of The Threatened Everything, Ghost Fargo (Nightboat Poetry Prize winner, selected by Franz Wright), Upon Arrival, and several chapbooks, including the lyric prose Misplaced Sinister. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota…

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Scott Dominic Carpenter

Scott Dominic Carpenter teaches literature and creative writing at Carleton College (Minnesota). Winner of a Mark Twain House Royal Nonesuch Prize (2018), he is the author of Theory of Remainders: A Novel (named to Kirkus Reviews’ “Best Books of 2013”) and of This Jealous Earth: Stories. His shorter work has appeared in a wide variety…

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Wendy Brown-Baez

Wendy Brown-Báez is the author of the inspirational guidebook for writers and writing instructors Heart on the Page: A Portable Writing Workshop, a novel Catch a Dream, and poetry collection Ceremonies of the Spirit. Her poetry and prose appear widely in literary journals and anthologies, such as Borderlands, The Litchfield Review, Mizna, Wising Up Press,…

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Steve Buechler

Steve Buechler had a 31-year career as a professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where he taught sociology and published on women’s movements, critical sociology, and social movement theory. On the eve of his retirement, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. He was successfully treated with chemotherapy, radiation, and a double cord blood stem…

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Brian Malloy

Brian Malloy’s novels have been a Book Sense pick, a New York Times New and Notable title, an Oprah selection for best LGBT books of 2021, an Apple Books best new release selection, a 2021 Publishers Marketplace buzz book, and a Booklist editors’ choice. Other honors include the Minnesota Book Award, the American Library Association’s…

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David Mura

David Mura is a poet, memoirist, essayist, novelist, and playwright. He’s written two memoirs, Where the Body Meets Memory and Turning Japanese, which won the Oakland PEN Josephine Miles Book Award and was a New York Times Notable Book. His novel, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award,…

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Kathryn Kysar

Kathryn Kysar is the author of two books of poetry, Dark Lake and Pretend the World and editor of the anthology Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers. She has received fellowships from the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Oberholtzer Foundation, and Write…

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Laurie Hertzel

Laurie Hertzel is the senior editor for books at the Star Tribune and the author of the memoir, News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist, winner of a 2011 Minnesota Book Award readers’ choice award. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction from Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina, has taught memoir writing at…

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Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich is the author of novels, children’s books, short stories, volumes of poetry, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. The Plague of Doves won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and her debut novel, Love Medicine,…