Middle Grade
Middle Grade writers from Minnesota.
J.M. Lee
Born and raised in the great Minnesota north, J.M. Lee spent his formative years searching for talking animals and believing he could control the weather. After pursuing nerdy interests in comparative film studies, screenwriting, and Shakespeare, he graduated from the University of Minnesota with a much nerdier degree in linguistics with a focus in Japanese…
Wing Young Huie
In his 40-year career, photographer Wing Young Huie has captured the complex cultural realities of American society. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, and his best-known projects, Lake Street USA and The University Avenue Project, transformed Twin Cities’ thoroughfares into six-mile galleries, reflecting the everyday lives of thousands of its citizens. Chinese-ness: The Meanings of…
Pete Hautman
Pete Hautman is the author of more than 30 novels for adult, teen, and middle-grade readers, including the 2004 National Book Award winner Godless and Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner The Big Crunch. He has written three New York Times Notable Books and won four Minnesota Book Awards. His “young adult” novels range from…
Rebecca Ansari
After twelve years as an ER doctor, Rebecca K.S. Ansari shelved her scrubs to write magical and mysterious worlds for middle grade readers. Her debut novel, The Missing Piece of Charlie O’Reilly was a Minnesota Book Award finalist, an ALA 2020 Notable Children’s Book nominee, and a Junior Library Guild selection. Her second novel, The…
Mary Casanova
Once a can’t-sit-still reader, Mary Casanova now writes stories that matter and books readers can’t put down. She is the author of numerous award-winning books, from picture books (One-Dog Canoe) to books and book-inspired movies for American Girl (Grace); from middle grade adventure novels (Wolf Shadows and The Klipfish Code) as well as historical fiction…
John Coy
John Coy is the author of young adult novels, the 4 for 4 middle-grade series, and nonfiction and fiction picture books including Night Driving, Two Old Potatoes and Me, Hoop Genius, Game Changer, Their Great Gift, and My Mighty Journey: A Waterfall’s Story. He has received numerous awards for his work including a Marion Vannett…
Jacqueline West
Jacqueline West is the author of The New York Times bestselling series The Books of Elsewhere, the Schneider Family Award Honor Book The Collectors, the middle grade mystery Digging Up Danger, and the middle grade ghost story/mystery Long Lost, as well as the YA novels Dreamers Often Lie and Last Things. A four-time Minnesota Book…
Marcie Rendon
Marcie Rendon, citizen of the White Earth Nation. Rendon received the McKnight Foundation 2020 Distinguished Artist Award and was listed in the Oprah Daily 2020 list of “31 Native American Authors to Read Right Now.” Girl Gone Missing, Rendon’s second Cash Blackbear mystery series novel, was nominated for the Mystery Writers of America – G.P.…
Sheila O’Connor
Sheila O’Connor’s work includes Where No Gods Came, Tokens of Grace, and Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, and Fictions. She has received the Michigan Prize for Literary Fiction, Minnesota Book Award, International Reading Award, and Midwest Booksellers Award among others. A multi-genre writer, O’Connor’s stories, poems, and essays have been published in…
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,…