Releasing this month, Blooming Hollyhocks: Tales of Joy During Hard Times by Naomi Helen Yaeger is a work of creative nonfiction telling the story of the author’s mother growing up in a small prairie town in the 1930s and ‘40s during the Great Depression and World War II. “With faith, family, and grit, she rose from heartbreak to hope, offering a story for anyone who’s ever longed to serve, to belong, or to make a difference.” Naomi Helen Yaeger is a Duluth-based writer, reporter, and Earthkeeper. Her work has appeared in the Grand Forks Herald, the Sioux County Index-Reporter (Hull, IA), the Duluth Budgeteer, and nowadays in Duluthian, Positively Superior, and Northern Wilds. She lives in Duluth, Minnesota, where she enjoys the beauty of nature with her husband and their faithful dog. To celebrate the upcoming release, I am pleased to share this Q&A with the author. You discuss it a bit in the “Note to the Reader,” but what did your research process look like while writing Blooming Hollyhocks? Were there any surprising discoveries you made during your research? Naomi Helen Yaeger: My research involved recording my mom and uncle while asking them questions. I also verified as much as possible. She told me she had a big birthday celebration for her 12th birthday, which was on a Friday. Even though the family was Protestant (Methodist), her mom wondered what to serve because many of the Catholics had to have fish on Fridays, and half the town were observant…

Through the years, I’ve had a lot of experience using Canva to create flyers, signs, social media materials, bookmarks, and even playlist covers—almost entirely with a free Canva account with no subscription. Sure, there are more options available with a paid subscription, but even with a free account, Canva is still a valuable tool with a ton of resources and design templates. It’s amazing what you can create without spending anything. This year, in helping with the publicity for Jill Swenson’s memoir releasing in June, The Land of Everlasting Sky, I took on a new challenge of learning how to use Canva to create a book trailer. Making video content is not something I have done before, let alone creating a trailer from scratch. But after reading and watching several tutorials online, I found Canva makes the process fairly accessible. In the end, I’m happy with what I was able to create on a free Canva account with no previous video-making experience. And I’d like to share some of the insight and advice I picked up from this process so that maybe you, too, can create your own book trailer with Canva. The Script The first step in making a book trailer is to come up with a script. Basically, the script should be a short book description of no more than five sentences. To do this, I pulled lines and inspiration from the existing cover blurb and marketing materials for The Land of Everlasting Sky but then edited it…

Award-winning author Jeannine Ouellette will be in Duluth at the end of October for two literary events — live and in-person, both free and open to the public. On Wednesday, October 26, Jeannine Ouellette will read from her memoir, The Part That Burns, at 6 pm in the Kathryn A. Martin Library Rotunda on the campus of the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Ouellette will share the stage with Tim Moder, an Indigenous poet from northern Wisconsin. The event is sponsored by the Department of English, Linguistic and Writing Studies at UM-D, and it is free and open to the public. On Friday, October 28, Jeannine Ouellette will sign books at Zenith Bookstore (318 N. Central Avenue, Duluth) from 11 am until 1 pm. Jeannine Ouellette is the author of The Part That Burns, a Kirkus Best 100 Indie Book of 2021. Originally from Duluth, Ouellette lives in Minneapolis where she runs Elephant Rock, writing classes and retreats, named after the Duluth landmark in Lincoln Park. She recently published an essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books which featured the old Duluth Zoo. She was married in 2005 at Brighton Beach, and when she became a mother, she made a regular habit of bringing her children to where she was born. “I wanted to share with them my love for the shockingly cold waters of Lake Superior. I wanted to teach them how to stand on rocks and tease the crashing waves, inevitably getting soaked in the process. I needed to…