The January NorthWords includes:
Notes from the Board Room
Each new day is a new chance, so I’ve been told.
That same thing goes for a new year, only more so. Yes, I’ve already got resolutions ready for how and how often to get more writing done. Journaling counts, so there will be more of that, along with a project I’ve assigned to myself – to make a journal with all the family stories we tell again and again when we get together. It’s something I hope the nieces and nephews and great-great-great nieces and nephews will appreciate.
The good news about turning a new leaf on your writing this year is that Lake Superior Writers are planning great help for your goals. First, we have a FREE (for LSW members) 2-part writing class by LSW Board Member Gina Ramsey teaching you how to find your funny in life and then write it down. Gina has just completed her third anthology of stories about when things go “bad” in a funny way. Her Animal Mayhem: When Wild Things Go Wilder should be available soon. The virtual class Writing Your Humor Stories with Gina starts soon – Jan. 13 & 20. In between Gina’s classes, join us for another free Book Club for Writers event with David Hakensen, author of Her Place in the Woods: The Life of Helen Hoover, on Jan. 15 over Zoom. He’ll be discussing the researching and writing process of writing his latest book.
Then in the coming months, we will have series of presentations on “Approaching Publishers” – with a hybrid publisher (Beaver’s Pond Press), some self-published writers and a tradition publisher (University of Minnesota Press). Plus we’ll have an upcoming Book Club for Writers with Mark Munger, who is both a publisher and a prolific author.
In February, a representative from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council will do a virtual presentation for us about the ARAC upcoming Artist Project Grants and how you can apply.
Do you have some courses or writing circle you’d like to see happen? Let us know at writers@lakesuperiorwriters.com.
It’s a new day – a new year – and there is a lot of writing out there to get done.
– Konnie LeMay, chair on the Lake Superior Writers Board
Lake Superior Writers News & Events
Virtual Writers’ Cafe
January 10 at 9:30 a.m. on Zoom
Join a group of local writers to connect about current writing projects, upcoming events, and general discussion. Virtual Writers’ Café at 9:30 a.m. Don’t forget to use the new registration form on the Virtual Writers’ Cafe page that sets you up for the Cafe through May 2026! This monthly event is free and open to all.
Finding Your Funny: Writing Your Humor Stories with Gina Ramsey
January 13 & 20, 2026 from 6pm-7:30pm via Zoom
If you’ve ever thought, “Someday I’ll write that funny story…” this virtual workshop is your invitation. In this 2-part writing class, join author and LSW Board Member Gina Ramsey in finding the funny in your life and translating that into writing. Perfect for new writers, seasoned storytellers, and anyone who wants to turn everyday chaos into unforgettable comedy. This 2-part course is free for current LSW Members and $40 for non-members which includes a year long LSW membership in the registration price. Registration is limited to 18 people.
Book Club for Writers with David Hakensen, author of Her Place in the Woods: The Life of Helen Hoover
January 15, 2026 at 6:30pm via Zoom
During the late 1950s through the early 1970s, Helen Hoover’s stories and essays of life in the wilderness on northern Minnesota’s Gunflint Lake, published in popular magazines and several bestselling books (including The Gift of the Deer in 1966 and A Place in the Woods in 1969), found millions of fans and earned her accolades alongside nature writers like Sigurd Olson, Rachel Carson, Sally Carrighar, and Calvin Rutstrum. Hoover’s own unlikely history of leaving a corporate career in Chicago for a small cabin without electricity or running water—with no interest in hunting or fishing—is just one chapter of the remarkable life that David Hakensen describes in Her Place in the Woods. This first complete biography illuminates how Helen Hoover (1910–1984) made a place for herself and for countless readers in, as she put it, the world of her time. Read more at the University of Minnesota Press website.
Writing Circles
Writing Circles are where writers of a particular genre like general fiction, memoir, fantasy, mystery and more can gather together to talk about writing and get feedback on their works-in-progress! We will be announcing new Writing Circles as volunteer leaders organize their groups. If you are interested in starting a Writing Circle — either online or in person in the region — please email writers@lakesuperiorwriters.org.
Literary Events
Meet & Greet/Signing: Karen Engstrom – Shadowland
January 10, 2026 from 1pm-3pm at Zenith Bookstore, 318 N Central Ave. Duluth, MN
Please join Zenith Bookstore as we welcome Minnesota author Karen Engstrom for a Meet and Greet on Saturday, January 10th 1-3 PM. She will be sharing her new mystery book, Shadowland. It is set in northern Minnesota and is second in the series after The Fox. Kathy will talk with readers one-on-one about her book and personally sign copies of it. This is a great book to cozy up with under a blanket and read on these chilly winter days – don’t forget the hot chocolate!
Karen Engstrom writes short stories and historical fiction. The Fox, the first in the series, and now Shadowland are part of a trilogy set in 1950’s northern Minnesota. Her short stories have been published in Minnesota Stories, A Collection of 28 Fiction Stories about the State We Love; Minnesota Not So Nice, Eighteen Tales of Bad Behavior; WINK Magazine; and The Star Tribune. Karen has several projects on the constantly intrusive back burner, including the translation of her father’s journals from Swedish to English, an illustrated cookie cookbook, and a unique family keepsake year less calendar. When she’s not writing, Karen spends time making handcrafted fountain pen ink for a family company, Anderillium Inks. She is a native of Illinois and currently lives in Independence, MN, with her longtime partner and their ever-napping dog.
