Listen To Your Mother TWIN CITIES 2013
Photography credit -- gratefully -- to Jennifer Liv Photography
Listen To Your Mother Twin Cities
2013 Cast
Carol Allis
Carol Allis has been writing poetry since her father gave her a manual Underwood typewriter when she was seven. She lives in Minnetonka, Minnesota, with two cats and a herd of deranged squirrels, close to beloved family. She used to write news for various governmental entities, paring down governmentalize into words ordinary people can understand. Now she is retired and devoting more time to poetry. She wants to help bring back the loving link that used to exist between ordinary people and poetry.
Watch Carol read, "Mother's Hippocratic Oath" >>
Jeanne Bain
Jeanne Bain has an affinity for singing Broadway show tunes out of key, performing and playing through improv, traveling to the ocean, and getting dragged around by her gigantic dogs. She loves to hang out with other people’s children either at the Loft Literary Center, where she is an instructor, or at high school speech meets ever since she talked her youngest son into letting her volunteer as a coach for his team.
Jennifer Ball-Tufford
Jennifer Ball-Tufford writes about divorce and its aftermath, parenting teens and trashy television on her blog, The Happy Hausfrau and for Huffington Post-Divorce. She is often spotted at Costco and other suburban hot spots sporting yoga pants, a wine-mustache and Michelle Duggar hair. When she’s not preparing for the zombie apocalypse she can be found teaching preschoolers how to build awesome block forts. Jenny lives in Golden Valley, MN with her four amazing teenagers and Walter, the Wonder Dog.
Nina Badzin
Nina Badzin, proud mom of four, is the host of the podcast Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship and a Substack newsletter with the same name. When she’s not writing or talking about friendship, she leads creative writing groups at ModernWell in Minneapolis. Find her on Instagram @dear.nina.b, Twitter @ninabadzin, and Facebook.
Watch Nina read, "The Blessing of a Botched Piano Recital" >>
Elisa Bernick
Elisa Bernick is an award-winning writer and journalist. She has worked as a reporter and producer for MPR, PBS, WCCO-TV, and TPT. Her travel and parenting articles have been published by Parents Magazine, Minnesota Parent, and Transitions Abroad. She is the author of The Family Sabbatical Handbook: The Budget Guide to Living Abroad With Your Family (Intrepid Traveler 2007), and Departure Stories: Betty Crocker Made Matzoh Balls (and other lies) (Indiana University Press, 2022). She is an avid gardener and lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. You can find Elisa at: elisabernick.com.
Haddayr Copley-Woods
Haddayr Copley-Woods is a radio commentator, essayist, and fiction writer with pieces in places such as Minnesota Public Radio, the Minnesota Women’s Press, Strange Horizons, and Best American Erotica. Her radio commentaries and essays cover disability issues, community, parenting, and politics. She works in nonprofit communications and lives with her family in Minneapolis. You can find her work at haddayr.com. Watch Haddayr read, "Shy" >>
Kate Hopper
Kate Hopper is an author, editor, writing coach, and the founder of Motherhood & Words®. She is the author of Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers, Ready for Air: A Journey Through Premature Motherhood, winner of a Midwest Independent Publishing Award, and she’s co-author of Silent Running, a memoir of one family’s journey with autism and running. Her writing has appeared in a number of journals, including Brevity, Creative Nonfiction’s True Story, Longreads, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times online, Poets & Writers, and River Teeth. Kate has her MFA from the University of Minnesota and has been the recipient of two Minnesota State Arts Board Grants, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant, and a Fulbright Scholarship. She has taught creative writing for over 20 years, and lives in Minneapolis with her family. For more information about her work visit www.katehopper.com.
Colleen Kruse
Colleen Kruse is a longtime stand up comedian and writer. She has performed on Comedy Central, the Independent Film Channel, and MTV. Her work has appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Minnesota Womens Press and the Rake Magazine. Colleen currently lives in Minneapolis with her sexy man friend and three cats.
