Conversations from the Barn

Molly Beth Griffin is the author of four picture books:  Ten Beautiful Things , The Big Leaf Leap, Rhoda's Rock Hunt ,  and  Loon Baby.  She has also published a young adult novel,  Silhouette of a Sparrow , two chapbooks of poetry, and a series of beginning readers. Two more picture books are forthcoming in 2024:  Rings of Heartwood: Poems on Growing  and  Just Us . Silhouette of a Sparrow (winne...

Carlisle Evans Peck (they/them) is a genderqueer composer and singer-songwriter of Northern European settler descent based in Minneapolis. Their work is focused on the power and magic of song and the human voice, rich with queer narratives, magical realism, and mythic symbolism. As a singer-songwriter and a music-theater composer, they consider songs as vessels for forgotten stories, landscapes of...

As a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, Vinnie has dedicated the majority of his life to making sense of the world through melody, rhythm, and verse. From, picking up the violin at age 12 and later busking on the streets of France, to learning to play the upright bass to set out on the road with the Last Revel, to finding the guitar as a tool to reimagine his process and find joy in playing wit...

Ondara offers a unique take of the American dream on Tales of America, his debut album. By Eric Danton   Ondara grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, listening to American alt-rock and making up his own songs for as long as he can remember. After moving to Minneapolis in 2013, he began making his way in the local music scene, continually writing songs about what he saw, felt and experienced in a place far di...

Ben Noble is a Minneapolis-based artist and producer. Noble's serene, innocent melodies drift lithely along sonic textures that range from sleepy-time folk to intrusive, experimental hyper-synth scapes. Through any aural difference, the heart is the same: Noble wants to embody his truth and experiences in his music. bennoblemusic.com Chris Bartels is a producer, musician, husband, and father from...

Allison Vincent is a performer, director, writer, and teacher known for devised work, physical theatre, and gender-bending performances. She has been honored to collaborate with companies and theaters across the Twin Cities, including The History Theater, Jon Ferguson Theater, WLDRNSS, Theater Forever, The Four Humors, Mainly Me, The Illusion, The Guthrie, Frank Theatre, Sod House, Strike Theatre,...

Rachel Moritz is the author of two poetry books, Sweet Velocity (Lost Roads Press, 2017), and Borrowed Wave (Kore Press, 2015), as well as five chapbooks. She's also the co-editor of a collection of personal essays, My Caesarean: Twenty-One Mothers on the C-Section Experience and After (The Experiment, 2019), which won the Foreword INDIES Award in Silver. Rachel's work has appeared in  American Le...

John Noltner is a freelance photographer based in Minneapolis. For 25 years, he has created images at home and around the world for national magazines, Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit organizations. His images have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, Forbes, Health, Midwest Living, New York Daily News and more.  He is the author of two award-winning books from his series  A...

Debra J. Stone 's poetry, essays and fiction can be found in Brooklyn Review, Under the Gum Tree, Random Sample Review, Green Mountains Review (GMR), About Place Journal, Saint Paul Almanac, Wild Age Press, Gyroscope, Tidal Basin , and forthcoming in other literary journals. She's received residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Callaloo, The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, New Yo...

Sam Kalda is an illustrator and artist based in Saint Paul. His commissioned works include editorial, book, advertising and pattern illustration. In 2017, he received a gold medal in book illustration from the Society of Illustrators in New York. His first book, Of Cats and Men: History's Great Cat-loving Artists, Writers, Thinkers and Statesmen , was published by Ten Speed Press in 2017. He recen...

KRISTI COLE kristicole.com Kristi Cole (she/her) is a Queer, Queens-based performer and choreographer with a Bachelors of Arts in Dance and Political Science from The George Washington University where she received the Elizabeth Burtner Theatre & Dance Award for her excellence as a performer, as well as a Luther Rice Research Fellowship. In 2019, she founded Kristi Cole & Guests with the mission o...

In this podcast, we sit down with artists Kim Gordon and Melanie Johnson to hear about their week at the Everwood Artist Retreat. KIM GORDON www.kimgordonfineart.com "Art has been at the core of my life since early childhood. Making art is as inherent and important to me as speaking, allowing exploration of the exterior/natural world and of my place in it. I work with landscape because it encourag...

