Blog

Baby farming was a term coined during the 19th century to describe the practice where working-poor women handed over their infants to hired caregivers so they could maintain employment.  The baby farmers, operating in both in the United States and Great Britain,...

During Christmas break in the winter of 1977, my flock of the high school girlfriends reunited at Ann Lynch’s house to talk about our freshman year college experiences: the classes, the boys, the dorms. Ann, a double Latin and Biology major, always a quiet and...

I was fifteen years old when I saw the movie, The Day of the Jackal, based on the novel by Frederick Forsyth. The plot detailed an attempted assassination of Charles DeGalle in 1962. I found myself rooting for the criminal, a good-looking guy in a James Bond sort of...

Grief Ella is a newlywed, living and working in Saint Paul, MN in 1915.  She had her husband work at a shirtwaist factory that mass-produces women’s work blouses. Connor works as a cutter and Ella is part of the sewing-line brigade.  A cutter stacks multiple layers of...

Overcoming Writer’s Block Are you telling everyone you are starting a new writing project but have nothing to show? In the middle of your novel, short story, screenplay but find you have hit the wall? Would you rather clean out the cat litter box than write? Do you...

The Writer’s Notebook When I was in my undergraduate program at The College of St. Catherine, my writer professor, Jonis Agee, recommended keep a writer’s notebook. This was a simple take-it-with-you pad to record items. In the days before Pinterest, this was a way to...

Dorie LaValle Dorie LaValle is married to a sweet, but incompetent farmer name Louie. Her education is from a one-room schoolhouse and she lives in near poverty. It’s 1928 in Anoka Country and people are desperate to drink. Dorie seizes a...