It is 1915, and young Katka Kovich leaves the only home she’s ever known for a new life across the ocean. Soon she finds herself on the rough and tumble Iron Range in northern Minnesota, where she joins a community of poor immigrant workers brutally exploited by the mine bosses. When the workers strike, Katka must convince the women to risk their lives and take over the strike. Along the way, she discovers true friendship, a sense of purpose, and love. Under Ground is based on the true story of an historic mining strike and the immigrants who organized to help lead it. Katka reminds us that there are things worth dying for, but more importantly, there are things to live for.

Under Ground

Literature & Fiction

Marsnik, Megan

Genre Fiction

Flexible Press

What does "Home" mean to you? Minnesota-connected short stories, memoir, and poetry from 28 authors about the meaning of Home.

Home: An anthology

Burleson, William E

Literary

Rewilding: Poems for the Environment is an essential volume of contemporary poetry that encourages us to reevaluate and restore our relationship with the nonhuman world, featuring poems by Camille Dungy, Joy Harjo, Ted Kooser, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Craig Santos Perez, Karen Solie, and a 100 more renowned and emerging poets.

Rewilding: Poems for the Environment

Gibbins, Crystal S.

Oromo Witness tells the astonishing tale of Hangasu Wako Lugo and his journey from his home in Ethiopia, to his fight for his people's freedom, and, finally, to America. The Bale Revolt, 1963 - 1970, saw Ethiopia descend into civil war as the Oromo people fought for self-determination and liberty. Throughout the conflict, Hangasu Wako Lugo was there. He sat at the side of his father, Wako Lugo, from battlefield to negotiating table. He met-and argued with-emperor Haile Selassie. He was imprisoned in one of the harshest Somalian prisons. He accompanied a military expedition in which he saved the general's life. In the 1990s, after the communist regime was toppled, he ran for a House seat representing his home district. And finally, in 2000, he landed in St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A.

Oromo Witness

Biographies & Memoirs

Dire, Abdul

Community & Culture

Anytime is a tough time to be a young person, but this time in history is a real sh%t show. Young people are coming of age in a time of open racism, hate, and xenophobia in the streets. Meanwhile, they are trying to navigate sex, their parents, their connection to their culture, and a world that just doesn't seem to take them seriously. "22 Under 22" is an anthology of fiction, essay, and poetry by 22 people under the age of 22 speaking up about what they believe, what they want, and what keeps them going. In other words, what's on their minds?

22 Under 22: Young people speak!

Harrington, Emma

Detroit Fairy Tales is a work of autobiographical fiction-or "speculative memoir"-that explores the lives of one struggling family with deep roots in their one-of-a-kind city. In the spirit of Bastard out of Carolina and The Glass Castle, Detroit Fairy Tales is part a coming of age story and part an exploration of how trauma can reverberate through four generations. Hopeful, yet raw and unflinching, thirty-six vignettes tie together like a work of jazz to create a single, one of a kind work. Along the way, Detroit Fairy Tales challenges assumptions while it peals back the layers of love, trauma, hope, and resignation that is at the root of this not unusual American family. Elisa and her five sisters are born and raised in the wealthy University District of Detroit where she longs to not stick out as a poor white kid. She is born with a "hole in her chest," a rare medical condition. That is but the first of a lifetime of struggles, as Elisa and her sisters must navigate a family clouded by life-defining tragedies that echo though the generations. The six girls make their own ways through a labyrinth of race, class, gender, mental illness, and sexual and domestic violence, each finding their escape, some with more success than others. Like everyone, Elisa does what she can, making the best choices she knows how to. And in the end, she must find her own peace and end the cycle of family secrets.Detroit Fairy Tales is a stunning story-never sensational, always honest and unexpected.

