Memoir / Creative Nonfiction
Memoir and/or Creative Nonfiction writers from Minnesota.
Sue Leaf
Sue Leaf, a Minnesota native, was trained as a zoologist and taught environmental science. She writes on natural history and environmental topics from her home on the shores of Pioneer Lake. An avid hiker, paddler, cross-country skier, and bird watcher, Leaf believes that being attuned to nature is good for the soul.
Sherry Quan Lee
Sherry Quan Lee, MFA, taught Creative Writing at Saint Catherine University and Metropolitan State University. She is author of Chinese Blackbird, a memoir in verse; How to Write a Suicide Note: Serial Essays that Saved a Woman’s Life; Love Imagined: a Mixed Race Memoir, a 2015 Minnesota Book Award Finalist; How Dare We! Write: a…
Michelle Leon
Michelle Leon is a writer, musician, and teacher for Saint Paul Public Schools. She was the bass player for the influential punk band Babes in Toyland from 1987 to 1992 and again in 1997. Her writing has appeared in City Pages, the music essay compilation The First Time I Heard David Bowie, Saint Paul Almanac,…
Catherine Madison
Catherine “Cathy” Madison is a veteran journalist who has served as editor-in-chief of Utne Reader, senior editor at Adweek and Creativity magazines, founding editor of American Advertising, and editor-in-chief of Format Magazine. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Minnesota, where she has taught continuing education classes in editing. Madison’s award-winning…
Carrie L. Mesrobian
Carrie Mesrobian is the author of five novels. She has a B.A. in Creative Writing & Hispanic Studies and an MFA in Fiction from the Rainier Writers Workshop of Pacific Lutheran University. She has written essays and poetry for Brain, Child magazine, Calyx, the Star Tribune, and two anthologies for young adults. Her first book,…
Carter T. Meland
Carter Meland is a writer of Irish, Norwegian, and White Earth Anishinaabe heritage. He takes writing seriously, but tries to do so with good humor. By day he teaches students in American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth about the wicked smart, moving, and profound things that Native writers have to say about the…
Rachel Moritz
Rachel Moritz is the author of Borrowed Wave, a finalist for the National Poetry Series as well as the 2015 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. Her second poetry collection, Sweet Velocity, won the 2016 Besmilr Brigham Women Writer’s Award from Lost Roads Press. Moritz is also the co-editor of a collection of personal essays, My…
Kaethe Schwehn
Kaethe Schwehn is the author of the post-apocalyptic novel The Rending and the Nest, the poetry collection Tanka & Me, and a memoir, Tailings. Her poems and prose can be found in journals such as Crazyhorse, Pleiades, jubilat, Witness, Minnesota Review, and the anthology Fiction on a Stick. She has been the recipient of a…
James Silas Rogers
James Silas Rogers is an editor and creative writer. His book of essays and poems about cemeteries, Northern Orchards: Places Near the Dead, was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in Memoir & Creative Nonfiction. Four of his essays have been selected as a “notable” in the annual Best American Essays volume (and as…
Sarah Stonich
Beginning with Vacationland, Stonich’s Northern Trilogy continued in September 2018 with the release of Laurentian Divide, winner of the Minnesota Book Award. Both have been chosen as community reads in a dozen cities. These Granite Islands was a Barnes & Noble Great New Writers pick with multiple translations, as was The Ice Chorus. Her Fishing…