Dorset and the Mudville Sundae

Yesterday my wife and I went to Dorset, Minnesota, for an authors and writers festival. I got to meet a bunch of authors and signed some books. The bookstore was great and it was great to meet Sally at Sister Wolf and Jen who runs the Beagle Books store in Park Rapids. Even cooler was [...]

Read Full Post »

Take a Gander

Yesterday I went to the Minnesota Educational Media Organization (MEMO) conference in Rochester, Minnesota, joining enough other authors to form a rugby team with reserves. It was a pleasure to meet the members of MEMO and my fellow writers, but the only photographs I have are of geese statues. These guys are all over the [...]

Read Full Post »

Conferences are for the birds

Two weeks ago I went to the Minnesota Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators conference, and saw a wild turkey on the side of the road. A wild turkey is probably not that peculiar a sight, but not one you expect to see driving from Minneapolis to St Paul. This weekend I went to [...]

Read Full Post »

The Five Funniest People in the Twin Cities

For the last few weeks I’ve been going to a comedy club about once a week as my friend Brandi ascended through the rounds of the Funniest Person in the Twin Cities contest, sponsored by the ACME Comedy Club. She went to the final round last night and got fifth place, which is pretty impressive. [...]

Read Full Post »

The corner joints

Since 2001 I’ve lived in the nicest part of probably the most maligned part of Minneapolis, “North Minneapolis,” really a composite of two communities–”Near North” and “Camden.” More information than you need, probably, but “NoMi” as it has recently come to call itself is in a time of tumult. It was the hardest hit in [...]

Read Full Post »

Highway 61 Revisited

You might have heard Bob Dylan singing a song once about Highway 61, which back in the day ran from New Orleans to Grand Portage on the Minnesota/Ontario border, passing by Bobby Z’s hometown of Hibbing. Interstate 35 deprecated the relevance of Highway 61 but there’s still a stretch of 61 from Duluth to Grand [...]

Read Full Post »

The Other Guys

I’ve recently been on a tour of readings by the other guys, i.e., other guys who write baseball books for kids, which by chance have been lately blowing through Minneapolis like the smell of lilacs in May. First on the miniature tour was Mick Cochrane, whom I’ve blogged about before. He’s a local guy, back [...]

Read Full Post »

Shadow Thieves: The Play

Yesterday we saw the theatrical adaptation of Anne Ursu’s Shadow Thieves by Stages Theater Company in Hopkins, Minnesota. Shadow Thieves is a fantasy series where the Greek myths are true, English teachers are heroes, kittens are sagacious and courageous creatures capable of saving the universe, cephalopods are dapper and gentlemanly, and the greatest evils are [...]

Read Full Post »

Uncle Franky’s: Truth is Better than Fiction

There are at least five scenes in Mudville in which hot dogs are consumed and commented on. It’s a baseball novel, after all. One of these scenes feature what I call in the book as a “divey” place on the outskirts of town called Uncle Franky’s. The hot dogs there are good, Roy decides, especially [...]

Read Full Post »

ALA Midwinter Meeting

ALA is the American Library Association, and their Midwinter Meeting is what it sounds like. It’s like a conference with more committee meetings. This year’s was in Denver, sharing the Colorado Convention Center with a sportsmen’s exhibition. For the most part you could tell who was attached to which conference by whether they had books [...]

Read Full Post »