How and why did Minnesota, distant from both dream coasts, become a literary mecca? Why up here in the North Country, and not Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, St Louis, or Cleveland? What made the Twin Cities fertile ground for the birth and growth of the Loft Literary Center, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and Milkweed Editions, and an ideal place for Graywolf Press and Coffee House Press to transplant themselves? The literary renaissance of the 1960s and 70s here was due at the start to one generous and visionary poet, Robert Bly, and his gift for generating excitement all across the state, involving many young poets, and creating a community of mutually supportive writers. A florescence of poetry reading series, poetry magazines, small press poetry books, and literary organizations ensued. Read this book to appreciate fully, for the first time, the origins of the wondrous scene in which we are privileged to live.

Mark T. Gustafson has written ten essays on the subject of Robert Bly, also a bibliography, The Odin House Harvest, and the in-depth narrative book, Born Under the Sign of Odin: The Life & Times of Robert Bly’s Little Magazine & Small Press. He first attended a Bly reading in 1972, as a student at St. Olaf College. He has a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota. In 2012 Bly designated him as his biographer. Born and raised in Chicago, he lives in Minneapolis.

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In Poetry on the Side of Nature, poet and teacher Thomas R. Smith aims to inspire and equip poets at all levels of experience to employ the nature poem as advocacy for the natural world. Making a case for what has been defined as the Western “nature poem” as an act of survival and protest, Smith enlists 30 poets, new and old, familiar and unfamiliar, from both sides of the Atlantic to demonstrate the many ways poets can, for readers and themselves, close the distance of alienation between human beings and the natural world. Part essay, part anthology, Poetry on the Side of Nature is for any reader or writer of poetry who passionately loves and wants to defend the Earth.

Thomas R. Smith is a poet, essayist, editor, and teacher living in western Wisconsin. His poetry collections include Storm Island (Red Dragonfly Press) and Medicine Year (Paris Morning Publications). He is editor of the forthcoming posthumous Robert Bly essay collection The Garden Entrusted to Me: Essays on Poetry and the Writing LIfe (White Pine Press, 2025). His first prose book Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival is available from Red Dragonfly Press. He teaches poetry at the Loft Literary Center and posts poems and essays on his website www.thomasrsmithpoet.com.

By the early ninth century, the Carolingian empire was at the height of its power. The Franks, led by Charlemagne, had built the largest European domain since Rome in its heyday. Though they jockeyed for power, prestige, and profit, the Frankish elites enjoyed political and cultural consensus. But just two generations later, their world was in shambles. Civil war, once an unthinkable threat, had erupted after Louis the Pious’s sons tried to overthrow him–and then placed their knives at the other’s neck. Families who had once charged into battle together now drew each other’s blood.

The Carolingian Civil War would rage for years as kings fought kings, brother faced off against brother, and sons challenged fathers. Oathbreakers is the dramatic history of this brutal, turbulent time. Medieval historians David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele illuminate what happens when a once unshakeable political and cultural order breaks down and long suppressed tensions flare into deadly violence. Drawn from rich primary sources, featuring a wide cast of characters, packed with dramatic twists and turns, this is history that rivals the greatest fictional epics–with consequences that continue to shape our own world.

Oathbreakers offers lessons of what deep cracks in a once-stable social and political fabric might reveal, and the bloody consequences of disagreeing on facts and reality. The Civil War at the heart of this tale asks: who is in and who is out? And what happens when things fall apart?

David Perry is a journalist, medieval historian, and Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies in the history department at the University of Minnesota. He was formerly a professor of history at Dominican University. Perry is the author of Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, and his writing on history, disability, politics, parenting, and other topics has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Nation, the Atlantic, and CNN.com, among others. He and Gabriele co-write the newsletter Modern Medieval on Buttondown.

Adam Stemple is an award-winning author, poet, and musician. He’s sold nine novels to publishers like Tor, Penguin Random House, and Viking, and published five himself. He’s also sold short stories in dozens of magazines, published three graphic novels, one novella, five poems, a pile of songbooks, and won two Minnesota Music Awards. He’s the founder of Written Well (www.writtenwell.com) where he shares his experience with self-publishing in order to help other authors get published.

More importantly, he is David’s fishing buddy and was there when he caught his first muskie. He is certain David timed this book release for winter so he could be done with promotional activities before the fishing opener.

In The New Fit, fitness coach and former professional athlete Aaron Leventhal offers a clear path forward built on the concepts of connection, education, and progression. Leventhal breaks down popular myths from modern consumer fitness programs, while teaching the science, the reason, the “why” behind exercise. Based on best practices developed over more than 20 years in the fitness industry and anchored in the latest research on exercise and longevity, this timely book empowers readers of any age to take charge of their own wellness journey, discover their optimal program, and continue to make the adjustments needed to see results into the future.