Detroit Fairy Tales

Sinnett, Elisa

The stories in Unsaid Things take place in the clubs, apartments, and often on the dark side of rudderless lives in search of something more. A woman who tells everyone her very much alive ex is dead. A model whose abuse as a girl defines how she sees her role in the world. An art student who is a curator, collecting beauty where she find it. A college student sinking deeper and deeper into a dark hole of drugs and sex. Always real, always unblinking, Unsaid Things pulls the reader along as a wing-woman on booze-soaked nights and ill-chosen hookups, all in search of more. Reviews: “Blunt, spare, tautly-honed stories in which lovers wound each other, betray and abandon each other, return to each other, fall in love, out of love, and back in love again, in a Mobius strip of hard-edged prose that captures the unsentimental sexual politics of our time. Joanna Acevedo is an unflinching portraitist with a wicked sense of humor.” — Joyce Carol Oates, winner of the PEN/O. Henry Award, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. "Joanna Acevedo has many gifts, but the most potent may be: she is a writer who is incapable of being dull. This searing, mesmerizingly entertaining collection will leave you aching for more. She's a great writer, and this is an exhilarating debut."—Darin Strauss, author of numerous books including Half a Life and recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award. "I wish I could read Joanna Acevedo for the first time again, and feel that swell of amazement a reader feels when discovering a brave and brilliant writer and thinker ... I envy you, reader, encountering Joanna Acevedo at the beginning of a great career." — Sharon Mesmer, poet, fiction writer, essayist and professor of creative writing. "Joanna Acevedo is not just good—she is thrillingly good. She takes you places—dark, funny roads, eerily beautiful faces and landscapes—you and books haven't been to before." —David Lipsky, New York Times Best-Selling Author of Absolutely American and Although Of Course You End Up Being Yourself. “Love isn’t safe, love isn’t kind. Love is a four letter word in Joanna Acevedo’s Unsaid Things.”—Elisa Sinnett, author of Detroit Fairy Tales.

Unsaid Things

Acevedo, Joanna

Short Stories & Anthologies

In the tradition of Denis Johnson and Charles Bukowski, author Frank Haberle's 21 interwoven stories will take you to minimum wage America of the 1980s, where opportunities are few and situations are precarious. Sometimes funny but always honest, Shufflers is a grand tour of a world in plain sight, a world in which no one hopes to travel.Danny lives on the outskirts of society, traveling randomly from New York to Alaska to Colorado to San Francisco and beyond, often cold and hungry, sometimes drunk and always struggling to survive. To get by he works as a ski lift operator, fry shack manager, jackhammer operator, and any other jobs he can get his hands on. Along the way, he learns about resilience and fortitude from the usually invisible characters who populate the outskirts of our world. Danny is trying to make a path to something better and avoid becoming just one more shuffler.