Zenith Penguin Storytime!
January 11, 2026 from 11am-11:30am at Zenith Bookstore, 318 N Central Ave. Duluth, MN
Join us for our January Storytime on Sunday, January 11th 11:00-11:30 AM. Our theme will be PENGUINS! That means penguin books, penguin snacks, penguin crafts, and who knows what else! This event is free and geared toward 1st grade and younger, but all are welcome. If you have a penguin stuffed animal or anything “penguinny”, please bring it with you to show others. Happy Penguinary!
Book Launch for George Morrison: Modern Artist
January 15, 2026 from 6:30pm-7:30pm at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, 800 Riverview Dr., Winona, MN
Minnesota Marine Art Museum Third Thursday book event, featuring the Native American Lives Series title, “George Morrison: Modern Artist.” Author Staci Drouillard and illustrator Tashia Hart will share their stories about how this book project was created as well as shed light on the incredible career of George Morrison, Grand Portage Anishinaabe artist, the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Native American Lives Series, a joint publishing effort between the Minnesota Humanities Center and Lerner publishing, shares real life stories of Dakota and Ojibwe leaders, artists, activists, and elders who have been influential for their communities and have shaped Minnesota and national history.
Link to register: https://www.mnhum.org/event/winona-third-thursday-mmam/
Telling the Hard Stuff: A Confessional Poetry Workshop with Ellen Lord
January 17, 2026 from 1pm-3pm at Hessel School House 3206 W Cedar St., Hessel, MI
Confessional poetry asks us to speak the truths we often keep hidden. In this two hour workshop, we’ll explore how vulnerability becomes art, how the “hard stuff” transforms into language that resonates, and how craft supports courage. Together, we’ll create a safe, supportive space to write the poems that demand to be written. Whether you write poems on the page or songs for the stage, this workshop welcomes artists who turn lived experience into works of written art. Poets and songwriters alike will find tools for shaping raw emotion into work that connects and endures.
Cost: $40 (includes autographed book)
Construction Ahead with Mary Mack
January 18, 2026 from 2pm-4pm at Honest Dog Books, 40 S 2nd St., Bayfield, WI
Professional writers read works in progress before making final tweaks. A light-hearted, short-winded event. One audience member gets to read a paragraph or poem they’ve been working on. Non-writers welcome and encouraged–please!
Winter Reading Gathering with Duluth Public Library
January 18, 2026 from 1pm-3pm at Dovetail Café & Marketplace 1917 W Superior St., Duluth, MN
Settle into the season at Duluth Public Library’s Winter Reading Gathering for a relaxed afternoon of quiet reading, warmth, and community at Dovetail Cafe and Marketplace.
Bring your current read or discover something new while you enjoy some peaceful reading time in the company of fellow book lovers. While you’re here, sign up for DPL’s Winter Reading Program and enter our raffle for a cozy prize!
Winter is better when we read together!
https://duluthlibrary.events.mylibrary.digital/event?id=264202
Meet & Greet/Signing: Mark Langenfeld – Wisdom of the Woods
January 31, 2026 from 11am-1pm at Zenith Bookstore, 318 N Central Ave. Duluth, MN
Join us for a very special January Meet & Greet! On Saturday, January 31st 11-1 PM Mark Langenfeld will share one-on-one with readers about his newly released book, Wisdom from the Woods: A Year of Gentle Guidance from Mother Nature (Llewellyn). Plus, he will personally autograph it for you. This book is your perfect companion for the new year.
In Wisdom from the Woods: A Year of Gentle Guidance from Mother Nature, you will discover fifty-two inspiring personal stories, each embodying one of Mother Nature’s practical lessons that you can implement weekly for greater wellness and joy. Told in Mark Langenfeld’s kind, humorous voice, these stories are designed to cultivate the motivation and encouragement needed to unearth buried treasures within yourself. Mark’s keen observations of the natural world offer a unique perspective on self-development and psychological well-being. The resulting insights skillfully connect these inner journeys to your relationship with nature. Learn to make peace with the storms in your head, nurture yourself like a snowy owl, and remove emotional thorns. With the easy-to-understand wisdom of bears, ravens, cats, and more, this contemplative book gently guides you along your own path to happiness and enlightenment, one observation at a time.
https://www.facebook.com/share/1DGE1kQUUB/
Opportunities
Pencil to Paper Zoom Classes Point of View and Structure
Six weeks starting January 8 from 12pm-2pm over Zoom
This year’s Pencil to Paper delves into the intricacies of point of view and structure, things that make or break your fiction. Whether you’re just beginning, near the end of a project, or somewhere in-between, this class is for you. You’ll learn ways to tighten prose, sharpen story-telling skills, and get your manuscript to the finish line.
