About the Authors and Editors
Jainab Tabassum Banu is a doctoral candidate and graduate teaching assistant in the Department of English at North Dakota State University. She is a bilingual poet and writer. She writes poetry, nonfiction prose, academic papers and newspaper columns. She is from Bangladesh, which has a warm and humid weather, exactly the opposite of where she lives in the U.S. now. She weaves her poem “This Land of Windchills and Snowstorms in not Mine” with the beads of her diasporic, melancholic words. From weather to food, and wind to people, her heart longs for the warmth of her homeland on a snowy, chilly day. The poet’s migratory soul sings the nostalgic lyre in a gloomy tune like the Black-and-white warbler. But unlike warblers, she cannot fly to her homeland!
Autumn Bestgen wrote the poem “The Quiet North” about how the birds migrate from the north to the south. She decided to write about birds because they are one of the most common forms of migration. She talks about how silent it feels in the winter without all of the birds around. She was a first-year student at UMD when she wrote the poem; she went to Sauk Rapids-Rice High School before deciding to go to Duluth. She is a double major in Communication and Journalism with a minor in Photography. She has written many stories for The Bark, UMD’s school news organization, and Lake Voice News, but this is her first poem to ever be published. She hopes you enjoy her poem just as much as she enjoyed writing it!
Dr. Louise Beyea wanted to explore the challenges the extreme weather poses for people who live without permanent shelter in Duluth. Like wildlife that moves with the changing seasons, unhoused persons are forced to migrate to survive. Beyea is a retired veterinarian who spent the bulk of her career practicing emergency medicine. She was also the consulting veterinarian at the Lake Superior Zoo for many years. She’s migrated multiple times in her own life and career, living in at least twelve different homes. She holds dual degrees in animal science and journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and is a distinguished graduate of Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. She received her MFA in creative writing from Lindenwood University in 2025.
rintu borah is pursuing a PhD in philosophy and sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, India. He works on migration theory, citizenship and borderlands, and caste in India, and his work has featured in Indian Cultural Forum, The Wire, The Telegraph, Firstpost, Borders and Belonging CERC Migration. His poem in this collection was penned on the day the National Register of Citizenship (NRC) of India made 1.9 million residents of Assam stateless. The poet received several panic calls from people he knew who were affected. This poem sprang from his despair and hopelessness. The poet sought to underline that being in the world is largely about being with others, a never-ending search for something outside of oneself.
As a person born and (mostly) raised in Duluth but now a Dutch citizen, Matthew James‘ essay explores ideas of home, family and identity through the lens of a U.S. Thanksgiving dinner event in Belgium. James contributes regularly to the website Perfect Duluth Day with posts that often focus on different aspects of Duluth history. Some of those posts involve visiting places in Europe with direct connections to Duluth. As part of the events surrounding the Thanksgiving weekend, the essay recounts visits to the birthplaces of Daniel Greysolon Sieur Du Luth and Louis Hennepin as a means of reflecting on migration in the context of colonialism.
According to Kathryn Jezisek Copeland aka Kathryn (Kat) L Copeland, “We are the world’s people, there are no strangers.” Copeland is an advocate for youth and elderly who lives in west Texas. “Longtime business experience. Since 2008 organizer of arts events and open mics for all ages. Visual and written word artist, published internationally. Art is life.”
Amanda Dunlavy’s story is about familial connection and the life events that brought her past relatives to the United States. It is a story about how the past is always a part of the future. Amanda is a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. She will graduate with her bachelor’s degree in writing at the end of December 2024. Her other publications include A Final Offering, a suspense piece published online through UW-Superior’s Nemadji Review, and newspaper articles about her local community and events.
Ethan Ellerstein finds inspiration in migration narratives deeply rooted in his family’s history. In his reflective piece, “Weaving Threads of Resilience, Identity, and Discovery,” Ethan intricately unravels the journey of his ancestors from the heart of Poland to the bustling streets of New York City, navigating the horrors of the Holocaust and the complexities of forging new beginnings. Ethan’s storytelling serves as a bridge, connecting individual experiences to broader themes of resilience and human connection. As he continues to explore the depths of his family’s past, Ethan invites readers to embark on a journey of introspection, reminding us of the profound impact of personal narratives on shaping our collective understanding of identity and belonging.
Lee W. Erna is a graduate of UMD (Go Bulldogs!), where Joseph Maiolo was their teacher. They spent many years in many occupations—a reporter for a small-town newspaper, dog obedience teacher, veterinary receptionist, and travel agent—providing a wealth of experiences for writing. After earning a Master’s in Teaching English as a Second Language from St. Cloud State University, they spent some time teaching in India). Erna currently teaches writing classes at North Dakota State College of Science and has started another novel. “I hope to someday return to the North Shore for good!”
