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2010 Book Club Blast
03/07/2010 @ 02:00 pm - 05:00 pm
For book club members – published and aspiring
writers – book lovers and engaged readers
Sunday, March 7, 2-5 pm at Open Book
1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis
Presenting Sponsor
University of Minnesota Press
Supporting Sponsors
The Loft Literary Center
Midwest Booksellers Association
The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library
and the Minnesota Book Awards
Department of English, University of Minnesota
Featured speaker — Lorna Landvik
“Book Clubs and Me”
2:00-2:45
Meet & mingle with MinnPost writers with recent or
forthcoming books — Judith Yates Borger, Doug Grow,
Joe Kimball, Jim Klobuchar, Iric Nathanson, Mark Neuzil,
Al Sicherman, Catherine Watson and Jay Weiner — and
other local authors including Elissa Elliott, Sue Leaf,
Kate Ledger, Gayla Marty and Candace Simar
Free refreshments, cash bar
(author bios below)
3:00-4:00
Speed chatting with
Marisha Chamberlain, Heid Erdrich, Nick Hayes,
Jim Heynen, Julie Kramer and Alison McGhee
in small groups in 15-minute segments
(author bios below)
4:00-4:30
Featured speaker Lorna Landvik
(bio below)
4:30-5:00
Book buying & signing
Bookseller for the Book Club Blast: Magers and Quinn
No charge to attend
Click here to support MinnPost’s Book Club Club
with a voluntary donation!
Book club members are invited to bring multiple copies
of non-perishable great reads for donation to
book clubs meeting in MN prisons.
SPACE IS LIMITED – Register here to reserve your spot
Questions? E-Mail bookclubclub@minnpost.com
Author bios
Judith Yates Borger is the author of Where’s Billie? A Skeeter Hughes Mystery. As a journalist she has written for The New York Times, Star Tribune, Pioneer Press and MinnPost. Her second book, Whose Hand? A Skeeter Hughes Mystery, is slated to be published by Nodin Press in the fall.
Marisha Chamberlain is a playwright, poet and fiction writer. Her stage plays and her teleplay, Scheherazade, have been seen all over the world. Her first novel, The Rose Variations (Soho Press), was published to very positive reviews, including a rave in the New York Times, and has just been released in paperback.
Elissa Elliott’s first novel, Eve: A Novel, was published by Bantam Dell a year ago, and the paperback has just come out. It’s a Random House Readers’ Circle paperbook (geared to book clubs) and was chosen as a Target Breakout book (for their book clubs). She lives in Rochester, MN.
Heid E. Erdrich is author of three collections of poems. The most recent, National Monuments, won the Minnesota Book Award in 2009.
Doug Grow’s new book, We’re Gonna Win Twins, will be published this spring by University of Minnesota Press. Doug was a newspaper journalist for 37 years, writing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Minneapolis Star, and Star Tribune. He writes about state politics, public affairs and other topics for MinnPost.
Nick Hayes is professor of history at Saint John’s University in Collegeville. He is a popular commentator on international affairs for public radio and television and writes about foreign affairs for MinnPost. His new book, And One Fine Morning: Memories of My Father, will be published in March by Nodin Press.
Jim Heynen’s publications include several collections of short stories as well as two YA novels and several poetry collections. He has a new novel and a new collection of short-short stories forthcoming from Milkweed Editions.
Joe Kimball, former columnist and reporter for the Star Tribune, writes about politics and St. Paul for MinnPost. He’s also the author of Secrets of the Congdon Mansion, the bestselling chronicle of the historic Congdon murders in Duluth. (He was in Duluth the day it happened — but has a good alibi — and has covered the trials and ongoing tales of bigamy, arson, prison and suicide ever since.)
Jim Klobuchar is a longtime Minnesota journalist who has worked in daily newspapering, radio and television and now writes for MinnPost. His latest book, Alway$ on , tracks the transformation of pro football from the 60s and 70s of black and white TV and $9,000 salaries to the round-the-calendar colossus it is today, with special attention to the continuing sagas of the Minneapolis Vikings. It includes Bud Grant’s ideas of how the game should be changed in a perfect world.
Julie Kramer writes a thriller series set in the desperate world of TV news. Her debut, Stalking Susan, won the Minnesota Book Award and the RT Reviewers Choice for Best First Mystery. It was also a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark, Anthony, Barry and Shamus Awards. People Magazine praised her sequel, Missing Mark, as a “crowd-pleaser.” Her third, Silencing Sam, will be released in June. Kramer is a national award-winning investigative producer who once ran the WCCO-TV I-Team.
Lorna Landvik, actor, comic, playwright and hockey mom, made her debut as a novelist with the critically acclaimed Patty Jane’s House of Curl. She is also the author of Your Oasis on Flame Lake, The Tall Pine Polka, Welcome to the Great Mysterious, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons, Oh My Stars, The View from Mount Joy and ‘Tis The Season!
Sue Leaf’s book, The Bullhead Queen: A Year on Pioneer Lake (University of Minnesota Press) is a finalist for a 2010 Minnesota Book Award.
Kate Ledger is the author of the literary novel, Remedies, which was published a few months ago by Putnam. It received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and raves from Kirkus, the Star Tribune and MinnPost critic Amy Goetzman.
Gayla Marty’s Memory of Trees: A Daughter’s Story of a Family Farm will be published by University of Minnesota Press in April.
Alison McGhee writes books for all ages, including the national bestseller Shadow Baby (novel) and the #1 New York Times bestseller Someday.
Iric Nathanson is the author of Minneapolis in the Twentieth Century, the Growth of an American City (Minnesota Historical Society Press) and has written and lectured about local history for more than two decades. An instructor for the University of Minnesota’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, he has published essays in the Star Tribune, Minnesota History and Hennepin History. Iric writes about local and state history for MinnPost.
Mark Neuzil is professor of communication and journalism at the University of St. Thomas. He is the author or co-author of five books, including The Environment and the Press: From Adventure Writing to Advocacy, which won the 2009 James W. Tankard Award. His 2001 book, Views on the Mississippi: The Photographs of Henry Peter Bosse, won a Minnesota Book Award.
Al Sicherman began to write his weekly humor column for the Star Tribune’s Variety section in 1981. (At least it was supposed to be funny.) Al retired in 2007 and has collected some of the best (or worst) of his allegedly humorous columns into a book, Uncle Al’s Geezer Salad, available at fine (and not so fine) bookstores. He continues to supply the Tidbits new-food-products column to the Star Tribune Taste section and provides occasional startling insights to MinnPost. He is 20 pounds overweight.
Candace Simar’s first novel, Abercrombie Trail (North Star Press, 2009) is an historical novel about the 1862 Sioux Uprising. Pomme de Terre, another historical novel set in Minnesota, will be published by North Star sometime next summer. She lives in Pequot Lakes, MN.
Catherine Watson is travel editor for MinnPost and a former travel editor for the Star Tribune. She teaches travel writing and memoir in university-level workshops, most recently for the U of M Split Rock Arts Program in northern Minnesota and for Brown University’s Summer in France Program. She is the author of two Minnesota Book Award finalists: Roads Less Traveled — Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth and Home on the Road — Further Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth.
Jay Weiner covered the Franken-Coleman recount for MinnPost, winning the 2009 Frank Premack Public Affairs Journalism Award for excellence in breaking news coverage for his work. His book about the recount — “This Is Not Florida: How Al Franken Won the Minnesota Senate Recount” — will be published this fall by the University of Minnesota Press.
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