Holding space is Erin Coughlin Hollowell’s superpower. Knowing what writers need - and what they don’t need - is what Erin does best as she directs Storyknife, a unique writer’s retreat for women in Homer, Alaska. 

In a land of giants, Amy Stearns brims with ideas both big and small.  Committed to place and the people who animate place, Amy spearheads Project 412, an ambitious placemaking enterprise in Detroit Lakes that builds community through public art experiences, entrepreneurial ignition, and making good on hometown hype by “Doing Cool Sh*t.”

Maggie Lorenz (Dakota, Ojibwe, Irish, German) has a “heart connection” to Wakan Tipi Awanyankapi, also known as Lower Phalen Creek Project, on the East Side of St. Paul. Her nonprofit organization’s impact is bringing about “healing justice for the land, the water, the plants, and for the animals and the winged and finned relatives” of this place. And while she may walk in two worlds, her vision unites the area’s original inhabitants, visitors to the area, and her many neighbors who are helping her steward the sacred site.

St. Paul is a city of neighborhoods, and James Walsh – writer and native-born son – knows somebody (or 20 somebodies) in each one of them.

Emily Hunt Turner is an Minneapolis entrepreneur and an iconoclast who hopes a remarkable grilled cheese sandwich can slake hunger and serve up justice, healing, reconciliation.

Imagining a future ripe for vibrant storytelling, archivist and historian Lisa Vecoli collects personal narratives from women whose work and perspectives are vital to understanding the spunk of the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota.

Ron Harris, Chief Resilience Officer for Minneapolis, knows that to create something great, something beautiful and robust, one must work with what one has, making do - and making better - even if an ingredient or two is in short supply. The trick? Leverage existing strengths, work together, keep going.

Divya Maiya is not afraid to stand out. In fact, she radiates when noticed, when her costume or colors shine, when her movement causes a stir. Divya is a devotee and teacher of South Asian dance, and she wants you to join her.

Tom Evers discovered the fun of parks, as many of us did, when he was a kid. “Growing up on a cul-de-sac” in his hometown of Mankato, Tom says, “my childhood was full of free play down at the river and in the woods.” To Tom, who is both a “big kid” at heart and a big thinker, fun is only half the power of parks; the compelling remainder lies in a park’s ability to heal a city, and the people who call it home.

Ten thousand hours, and ten thousand stitches, could not begin to describe the sewing output of Suzanne Thao. To quantify her workflow, one might as well count the singular daubs of paint on the canvasses of Mary Cassatt, or individual letters in the writing of Louise Erdrich.

The Coven is a female-centric co-working and community space in St. Paul’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood. Erinn Farrell and her co-conspirators - Alex West Steinman, Bethany Iverson, and Liz Giel – have crafted a space that meets the needs of women who work. Think: Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” with high-speed internet and a coffee bar.

Essie Simpson has the inside scoop on what’s going down in downtown Minneapolis. Essie is an Ambassador with the Downtown Improvement District (DID), a visible, mobile envoy of hospitality in the city’s urban core.

Carla Godwin serves bold for breakfast. As Executive Director of the Peris Foundation, Carla ushers in a modern-day Renaissance in affordable and accessible housing in Minneapolis. Peris Hill Apartments is the Peris Foundation’s inaugural project in community, and it offers refuge and promise to a particularly vulnerable and underserved population: young adults aging out of foster care

With degrees in journalism and culinary arts in hand, Patricia Wall thought she might make a career as a food writer. As the landowner and visionary behind The Market at Malcolm Yards – a lively new food hall in Minneapolis - Patricia is telling a story not in words but in servings of salteña, croque madame, and kimchi slaw.

St Paul artist, Anne Labovitz, is an effusive welcome wagon of one.

One of her most visible, and gregarious, public art pieces is on display at MSP’s Terminal 2, hailing and bidding farewell to thousands of travelers and hometown folk coming and going each day.

In his missives to Minneapolis, John Schuerman indicates an unwillingness to take things sitting down.

He is a man of action, primarily a man of movement, walking actually. A long-time visual artist, John decided 5 or 6 years ago to give himself over entirely to drawing. As soon as he did, he says he had a “visceral response.” “Oh man,” he thought, “I do not want to be confined to making marks on paper.”

When the story is the message, the medium can move: in poetry or through song; on lawn signs or little scraps of paper; in skywriting. For Hawona Sullivan Janzen, stories often float in on dreams, mooring in her brain as she walks the neighborhood, or waits in her car at a red light.

Bassett Creek; Phalen Creek: Bridal Veil Creek: Cascade Creek.

These names are like secret hydrological codes in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Water engineer, Nathan Campeau, is a super sleuth: he is knowledgeable about where the water that once-was-above-ground is now, and he’s focused on where it’s going.

Fred Rogers, known to American television audiences as “Mr. Rogers,” espoused a coping mechanism he learned from his mother: When the world gets tough, she told him, “Look for the helpers.”

Joan Vorderbruggen is that kind of helper.

Mr. Marvin Roger Anderson embodies the honorific “Mister.”

As a prominent elder in St Paul (Morehouse College graduate; attorney; MN State Law Librarian; alumnus of the Improved Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks of the World; community organizer, historian, and cultural curator), Mr. Anderson has earned the title of respect. More importantly, he is a Son of Rondo.