Shufflers

Haberle, Frank

Diane Josefowicz’s debut novel, READY, SET, OH, is set against the upheavals of the Sixties and chronicles the struggles of a man who has just lost his draft deferment, a young pregnant woman with fragile mental health, and a UFO-chasing astronomer, each hostages in their own way to their families and to history.\nProvidence, Rhode Island, 1967, Tino Battuta returns home from medical school in disgrace and without his draft deferment to attend his grandfather’s funeral and to spend time with the love of his life, Primrose Tirocchi. Primrose, an art student, has an abusive home life and serious mental health challenges. But Primrose has plans: she is writing The Book of Love with her best friend while dreaming about living in New York and showing her art in galleries. Tino has a dream as well: to escape the war.\nComplicating matters, Primrose is soon carrying Tino’s baby. Tino isn’t giving her the ring she wants, but Primrose isn’t so sure about their relationship either. Soon Primrose falls for Lupo Light, a budding astronomer with a deferment, who is caught up in a popular movement to link political liberation to a wave of UFO sightings.\nWhile Tino and his best friend work on a boat that could be their ticket to Canada, Primrose joins the Students for a Democratic Society while trying to keep a grasp on her tenuous mental health.\nTogether, Primrose and Tino discover the limits of their finite possibilities as well as the fragility of their resilience. Ultimately, they must confront the question: how much choice do we really have in the paths our lives take?\nNamed "2022 Best Indie Book: Notable Indie" by Shelf Unbound Magazine\nReviews: 
"Compelling and especially engaging ... Showing a genuine flair for originality and an exceptional gift for narrative-driven storytelling, Ready, Set, Oh is unreservedly recommended for community libraries and contemporary fiction collections." — Midwest Book Review\n“Josefowicz finds the large truths in our smallest state, leaving an indelible mark on our broader literary landscape. A stunning debut.”—Jacob M. Appel, author of Einstein's Beach House\n“Every chapter bursts out of the gate in this devastatingly funny, high-intensity novel of working-class Rhode Island.”—Kirstin Allio, author of Buddhism For Western Children and Garner\n“Ready, Set, Oh gives you the quahogs, the red gravy, the Italian-from-Italy suits. A story this big could only take place in Rhode Island.”—William Walsh, author of Forty-Five American Boys\n“Darkly humorous, searingly poignant, and seamlessly wrought in sure-handed prose, Diane Josefowicz’s Ready, Set, Oh encompasses both the familiar and the wildly imaginative.”—Carla Panciera, author of Bewildered, winner of the Grace Paley Prize in short fiction\n“…An enthralling novel about some of the most interesting things there are: the Sixties, love, UFOs, and strange manuscripts.”—David Burr Gerrard, author of The Epiphany Machine\n“With Ready, Set, Oh, Diane Josefowicz has crafted a riveting narrative of risk and redemption against the backdrop of utterly convincing Sixties turmoil.”—William Giraldi, author of Busy Monsters and Hold The Dark

Ready, Set, Oh

Josefowicz, Diane

In the mid-1960s, sex is dangerous. Having sex can ruin your family, ruin your future, or worse. 
From Karen Lee Boren, author of Mother Tongue and Girls in Peril, Secret Waltz follows the coming-of-age journeys of three teens whose lives are turned upside down by the secrets they keep. 
Early 1960s Milwaukee, four best friends, Will, Kirstin, Leo, and Emelia, are growing up together, finding themselves and what it means to be a budding adult. They do all the things teens do—hang out at the pool, bike everywhere, and discover their bodies. 
But this growing up thing is hard. On her 16th birthday Emelia receives stunning news from her aunts who raised her. Seems they’ve been keeping a secret from her for her entire life, one that forces Emelia to re-evaluate everything she thought she know about her family and herself, sending her on a journey of discovery with few tools and no idea what she might find along the way. 
Meanwhile, Leo is struggling with his abusive father, who leads a polka band, drinks too much, and cheats on Leo’s mother. Leo plays the guitar. He’s good, too. But his father wants Leo to stay away from that so-called music of rock and roll. Their relationship is complex: Leo both looks up to and hates his father for the control he has over his music and his life. 
All that is hard enough, but then Leo and Emelia and their friends Will and Kirstin stumble across Sonya, someone they’ve seen at school but don’t really know, doing what to them is an inexplicable and horrifying act. What should they do? What can they do? This begins a chain of actions that escalate and spiral out of their control. 
In the end, Secret Waltz asks, what does it mean to be a “good girl” or a “good boy”? If you have a secret, do you get to still be “good”?\nWhat people are saying about Secret Waltz: 
"Karen Lee Boren’s characters, each with their own compelling combination of naivete and bravery, crackle with realism."—Robert Arellano, author of Edgar Award-finalist Havana Lunar\n"Engaging characters, evocative landscape, beautiful writing: these are the highlights—and the delights—of Karen Lee Boren’s novel Secret Waltz"—Tina Egnoski, author of Burn Down This World\n"With its spot-on depiction of life in middle America in the 1960s and its compassionate rendering of the emotional lives of teenagers, Secret Waltz is an urgent reminder that hard-won rights can be reversed. This is an important book—and a terrific read, with characters you’ll be rooting for even as your heart is breaking for them"—Jane Eklund, author of The Story So Far

Secret Waltz

Boren, Karen Lee

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