Sandy Feinstein’s poetry has appeared this academic year in Willows Wept, Pivot, The engine(idling, and Seems. Her poems in this collection form a map of migration through time as well as space. She wrote “Migration: Chickadees” nearly twenty years ago (2005) during the fall semester while “Advisory” and “Colorado” were written as part of a sabbatical project. “Colorado” is part of a collection focusing on “Pilgrimage” (the first section rewrites Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; “Colorado” is from the second part, my pilgrimage cross country; and “Advisory” is from the last section, pilgrimage as related to nature).
Lisa Fitzpatrick received a BS in Russian with a business minor from Georgetown University, Washington, DC; an associate degree in graphic design from Massachusetts College of Art & Design in Boston; and a Masters of Science in rhetoric and technical communication from Michigan Tech in Houghton, Michigan. Lisa is the director of two emerging technology labs (Viz Lab and MMAD Lab); additionally she is an experienced Russian, Spanish and French translator, and also speaks enough Finnish and Turkish to get by. She wrote two guides for Boston medical staff about Haitian and Hispanic cultural beliefs. She founded Duluth Climate Mobilization, which got Duluth to declare a climate emergency and climate action plan. She received the UMD Staff Sustainability Inspiration Award on April 12, 2024.
Editor Greta Gottwalt has lived a perfectly average, happy, midwestern life in Minnesota. She finished her associate of art at Inver Hills Community College and now lurks the hallways at the University of Minnesota Duluth as a writing major. She is very involved with the Newman Center at UMD and enjoys playing Dungeons and Dragons. She was excited about including all these different migration stories in this collection.
Jim Johnson’s grandparents were Finnish Immigrants. His books Wolves, Dovetailed Corners, The Coop Label describe their experiences leaving their homeland and coming to a new world for the opportunity of a better life. This is an experience Americans, somewhere in their family history, share.
Meridel Kahl retired in 2013 after 45 years of teaching. She spent the last 27 years of her career at The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota. She discovered poetry late in life and is grateful for the daily inspiration she finds in the many moods of Lake Superior. Her poems have appeared in WritersRead, The Talking Stick, The Peninsula Pulse, Amethyst and Agate: Poems of Lake Superior, The Thunderbird Review, The Avocet, Bramble, Leaves of Peace, and Bringing Joy.
In retirement, Chris Marcotte has become an award-winning writer of historical fiction and nonfiction. Their work can be found in Talking Stick, Lake Country Journal magazine and other national journals. They are honored to be a recipient of a 2023-2024 Minnesota Arts Board Grant, as well as local arts grants and artist residencies during the past five years.
Editor and author Rachel Mercer is a published writer and avid reader. Passionate about communication, she was a teaching assistant for Communication courses in college. She also served as one of the past presidents of the Writing Club at the University of Minnesota-Duluth during her education there. Rachel is an abundantly creative individual, and is often wrapped up in some sort of writing/ art project. Through themes of urbanization and adaptation, “We’re City Birds Now” is Rachel’s exploration of migration in the form of the immigrant experience. Like Mushroom adapts to his environment, Giuseppina and Patrizia try to do the same. Rachel wanted this parallel to reflect the connections between humans and animals as they are forced to survive. For her, this story was an echo of what she believes to be the beginnings of the “American Dream” in the United States.
Liz Minette‘s poems in this anthology explore migrations of family, the migrations of inheritance or give away, and the migrations of between here and there, wherever that is.
Erin O’Daniel (uses any/all pronouns) has a BA from Warren Wilson College (Social Justice/
Humanities). Erin worked on an MFA in Children’s and Young Adult Literature at Hamline University. Erin shares her/their/his work at erinkodaniel.com and has read performed + published in myriad places for two decades to support reproductive justice. Erin’s migration experience centers queering (as in disrupting the status quo) relationship and pleasure activism. Born a southerner (Miami), who survived sex-ed in Texas (Dallas), and now loves on Lake Superior (Duluth), Erin writes about a Queer Intimacy with Place that allows her/them/him to migrate towards appreciation- with the reimagined. “Queering, deBunking, Migrating” is a piece about recognizing the oppressive nature of social norms (in conventional relationships) and challenging colonizer/settler sexuality (by queering intimacy). Erin sees migration as an act of collective liberation for all queer and BIPOC bodies.
Alycia Roller is a collector of stories and passionate writer. She finds inspiration in the people she’s met around the world and in nature, seeing a connection to humanity in both. Her stories have led to funding for various organizations and brought awareness to many issues. When she’s not writing her memoir, Alycia is absorbing the imagination of her daughter Juniper. She currently lives in Northern Minnesota. In the summer of 2017, she traveled to Northern Uganda to meet with a man named Uche Izoura who works with South Sudanese Refugees. “In a matter of days, I heard incredible accounts of resilience and pain, stories that would cling to me like the African red dirt. I was never the same. My new friends were living normal lives when war came, and they had to flee to a safe border. Working with Uche has been an eye-opening experience to the ways we label people and dehumanize their experience. The word refugee invokes various responses and leads to walls being built, physically and metaphorically.” Her work in this collection is a story about movement, something that affects millions of people because sometimes the safest option is to run.
