BY SARAH STONICH Upon the paperback release of Shelter: Off the Grid in the Mostly Magnetic North, author Sarah Stonich answers questions posed by BookFox. Q. Does writing energize or exhaust you? Both. I’d compare a good session of writing to a long day of stone-stacking or gardening. They are very similar in that you’re … More Sarah Stonich on memoir writing, truth, and Shelter.
BY NORA MURPHY “We’re just Potato Famine Irish,” declared my grandfather when, as a child, I asked him about our family’s roots in Ireland. A Minnesota Supreme Court Justice, his word sank heavily into my heart and lodged there for decades. They didn’t resurface until decades later, when I began working at the Minneapolis American … More "We’re just Potato Famine Irish."
BY ADAIR ROUNTHWAITEAssistant professor of art history at the University of Washington in Seattle From an art historian’s perspective, one of the most fascinating elements of 2017’s American political landscape has been conservatives’ defense of the National Endowment for the Arts. These statements of defense have followed the Trump administration’s budget proposal, which as is … More With NEA under threat, arguments across the aisle are united in surprising ways.
Manifold is an intuitive, collaborative platform for scholarly publishing. With iterative texts, powerful annotation tools, rich media support, and robust community dialogue, Manifold transforms scholarly publications into living digital works. The Manifold team is delighted to launch a public beta of its new publishing platform for interactive scholarly monographs: http://staging.manifoldapp.org/. Funded through the generous support … More Manifold Beta Now Available
Yesterday, the Minneapolis City Pages went live with a front-page feature on Tom Rademacher, a middle-grade English teacher and Minnesota Teacher of the Year who has written a book about the messy, messy, messy business of teaching. Select excerpts from his book, It Won’t Be Easy, bring to vivid life moments from his teaching career in … More "I was going to be one of *those* teachers: the natural and inspiring who wore stylish sport coats, whose classroom was a sacred space of literature, of rebellion, of learning. But nobody told me how hard it was going to be."
BY JIM WALSH On Valentine’s Day 1996, Prince married Mayte Garcia at Park Avenue Methodist Church in South Minneapolis. In honor of the funky nuptials that day, I took the opportunity to compile a list of Prince’s greatest love songs for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, reprinted in Gold Experience: Following Prince in the ‘90s … More Throwback Valentine’s Day: A bittersweet collection of Prince’s finest love songs
BY BRIAN MCMAHONExcerpt from The Ford Century in Minnesota Ascent of the AutoworkersThe Postwar Boom and ChallengesWhen [World War II] ended, there were about twenty-five million cars on the road, and most were more than ten years old. People wanted new cars and Ford was eager to meet the pent-up demand. Several hundred workers, including … More The Ford Century in Minnesota: The Postwar Boom and Challenges
BY JIM WALSHExcerpt from the Introduction to Bar Yarns and Manic-Depressive Mixtapes My earliest memory of scribbling in a notebook while listening to music is New Year’s Eve, 1974. I was fourteen and then as now not a big fan of mean girls and boys, so that night I intentionally stayed away from the junior … More Going Underground: Jim Walsh on his earliest memory of music writing.
BY MARK NEUZILProfessor of communication and journalism, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN “Everyone believes in something. I believe I will go canoeing” is a comment attributed to Henry David Thoreau, who could make a claim as America’s most famous canoeist. Regardless of whether he wrote it or not, I have understood what the … More "I have spent a life in canoes."
Looking ahead to this weekend’s Nobel prize ceremony, in which Bob Dylan, the 2016 laureate in literature, will likely not attend but will provide a speech.BY COLLEEN SHEEHYPresident and executive director, Public Art St. Paul When I looked at my phone in the early morning of Thursday, October 13, I was stunned to discover that … More A quiet life, a remarkable influence: On Bob Dylan’s English teacher, B.J. Rolfzen
