Loft Spotlights

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.

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.

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.

Emma Harrington begins her series of Publisher Profile interviews by checking in Flexible Press publisher and executive editor William E Burleson.

María Barrios is a writer born in Barranquilla, Colombia, living in Brooklyn. She has lived in Bogotá and Manchester, where in 2016 she completed a master's degree in creative writing from the University of Manchester. Her stories have been published in Hobart Pulp, Reservoir Journal, and more.

Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color (Carolrhoda Lab, 2015), a young adult novel that won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award in Young Peoples' Literature. Gibney is faculty in English at Minneapolis College, where she teaches writing.

Margaret LaFleur writes fiction and teaches writing in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her writing has most recently appeared in Bright Flash Literary Review and (mac)ro(mic), but you can more often find her reading over the heads of her small children.

Kalena Miller is a writer, teacher, and editor from Maple Grove, Minnesota. She received her bachelors from Carleton College and her masters of fine arts from Hamline University's Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults program. Her novel, The Night When No One Had Sex, was published in 2021.

Shayna Goodman's essays have appeared or are forthcoming in the Cut, Salon, Jewish Currents, the Takeout, and Grub Street Literary Magazine, among other places. Her work was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize. She received her MFA in memoir from Hunter College.