Aaron Leventhal played professional soccer for the USL’s Minnesota Thunder for eight years, then went on to become a conditioning coach for the Thunder and later for the Major League Soccer Team Minnesota United for 15 years. He has worked with athletes on the U.S. Olympic Ski team, as well as individual NHL and NFL athletes. In 2002, he founded Fit Studios and has served more than 20,000 clients over two decades. Leventhal also spent time as the senior director of the largest fitness chain in the world at Self Esteem Brands, where he worked to integrate personal training and group fitness operations to all domestic AnyTime Fitness gyms.

Kate Hopper is an editor and writing coach and the author of Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers, Ready for Air: A Journey Through Premature Motherhood, winner of a Midwest Independent Publishing Award, and co-author of Silent Running. Her writing has appeared in a number of journals, including Brevity, True Story, Longreads, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poets & Writers and River Teeth. She teaches online and in Ashland University’s Low-residency MFA program.

It arose not from desire or even interest, but from curiosity: what would happen . . . if she just let it?

The bubble in which Ruth and David live their tidy suburban lives is about to burst. A tragic automobile accident shatters their insular world and sends David into an emotional tailspin. An unexpected job opportunity sends Ruth to the West Coast, waylaying her desire to become a mother and making her increasingly unavailable for David’s needs.

Thrown off balance and alone, David develops a fixation on Annabeth Brady, the daughter of the friends lost that fateful night. As he and Ruth drift further apart, each must decide if they will remain true to their vows, or what it might mean to search for something better.

Told in gorgeous, descriptive prose with flashes of humor and insight, this debut novel by Diane Parrish quietly questions our notions of forgiveness and faith. Something Better heralds the introduction of a sparkling new talent.

Diane Parrish is originally from the Midwest and now lives with her husband and their elderly Corgi in Connecticut, where they raised their two children. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in various literary journals and magazines. Something Better is her first novel.

Who’s your hero? What television show did you binge-watch, even before “binge-watching” was part of our vernacular? For Julie Marie Wade, the hero is Mary Tyler Moore, the television show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. From its premiere on Nick at Nite in 1992 until the death of its eponymous lead actress in 2017, this nonfiction novella follows our protagonist from her pre-teen years in Seattle through tenure at an academic institution in Miami—a journey modeled in surprising, tender, and humorous ways on Mary’s own journey from Roseburg to Minneapolis, to the WJM newsroom and beyond.

Julie Marie Wade teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami. Her newest projects are The Mary Years (Texas Review Press, 2024), selected by Michael Martone as the winner of the 2023 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize, and the forthcoming Quick Change Artist: Poems (Anhinga Press, 2025), selected by Octavio Quintanilla as the winner of the 2023 Anhinga Poetry Prize.

Essayist and poet Heidi Czerwiec is the author of Crafting the Lyric Essay: Strike a Chord, and the lyric essay collection Fluid States, winner of Pleiades Press’ 2018 Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose, and she is also the co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay, forthcoming in early 2026. She writes and teaches in Minneapolis, where she is Senior Editor for Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies.

Allison Blevins (she/her) is a queer disabled writer. She is the author of Where Will We Live if the House Burns Down?, winner of the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award, and three other full length collections. She is also the author of five chapbooks. Allison is the Founder and Director of Small Harbor Publishing. She lives in Minnesota with her spouse and three children. allisonblevins.com

Tumblehome is structured like a musical fugue, moving in three sections from the west coast of Ireland to London, then to Galway, and back to a small town in Minnesota as it interweaves and deepens themes of home, time and loss. The poems contemplate vast human history and the small space of our lives in distinct voices and episodes, with closely-observed objects – coins, stones, birds, water – reappearing and echoing to create a harmonic poetic travelogue.

Susan Jaret McKinstry, professor of 19th c British literature, narrative theory, journalism, and creative writing at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, has published poems in Plain Songs I & II, The Journal of General Internal Medicine, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Willows Wept Review, Rootstalk, and the Red Wing Poet Artist Collaboration (2020, 2023). Her first chapbook, Tumblehome, came out in fall 2024. Susan yearns for the sea, and has been lucky to teach and write in Ireland, Scotland, Norway, London, Florence, and Moscow.

