Sheila Packa is a poet, writer, and teacher with Minnesota and Finnish roots. She has five books of poetry: The Mother Tongue, Echo & Lightning, Cloud Birds, Night Train Red Dust: Poems of the Iron Range, and Surface Displacements. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and has taught creative writing and composition at Lake Superior College. She leads poetry and writing workshops in community settings and performs her work in music and media installations with her creative partner Kathy McTavish. Packa has published her work in several literary magazines and anthologies. Surface Displacements was a 2023 Minnesota Book Award finalist.