David Beard
Our Changing Relationship to Lake Superior, 1975-2025
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald. (Image via the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
A new collection of works by Duluthians speaks to their changing relationship to Lake Superior. I am including the intro, which I wrote, below. For more, visit openrivers.lib.umn.edu. (more…)
Call for writing and artwork for ‘Going the Distance’
Duluth Publishing Project, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota Duluth and Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador, is compiling a collection of creative works — visual art, poems and nonfiction writing — on the theme of “Going the Distance.” Students enrolled in classes at the colleges will edit and create the final product. (more…)
When Duluth was Country
Duluth was once a Midwestern center for country-western music. I’m going to share some fragments of it, and I want readers to help me with three things: 1. Are any PDDers alive who remember these things? 2. Are they still rolling and just not on my radar? These come from a book I bought at Gabriel’s back in the day. (more…)
Save Our Signs: Grand Portage Monument and Voyageurs Park
My colleague is curating photos for the Save Our Signs project, and just heard Grand Portage National Monument and Voyageurs National Park have basically no signs recorded yet. (more…)
Author, artist and entrepreneur Richard Comely spoke at UMD
I’m tired.
I woke early on Wednesday to Zoom briefly with the Arrowhead Regional Development Commission on a an exciting upcoming project (this is a teaser sentence for a future post) and then to meet Richard Comely at Perk Place Coffeehouse. (more…)
Minnesota Poets — but who are the Duluthians?
I’ve been going through public library discards, looking for Duluth authors in the mix. (I teach a course in Minnesota authors that leans hard into Duluth authors.) (more…)
Duluth artist on view in Fergus Falls
I was in Fergus Falls at Kaddatz Galleries. There, nestled amongst the regional artists with increasingly national reputation, was an exhibition of student work. And nestled therein was a Duluthian, Reagan Cheshire. (more…)
A View from Montreal Pier: The R/V Blue Heron
Not long after I disembarked from the research vessel Blue Heron in June, it was announced that a new form of life had been discovered inside the propeller shaft. A life form, hidden inside the extreme environment of the engine, cold and dark — it feels like how the Venom movies started. It feels maybe a little Lovecraftian, maybe, this shapeless life form, in the black goo.
My colleagues laugh at me for thinking in such melodramatic terms. But really, ever since that ride, I just keep learning how cripplingly limited my understanding of Lake Superior, and of our relationship to it, really was. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it.
Finding the Blue Heron
The Blue Heron is docked in Superior on Montreal Pier, a research facility maintained by the University of Wisconsin-Superior. The site itself is a weird mishmash of history. The Montreal Pier, Quebec Pier and Allouez Bay are all a reminder of the deep affect French Jesuits and fur traders had on the Superior region.
By the early twentieth century, these piers were incredible sites of commerce. Superior was in competition with the Minneapolis area as the center of wheat and grain production, and several major companies built grain elevators and mills on the piers — Lake Superior Mills, Anchor, Listman, Cargill, and Belt Line. Most of these structures were destroyed in fires. (more…)
Rob Adams making new art in Florida
Rob Adams was most notable in Duluth for his art installation representing shipwrecks on the Great Lakes using Battleship game boards. Catch up with the former Duluthian in this radio interview about his new exhibit at Florida Mining Gallery in Jacksonville, Florida.
One more contribution to the literary history of Duluth
My students were busy over the past two years. Tales of Migration is the second of their book projects, a collection of migration tales that include submissions from the students, from Duluth, and from around the world.
I am looking for themes for the spring 2026 project. I am oscillating between calling for an anthology, like this, or for calling for chapbooks and short essays and comics that could be published by my students, chapbook style.
Not just excavating, but creating the literary history of Duluth
I post a lot about books found at the Duluth Public Library sale, or at the former Gabriel’s books, as part of the general project in my class to excavate the literary history of Duluth and to work with the UMD archives to preserve it. (more…)
North Country Cadence in the literary history of the Duluth
For some reason, the Duluth Public Library decided to deaccession some of its reference Minnesota collection. (more…)
Arrowhead Regional Arts Council 2025 Grant Recipients
The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council has announced its most recent grant recipients. (more…)
Rag Mag: More Duluth Literary History Hunting
This post, also looking for resources and connections for my fall 2025 course in Minnesota Writers, has two asks. (more…)
‘Cottage Core’ tea at the Loch
I recently attended an afternoon tea at the Loch. It was a joyful experience. (more…)
Writers, Artists and a Culture of Creativity in the Loch
Chance Lasher and Justin O. Rose meet to talk writing, art and creativity at the Loch game shop and cafe.
I visited the Loch on June 6 for an event celebrating and cultivating creativity. The event was sponsored by the Duluth Failed Poets Society. (more…)
Poets from Minnesota in ‘Black Flag’ — but were any of them from Duluth?
At the Duluth Public Library sale, it seems that the Minnesota Poetry collection was weeded, deaccessioned.
I think that’s a loss. (more…)
Discovering Colleen Baldrica’s ‘Tree Spirited Woman’
In “Minnesota Writers Spotlight on Colleen Baldrica,” Kaelyn Hvidsten writes about discovering Baldrica’s Tree Spirited Woman tucked away in a Canal Park art shop.
Writing Communities: The Writing Group at Sara’s Table
Calyx Books was a significant creative force in shaping poetic life in Duluth. These two pages, from a Calyx Press book discussed in the Duluth Budgeteer, are a kind of evidence of that impact, creating and manifesting literary community. (more…)
Coffee Landing Radio Theater premiere revives classic radio
Readers of Perfect Duluth Day know I am enchanted with International Falls and the Icebox Radio Theater. I write about it for the Duluth News Tribune too. For more than a decade, the Icebox Radio Theater has focused on the theater experience. The audio dramas developed under Jeffrey Adams’ artistic direction have been funny, moving, and technically well-executed. Some have won awards, including the Ambie Awards for Excellence in Audio. But, in many ways, as a podcast, the Icebox has focused on the theater and missed out on the charm of radio. (more…)
Minnesota Authors: Reading Like a Writer (Margaret D. Kennedy and Winnifred Elliott)
This Fall, I’m teaching Minnesota Authors: Reading Like a Writer (a subtitle I stole from my colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Superior). The goal of the class is to read like a writer, which is to say to be less interested in “what a text means” (that’s reading like a reader), but instead “how a text works” (that’s reading like a writer).
We also look at the mechanics of writing and publishing. The works of Michael Fedo are a gift in this. He has written extensively about being a writer. (more…)
Reconstructing the Poetry History of the Arrowhead: Meda Casler and Edith Addison Thomas
I am reconstructing the Poetry History of the Arrowhead as I prepare to teach my Minnesota Writers class. Today, I want to ask you whether you know anything about Meda Casler or Edith Addison Thomas. (more…)
My heart is on fire for this lost Duluth poet
Elvira T. Johnson was a leader among poets. As I reconstruct the history of the Arrowhead in poets, she seems to be a voice I need to reconstruct. (more…)
Literary History of Duluth: Helen Jenswold Dahle
Google tells me John “Jack” Dahle was “born in Duluth, Minnesota, to Minnesota State Senator Clarence Arthur and Helen Jenswold Dahle.” But I have no idea who Helen Jenswold Dahle is. Does anyone else have any ideas? As I build a literary history of Duluth, I am missing information about this author. (more…)
Duluth Literary History
As I prep to teach a Minnesota Writers class again this fall, I am working through little resources and breadcrumb trails.
William A. Sommers has been subject to my writing here before. Here is his page from Minnesota Landscapes. I wonder if anyone has a story to tell? (more…)