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Named for a bold pink pigment that fades over time, Leslie Schultz’s vibrant collection Geranium Lake is an ekphrastic extravaganza as well as a meditation on age, time, and beauty. Schultz’s refreshing curiosity is evident as she engages with individual works of art and with larger issues of looking, curation, and display. Schultz’s eye for quirky details and her ear for playful sounds reminds me of that other great ekphrastic poet, Marianne Moore. “I know the struggle to make one / thing true,” reminding us that making art—and making a life—is a long process with endless twists and turns: “for each new page, dozens crumpled and torn.” For Schultz, the process is the point. Geranium Lake teaches us what it means to live a life devoted to apprehending, and making, beauty. This is one collection that won’t lose its luster no matter how much time passes. —Melissa Range, author of Horse and Rider and Scriptorium

Leslie Schultz (Northfield, Minnesota; winonamedia.net) has five collections of poetry; of these, Geranium Lake: Poems on Art and Art-Making (Kelsay Books) is her most recent. Her poetry has appeared widely, in such journals as Poet Lore, Mezzo Cammin, Midwest Quarterly, Naugatuck River Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Pensive, MockingHeart Review. and Blue Unicorn. She serves as a judge for the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. In addition to poems, she publishes photographs, essays, and fiction; makes quilts and soups; and happily mucks about in a garden plagued by shade, rabbits, and walnut trees.

An 1855 treaty set aside thousands of acres to be the permanent home of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, but in order for members to hold this land it required resolute actions and unwavering commitment. This important volume details how an Indigenous community repeatedly stood up for itself and won against overbearing pressures across decades.

The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, known as the non-removeable band, remained steadfast in the face of challenges to the Treaty of 1855, which granted them 61,000 acres of land along the south shore of Lake Mille Lacs for their use indefinitely. Soon Euro-American entrepreneurs encroached on these rights and encouraged Ojibwe families to move elsewhere, but Mille Lacs Band members held firm. They Would Not Be Moved traces the history of a people defending their rights through decades of opposition to their sovereignty and their stewardship. Loggers and settlers claimed parcels, taking advantage of lax governmental oversight. Neighbors may have wished away the Mille Lacs Reservation, but historical maps, contemporary newspaper accounts, and congressional declarations make clear the reservation was never dissolved.

Bruce White opens this essential history with oral traditions of the people at home on the land. He interprets treaty negotiations to outline how each side understood the signed agreements. Local newspapers show that some nearby communities supported the Mille Lacs people, and family narratives relate the challenges and successes of those who stayed to defend their rights. Ultimately, the story of the Mille Lacs Reservation is one of triumph–of courage and survival and successful resistance.

Bruce White has dedicated more than four decades to researching Native history in Minnesota and North America. His books include We Are at Home: Pictures of the Ojibwe People and, with Gwen Westerman, Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota. He has authored expert reports used in court cases testing treaties and the application of laws relating to Native people. His expert report in the 1994 Mille Lacs hunting and fishing case was quoted by Sandra Day O’Connor in her 1999 majority opinion upholding the rights of the Mille Lacs Band to hunt and fish in the ceded area of the Treaty of 1837. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Melanie Benjamin is the former chief executive of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.

Magers & Quinn is proud to welcome back The Mill City Reading Series, a monthly showcase of works-in-progress by MFA in Creative Writing students at the University of Minnesota.

The showcase is free and open to the public. Speakers and genres vary every month. Come support these emerging writers on Sunday, November 24. Other series dates are Sunday, September 29 and Sunday, October 27.

More details about this session’s readers will be available soon!

Join us for the November meeting of the Magers & Quinn Translation Book Club!

This month, we’ll be discussing Nejmeh Khalil Habib’s book A Spring That Did Not Blossom, translated from Arabic by Samar Habib.

Order the book here: https://www.magersandquinn.com/product/A-Spring-That-Did-Not-Blossom-Palestinian-Short-Stories/26581753

Cold winters call for warm kitchens and cookie baking, especially around the holidays. The Ultimate Minnesota Cookie Book, a compendium of Minnesota’s rich baking traditions and innovative recipes, stirs up winning treats from twenty years of the Star Tribune’s popular holiday cookie contest.

Significantly expanding and updating its 2018 predecessor, The Great Minnesota Cookie Book, this collection features thirty-five new recipes, including Grasshoppers and Dark Chocolate Fig Rolls, Tiramisu Twists and Cardamom Cherry Buttons, Diablo Snowballs, Spumoni Squares, and Maple-Roasted Walnut Delights. This sweet-tooth treasure trove of cookie recipes will inspire bakers to discover how many ways flour, sugar, butter, and eggs (plus several unexpected ingredients) can be combined to create new favorites for the holidays—or any time of year.

The best of the best, these contest-winning cookies are accompanied by beautiful photographs and baking tips, insights, and essays about favorite cookie memories. Indulge in these delightful, mouth-watering recipes while Minnesota’s best bakers share stories of cherished holiday traditions, recall memorable cookie moments, and celebrate how baking brings us together.

Lee Svitak Dean was the longtime food editor at the Star Tribune, where she guided the Taste section to multiple James Beard Awards, an Emmy, and national recognition as “Best Food Section.” She is author of Come One, Come All: Easy Entertaining with Seasonal Menus.

Rick Nelson was the Star Tribune’s restaurant critic and food writer for twenty-four years. He is a James Beard Award winner, and his writing has been included in four editions of the annual Best Food Writing anthology, which highlights the finest American food journalism.