Nonfiction
Nonfiction writers from Minnesota.
Susannah Shmurak
Susannah Shmurak has written on gardening, health, and environmental topics for magazines such as Northern Gardener, Mother Earth Living, Ensia, and Sierra as well as numerous websites. Her favorite topics to cover are foraging, growing food, herbal remedies, and sustainability. She is the author of Everything Elderberry and founder of HealthyGreenSavvy.com, a website focused on…
Dralandra Larkins
Dralandra Larkins is a multi-genre writer, three-time award-winning spoken word poet, and the author of Before I Lie. She is a teaching artist at COMPAS and has performed for the NAACP, Button Poetry, Mill City Museum, Minnesota State Capitol, Minnesota Black Business Ball, and the Minnesota Black Authors Expo. Larkins co-edits Cracked Walnut’s Rewilding Hope…
A.J. Briscoe
A.J. Briscoe is an author, entrepreneur, and founder of the non-profit community literacy initiative “To Succeed You Must Read.” His mission is to assist in raising the literacy levels in underserved communities. Briscoe has established strategic partnerships with various schools, businesses, and community pillars in an effort to impact the lives of our young people…
Jokeda Bell
Jokeda “JoJo” Bell is the executive director and the director of exhibitions and programming for the African American Interpretive Center of Minnesota (AAICM). Her roles in the organization have led to collaborative programming with the Minnesota Historical Society and the Minnesota Museum of American Art. She has also appeared as an expert in the Minnesota…
Steve Grove
Steve Grove is CEO and publisher of the Minnesota Star Tribune. Previously, he was Minnesota’s commissioner of employment and economic development. Before moving back to his home state, Grove built a career in Silicon Valley as an executive at Google and YouTube, most recently as the founding director of the Google News Lab and previously…
Antonia Felix
Antonia Felix, Ed.D., MFA, is a New York Times bestselling author of nonfiction, fiction, drama, and poetry. Her 25 books include several acclaimed political biographies of women leaders, and she has been a guest speaker at many universities and organizations, including the Woman’s National Democratic Club in Washington, DC., and Robert J. Dole Institute of…
Micah Ruelle
Micah Ruelle is a queer poet from America’s Heartland. They hold an MFA from Texas State University. Their first chapbook, Failure to Merge, was published by Finishing Line Press. Their second chapbook, Clean Getaway, was a semi-finalist for the YesYes Books’ Vinyl Chapbook Competition and a finalist for both the Concrete Wolf & Nine Syllables…
Varla Ventura
Varla Ventura is an author, traveler, rotten botanist, and lover of the strange. She has written several books on bizarre and freaky things, from paranormal women’s history to werewolves and banshees to plants that smell like death. She is a committed supernaturalist, folklorist, and seeker of those shadowy things that scrape at your window in…
Michelle S. Phelps
Michelle S. Phelps is Professor of Sociology and Law at the University of Minnesota. Her research is in the sociology of punishment, focusing in particular on policing, probation, and prisons. Her writing has appeared in public outlets, including The New Republic, The Minnesota Star Tribune, and MinnPost, alongside academic journals, including American Journal of Sociology…
Sonja Trom Eayrs
Sonja Trom Eayrs, author of Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America, is a farmer’s daughter, rural advocate, and attorney. She is involved in several rural advocacy organizations, including the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, Farm Action, Land Stewardship Project, and Dodge County Concerned Citizens. Trom Eayrs also serves as the business…