David Huckfelt has shared stages with a staggering diversity of artists: from Mavis Staples, Emmylou Harris & Greg Brown, to Bon Iver, Arcade Fire & Gregory Alan Isakov, and more recently an impressive array of Native American musicians including John Trudell, Quiltman, Keith Secola, and Annie Humphrey. In thousands of shows across the United States, Canada & overseas, Huckfelt's grassroots follow...

Bart Buch is a puppet artist, poet and arts educator who focuses on interpreting poetry from written text into puppet performances and looks for the poetic qualities of any story to highlight. He calls his work "puppet poems." In 2016-2018, he conducted a community residency with youth, artists and community members, co-creating several performances about the "helpers" of the Phillips neighborhood...

Minnesota-based artist, Kristin Dieng, has been developing her skills as a glass artist for the last decade. When a chronic illness forced her to leave her career in international affairs, Kristin sought a new way of interacting with and interpreting the world. She found mosaic art. Kristin's art explores the way in which colorful light-filled art can serve as a source of healing, both for herself...

Kerry Alexander is a songwriter and musician, and the front-person of indie rock band, Bad Bad Hats. She was born in the Twin Cities, but grew up in Birmingham, AL. Alexander returned to Minnesota to attend Macalester College, which is where she first started to perform live the songs. She performed at open mic nights at the Dunn Bros on Grand Ave and posted her music to MySpace, eventually meetin...

Feeling detached from her previously released work as years lapsed, Duluth, Minnesota's Sarah Krueger set out to Hive, a small studio nestled near the river in her hometown of Eau Claire, WI. In the course of two separate sessions, (the first on the cusp of a long winter, and the second on the fringe of summer's swell), Krueger assembled a cast of collaborators to help flesh out a collection of so...

Julie Landsman's first love has always been poetry. Over the past thirty years her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies. She is presently a poet and teacher for the Alzheimers Poetry Project. In 2019 she won the Bechtel Essay contest for "Music and Story: How We Enter."  Her three published memoirs , Basic Needs , A Year With Street Kids in a City School (Milkweed Press) A White Teache...

"Performer is the word that sums up what I do. You can find me on a stage doing theatre, sharing my own music, or in front of the camera. I prefer my name as my pronoun, but they/them is good is well. I started acting in my elementary school and church. I also would write songs with my brother to perform to our family. My first community theater performance was in 7th grade, which was also the tim...

Michael Hanna is an actor and musician based in Minneapolis, MN. He has performed at The Guthrie, Mixed Blood, and Jungle Theater, as well as stages across the country. He's the front man and manager of Ready Freddie, a  Queen Tribute band. (IG @readyfreddiempls) As an eponymous singer-songwriter, he's performed at The Warming House, Bryant Lake Bowl, and Moto-I.

Rachel is a Minneapolis-based musician, songwriter, Kith + Kin Chorus  director, sideman, auntie, artist and tiny home inhabiter. She has released four albums and four EPs, including the country ep, a split 45 of countryish duets with longtime friend and collaborator, Anaïs Mitchell. In 2016, with the release of To Gentlemen, Rachel parted ways from performing as "Rachel Ries" and now writes for a...

Shannon TL Kearns is a transgender man who believes in the transformative power of story. As an ordained priest, a playwright, a theologian, and a writer all of his work revolves around making meaning through story. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Uprising Theatre Company in Minneapolis, the co-founder of QueerTheology.com, and will soon publish with Eerdmaan's books. Shannon is a recip...

Cleo Person is a dancer, emerging choreographer, and writer. Her work explores the soulful qualities of the human being and the mysteries of the natural world. Working with the languages of classical ballet, modern dance, and poetry, she aims to connect audiences with the beauty and intelligence of our inward and external environments. She is a graduate in dance of The Juilliard School, and curren...

Carrie Elkin is one of those rare artists with a tidal wave singing voice, and a stage whisper writing voice that brings you to the edge of your seat, emotionally. Like Patty Griffin or Brandi Carlile, she straddles the Americana, Folk, and Indie Rock worlds, where meaningful songs meet the fierce-yet- fragile voices of powerful women. Like these other seminal artists, Elkin has the gift of projec...

Con Davison is a songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist living in St Paul, MN, and is a member of the band Bad Bad Hats. Originally from Austin, Texas, Davison moved to Minnesota hoping to get away from an orchestral music degree and put the drums away for a while, an escape that only lasted as long as the 17 hour drive up I-35. Surrounded and supported by an amazing community of artists a...