University of Minnesota – Duluth students in David Beard’s Minnesota Writers class interviewed local writers and wrote spotlight articles that we will showcase in the coming months.
Miles Spangrud grew up in Minnesota, reading westerns and working construction. He’s a UMD alumnus, and his new book, Flesh and Bone, is forthcoming with Two Gun Publishing.
According to the publisher,
The Fort Pillow Massacre in 1864 was one of the most brutal moments of the Civil War, and for three confederate soldiers it was the beginning path for their lives of hate, redemption, blood, regret, and vengeance.
Barton Asher tries to futilely escape that day by running north to Minnesota. Vauhn Felton and Thacher Kane seek to relive it as often as they can while their insatiable bloodlust grows.
Lives and bodies are ripped apart as these men’s paths progress and collide, and for the citizens in the Front Range town of Shotley, a bloody horror of pure evil is descending.
Written with a raw honesty, Miles Spangrud’s Flesh and Bone is the shocking account of one deadly event in American history, its aftermath of terror and the permanent affects it had on the minds of those who experienced it all.
His next book, tentatively titled Ravenous Waters, focuses on whaling and is closer to the historical fiction genre. According to Miles, “History is brutal, and historical realism pushes a writer towards research.” Old news articles, blue prints, archive work—you need to know the time to write a scene in it. Spangrud encourages new writers to follow the same path, into the archive.
Ella Hatfield is an unkempt writer and artist native to the Midwest. She’s been published in the University of Northwestern’s Inkstone and UMN Duluth’s The Roaring Muse. She received a gold key through the Scholastic Art and Writing Contest in 2022. She specializes in poetry, creative nonfiction, and art she can make as a joke. She dabbles in embroidery, fiction, and most recently, playwriting. When not being massively famous, she spends her time drinking tea, petting dogs, and telling stories to children. If she’s lucky, she’ll never get eaten by a whale, something she fears at all times.
Lake Superior Writers 