Lorna Landvik
Lorna Landvik has written eight novels including Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons, The View From Mt Joy, Oh My Stars and Patty Jane’s House of Curl.
Lorna is a Minneapolis native that spent several years in California. After returning to Minneapolis years ago with her husband and first-born daughter, she had her second daughter and became a cast member of Dudley Riggs Brave New Workshop, a comedy and improvisational theater. She has written and starred in several plays, including On the Lam with Do and Re, The Smelt Princess and Glamour Queen. She continues to work as an actor and playwright, most currently in a one-woman, all-improvised show called, Party in the RecRoom. She is also a co-host of Reading Goddess Radio, an on-air book club which should soon have a radio home.
Watch Lorna read, "What A Bitch Taught Me About Mothering" >>
Melissa Nielsen
Melissa Nielsen is a lover of music, chocolate and sharpie markers. Melissa is busy. She and her wonderfully supportive husband enjoy raising 4 beautiful, energetic children: Brody, Charlotte, Elaine, and Adelaide. In her *spare* time, Melissa teaches music lessons and occasionally bakes cookies. As Melissa’s 30th birthday approaches, she is clinging to her youth by spending time coloring, looking forward to summer vacation, and attempting the splits. While she has been actively blogging for 5 years, Melissa doesn’t consider herself a writer – just another mom with another story to tell. Thank you to everyone involved in this project for your support – the producers, the other amazing women on stage, my family and Sweet Caroline, without whom this story wouldn’t be told.
Kelly O’Sullivan
Kelly O’Sullivan is a modern day (and hopelessly flawed) feminist, parent, and partner. She was the author of the How I Learned to Wear a Dress blog where she opined about sexism, equality, parenting, and even politics and religion (yikes!). Kelly occasionally finds herself on local stages as an actor and singer. She remains notoriously incapable of using commas correctly, but will fight to the death for her right to use the Oxford comma. Kelly enjoys the outdoors in a “waiter, I’ll have my tea on the terrace” kind of way. She shares her home with her loving family and their cats who are sitting on her keyboard right now.
Watch Kelly read, "I Wanted a Gloria Steinem Barbie but I Got a Baby Alive Instead" >>
Vikki Reich
Vikki Reich writes about the intersection of contemporary lesbian life, parenthood and pop culture at her personal blog Up Popped A Fox. She is a contributing editor at lesbianfamily.com and contributor at aiminglow.com. She is currently finishing the Foreword Writing Apprenticeship in Creative Nonfiction at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. When not writing, rapping with her kids or keeping the cat off the dining room table, she enjoys making movies with a cast of thousands…of marshmallow peeps. She lives in Minneapolis with her partner and two kids and spends every single winter complaining about the cold. Vikki is also part of our talented LTYM- Twin Cities cast.
Kate St. Vincent Vogl
Kate St. Vincent Vogl’s book, Lost & Found: A Memoir of Mothers, has been featured on national ABC news and was named among the best of the year by The Akron Beacon Journal. She teaches at The Loft Literary Center, and she has spoken at national and international adoption conventions. Her short stories and essays have won honors in international competitions. An excerpt of a memoir-in-progress about her father is forthcoming in The Bellingham Review. Vogl was graduated from Cornell University cum laude and from the University of Michigan Law School. She lives in Plymouth, Minnesota with her family.
Sue Taylor
Sue Taylor lives with her small but unruly family in the beautiful Powderhorn Park neighborhood of South Minneapolis. Her work has appeared in the anthologies Blink: Sudden Fiction by Minnesota Writers , Blink Again: Sudden Fiction from the Upper Midwest and Inside Grief, and in Phantasmagoria, Rosebud, Alimentum, Moondance, and 3AM Magazine. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing with fiction emphasis from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 2001, and teaches English and creative writing at Saint Paul Community and Technical College.