Cost: $240
Sign up at Bluecottageagency@gmail.com
Call for Poems, Nonfiction Writing, and Artwork: “Going the Distance”
Deadline: January 10
Students enrolled in classes at the UM Duluth and at the USF Quito, Ecuador will edit and create a collection of creative works (visual art, poems and nonfiction writing) about “Going the Distance.”
The theme for the project takes it inspiration from the incredible distances that can separate us from our neighbors in both the United States and Ecuador. Rural areas are sometimes sparsely populated. For example, rural Cook County, Minnesota’s population density is 1.8 residents per square mile. Residents of rural areas are often miles from affordable access to fresh foods, healthcare, and other public services. Using Minnesota as our example again, some rural residents, close to the Canadian border and the Superior National Forest, are more than an hour, one way, by car, from a clinic providing basic heathcare. In many parts of the US and Ecuador, one must “go the distance” to have access to the services essential for life. In this sense, one must “go the distance” for basic survival.
The theme from the project, though, also takes inspiration from the metaphor’s association with never giving up. Living one’s best life often entails “going the distance.” Whether we mean setting a goal to run a marathon or completing what oncologists call “the cancer journey,” one must “go the distance.” Achieving any goal, from earning a university degree to creating a work of art, involves “going the distance.”
Submissions should be less than 5,000 words (20 typed pages) for essays, memoir, and journals; poetry submissions should include no more than five individual poems, and no one poem can be more than five pages in length. Artworks in any digital format are accepted. Because of our unique collaboration between our universities in Duluth, Minnesota and in Quito, Ecuador, we can this year accept submissions in both English and Spanish.
Submissions will be reviewed by students in Ecuador, in Duluth, or both. Additional evaluation will be offered by faculty with related expertise.
Authors retain all copyright of their work; we seek only permission for first publication in the collection, which will live online, for free, on the Minnesota Libraries Publishing Project and as book on Amazon. Previous collections in this series can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0D43N82L8/about?ccs_id=273532a7-3a5f-4f69-af05-ce04ee8d4930
Please submit your work to: dbeard@d.umn.edu by January 10, 2026. In the Subject line, please indicate >Submission for “Going the Distance”<
Writers’ Monthly Get Together
January 17, 2026, from 10am-11am at Foxes & Fireflies Booksellers, 1401 Tower Ave. Superior, WI
Looking for a place to talk about writing, share writerly advice, and hang out with other writers? Join fellow writers at Foxes & Fireflies Booksellers on the 3rd Saturday of each month from 10-11 a.m. in a spacious conference room, located at the back of the bookstore.
Refreshments aren’t available onsite, but feel free to bring in your own beverages and snacks if you wish. All writers are welcome. There is no fee or requirement to join anything, just a chance to be part of a writing community.
Learn To Write Your Humor Stories Workshop
January 24, 2025 from 1pm-4pm at Foxes & Fireflies Booksellers
Learn To Write Your Humor Stories Workshop will be held on January 24th from 1-4 at Foxes & Fireflies Booksellers! We will discuss writing challenges and breaking writers block, observing and documenting the funny in life, the components of crafting a compelling story, and tips on continued writing success. Notebooks, pens, swag, refreshments, and laughter are included.
Registration is $47. Limited space available!
Register at this link: https://pci.jotform.com/form/250247150123140
KUDOS – News about our members
David Beard recently wrote a feature article for the new issue of Open Rivers about Lake Superior that includes poems by Bamford, Montgomery, Packa; essays by Moravec, Broman, Lasher, Moore, Lane, O’Reilly; art by Villiard, Adams, and Sue-Lo Twu.
Deborah K Frontiera‘s book, Douglass Houghton Michigan’s Pioneer Geologist, Doctor and Teacher, will be released Jan. 1, 2026. A biography written for upper elementary and middle school students, it can also be enjoyed by adults. She has been invited to do an author event in Fredonia, NY (where Houghton grew up) in April. Her publisher, Modern History Press, has asked her to be series editor for more books about Michigan’s many heroes, men and women. authorsden.com/deborahkfrontiera
Katharine Johnson‘s long awaited sequel to Born in a Red Canoe (a finalist for a MN Book Award) is finally out. In Born Under the Blazing Comet, tragedy sets Luna on another journey of survival. Besides saving comet-born children like herself, she must find a place she can call home and a purpose for her own life.
Cathy LaForge Tonkin has one of her many short stories published in one of the ‘Investigative Interests’ publications titled ‘Voiceless Visitors’.
R. T. Lund‘s book, Avenging the Dead, the third and final installment of a Lake Superior Trilogy has been released by Little Creek Press and is available for purchase.
With the Christmas column that will be published in the Duluth News Tribune December 24th, Claudia Myers will have had 275 of her “humorous observations” columns published by the DNT. They appear every other Wednesday, hard copy and online, and have done since January 2021. The columns have inspired her two self-published books, “The Storyteller” and “The Storyteller Has More to Say”.
Lake Superior Writers Blog
Lake Superior Writers invites members to submit guest posts for possible inclusion on our blog. Please visit our blog information page for more details.
Our blog currently features Minnesota Writers Spotlight on Margi Preus
Lake Superior Writers 