Editor and author Katelyn Rowe is an inspiring writer and storyteller currently working towards her Bachelors degree in Writing Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth with an end goal of working as a publisher. Although she doesn’t typically find herself writing poetry, she took this project as an opportunity to express and challenge herself in a new way. She strives to write things that inspire people as much as she has been inspired by literature throughout her life. She hopes to one day be a successful published author who is on the frontlines of encouraging young writers to pursue their dreams.
Editor and cover designer Valencia Ruprecht is an artist and a writer who is inspired most by empathy and the small details in life.
“The Escape” is inspired by an unfortunately personal story of a friend who was escaping a relationship rife with instances of domestic violence. This poem was an attempt to convey the concern that comes with the journey to migrating via leaving the old behind whilst not knowing exactly where to travel next, where to find solace and a new beginning. Jeremy Simpson is an attorney, teacher, and musician who holds his BA in English from Kennesaw State University, his MA in English from Georgia State University, and his JD from Mercer School of Law. Jeremy has been published in The Sucarnochee Review, The Taj Mahal Review, The YLD Review, and Simpson was awarded the State Bar of Georgia’s “Tax Student of the Year” Award in 2023. Jeremy lives in Kennesaw, Georgia with his wife and their cat, Jack.
Editor and author John Joseph Skrip has been writing since he was four years old. He has been writing coherently since 2018, depending on who you ask. When he’s not working as an editor or thinking deeply about the meaning of life and who he specifically wants to be on a daily basis, he can be found frolicking around Duluth and musing about comic books. Currently he works in a library and archives, and, in his free time, he writes short stories about irritable detectives and posts on his blog, www.TooManyServingsOfJohn.com, about movies he likes and random thoughts he may have.
On a cold, windy day in October 2022, Victoria Lynn Smith spotted a motionless monarch tucked inside a pink cosmos flower and wondered: Why isn’t it moving? Why hasn’t migrated south? Curiosity inspired her, and research enlightened her. In addition to writing about nature, Smith writes short fiction and essays. In the 2023 Hal Prize fiction contest, her story “Newlyweds in Front of a Lilac Bush” won first place, and her story “New Boy” won third. Her work has appeared in Brevity Blog, 8142 Review, 45th Parallel, Rathalla Literary Review, Nemadji Review, and Mason Street Review, among others. She earned a BA in English and history from the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Victoria Lynn Smith lives near Lake Superior, a source of inspiration, mystery, and weather worthy of gothic tales.
Harshita Srivastava is a poet and research scholar from Kolkata, India. Currently, she is a Junior Research Fellow at Christ University, Bangalore. She has a published volume of poetry from Writers Workshop titled Corona Diary, Before and Beyond (2020) which was shortlisted for India Bibliography. Harshita has been a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2022-23) and holds a Master’s degree in English Literature (from St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata) with a gold medal. The poem “Shifting Bricks, Plaster and Paint” is a part of Harshita’s unpublished manuscript of her second volume of poems. This poem deals with the idea of re-location from the house one has spent their childhood into a new space that is initially devoid of any memories, and how this migration is processed through the various stages of moving.
Leah Wenger’s expressive poetry is inspired by the small moments in life that often go overlooked. Her series of Haibuns are an exploration of a poetic form originating in Japan as a type of travel journal. Written during the fall of 2020, as the world navigated a mass migration away from familiarity, these works capture the moments of travel within oneself: strangeness nestled amongst the comfortable. Leah’s poetry has been used as worship resources in the Mennonite and United Methodist churches, and has been published in Eastern Mennonite University publications, The Weathervane and The Phoenix.
Marlene Wisuri is a visual artist and writer. She is the author or co-author of over a dozen books and many articles dealing with Ojibwe history and culture, immigration, and local history. She holds a MFA degree from the University of Massachusetts and is the recipient of two Minnesota Book Awards and grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board. As Chair of the Sami Cultural Center of North America, she has done research, exhibit preparation, and writing about the Sami and the Alaska Reindeer Project. Her latest publication is 10 x 10: Photographs and Essays. Her studio and home overlook the north shore of Lake Superior in Duluth Township.
Paula Zwicke writes from the Lake Superior region of northern Wisconsin where she led a project-based learning high school from an outdoor classroom in the school forest. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Ruffed Grouse Society magazine, Wisconsin Outdoor News, Price County Review, Wisconsin English Journal, and elsewhere. She placed 13th in the 2021 Writer’s Digest Personal Essay Awards and 1st place in the 2022 Lake Superior Writers’ Contest with her essay, “Migration.” It is the story of a narrator’s parallel journey through the changes in her own seasons with loon migration–the loss, sorrow, and hopefulness in the rhythm of life.