The Loft Blog

Lisa's publications include more than 50 nonfiction children's books, four middle-grade "choose your path" sports novels, and the adult history book Faribault Woolen Mill: Loomed in the Land of Lakes. Accolades include two Honorable Mentions for the McKnight Artist Fellowship.

Sara Lynne Puotinen lives in south Minneapolis, near the Mississippi River Gorge, where she tries to be upright and outside as much as possible. She earned a BA in religion, an MA in ethics, and a PhD in women’s studies, which all inform her experiments in paying attention.

Kali White VanBaale is the author of the novels The Monsters We Make (Kali White) and The Good Divide and The Space Between (Kali VanBaale). She’s the recipient of an American Book Award, an Eric Hoffer Book Award, and an Independent Publisher’s silver medal for fiction, among others.

In her collection No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body, Asiya Wadud frames history as ephemeral, porous and deadly serious. Rooted in shared histories of oppression, Wadud’s collection places her body and personal experience as a framework.

You can’t allow one rejection to represent your whole life as a writer, nor can you try to tackle all your writing goals on a given day. But when you begin submitting your poetry to literary journals, you know you’ll encounter rejection, delayed gratification, and judgment.

Finding an agent is not a linear process. Many writers spend months querying in vain, feeling like little-to-no progress is happening. As a result, some decide to self-publish. Others stash away the manuscript(s) toiled over for years—convinced they’re just not destined to see their work in print.

Jack El-Hai is a Minneapolis author whose writing has been published in the Atlantic, Wired, GQ, Discover, Scientific American Mind, and Minnesota Monthly. His previous books include The Nazi and the Psychiatrist and The Lobotomist as well as two books from the University of Minnesota.

How do you feel about cemeteries? As a young person they scared me to death (heh), but they have become one of my favorite spots to spend my time. I do happen to be someone who enjoys the spooky and the macabre, but I also see them as a place of quiet beauty and mystery.

Quan Barry's We Ride Upon Sticks is about a high school field hockey team in the late eighties who make a pact with the devil (or Emilio Estevez, in notebook form) under the shadow of the Salem witch trials (they live where they happened).

Allison Vincent (née Witham) is a writer, teacher, and theater maker. She’s a staff contributor for MN Craft Notes and her fiction has been previously published in Roi Fainéant Literary Press and in the Dirty Girls Come Clean Anthology.

Emma Harrington continues her series of Publisher Profile interviews by checking in with Graywolf Press editor Chantz Erolin.

“Don’t forget! You have your two best editors hanging on either side of your head,” I tell my WRIT 1301 students. I am met with a combination of blank looks and cocked eyebrows. “I’m talking about your ears.”

My students' eyes widen in disbelief.