LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER TWIN CITIES 2015
PHOTOGRAPHY CREDIT -- GRATEFULLY -- TO GLIMPSES OF SOUL PHOTOGRAPHY
LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER TWIN CITIES
2015 CAST
Paula Chapman
Paula Chapman was a journalism major, spending many years in corporate communication before taking a detour into the world of finance. Today, she enjoys writing personal essay and memoir and has performed pieces at Litquake in San Francisco and Minneapolis, and The Mama Monologues. Her story, “The Heritage Doll,” was published in the Mamas Writes anthology in 2014.
Emily Cornell
Emily Cornell lives a life deeply committed to courage and authenticity. Her 2015 reading of "Despite Everything" on the LYTM stage was the first time she publicly owned her story of growing up with domestic violence. In the years since then, she's continued to find her voice and share her stories, which now include being the wife of an American diplomat, the mom of a preschooler, and a sober woman in recovery. Many of her adventures can be found on her blog UnexpectedExpat.com. Emily is also a Certified Professional Coach and works with other women to help them show up as their most courageous, authentic selves. These days, you can find Emily in New Delhi, India where she enjoys riding in tuk-tuks and drinking entirely too much chai.
Jeanne Gallaher
Jeanne Gallaher, aka the Colorbitch®, is a color & design consultant (colorbitch.com) who utilizes her color synesthesia for the benefit of her clients’ homes and businesses. Jeanne is also a writer working on her first novel. Her poem “We’re All Here” was published in Open to Interpretation in 2014.
Lindsey M. Henke
Lindsey Henke is the founder and editor of Pregnancy After Loss Support an online magazine and peer-to-peer support service provider for women pregnant again after a loss as well as a writer, clinical social worker, wife, and most importantly a mother to two beautiful daughters. Tragically, her oldest daughter, Nora was stillborn after a healthy full-term pregnancy in December of 2012. Since then, she has turned to writing on her personal blog, Stillborn and Still Breathing, to soothe her sorrow and has found healing in giving voice to her grief. Lindsey is also a monthly contributor to Still Standing Magazine, an online magazine for bereaved parents and was featured as Pregnancy and Newborn Magazine’s Knocked Up Blogger during her pregnancy with her second daughter, Zoe who was born healthy and alive in March of 2014.
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew writes, loves, teaches, and urban homesteads in South Minneapolis. When she’s not chasing her gregarious daughter around the neighborhood or dancing with her partner, she’s doing her best to support the spiritual life of writers. Her books are Swinging on the Garden Gate: A Memoir of Bisexuality & Spirit (Skinner House Books), On the Threshold: Home, Hardwood, and Holiness (Westview Press), the novel Hannah, Delivered (Koehler Books), and two books on writing: Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir (Skinner House Books) and Living Revision (Skinner House Books).
Patsy Kahmann
Patsy Kahmann, memoir writer and filmmaker, lives in Minneapolis, but has called many places home. She was born in Kansas City, the second of twelve children, and as a young teen her family was on the move. They came to live on a farm in Southwestern Minnesota, where a catastrophic event split the family apart, twelve kids sent to ten foster homes. Her forthcoming memoir, House of Kahmanns, is about those tender family bonds forged and fractured through hardship and happenstance. For more information about her memoir and publication date please send an email to: KahmannScribe@gmail.com. Kahmann also tells stories through filmmaking. Two of her collaborative documentaries won awards from the Minnesota History Center’s nationwide documentary film series. Kahmann is retired from the University of Minnesota where she worked with student-athletes and coaches in the acclaimed Women’s Basketball program.
Marsha Partington
Marsha Partington is a freelance writer who enjoys writing real life stories about her children. Meeting Ed, about her daughter’s recovery from a life-threatening eating disorder was published in the anthology, Easy to Love but Hard to Raise, in 2012. Susie’s Story, highlighting the service work she engaged in after the death of her infant daughter, was featured in Today’s Health and Wellness Magazine in 2007. Marsha’s piece, When a Baby Dies…How you can help, appeared in multiple bereavement newsletters. A frequent contributor to the Sun Sailor newspaper, she has also worked as a reporter for a sustainable community project in the Twin Cities. A memoir about her parenting years is currently a work in progress.
Cara, who inspired the piece for LTYM 2015 now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. Their loving, nurturing relationship continues flourishing despite the distance.
Marsha has been a scholarship recipient at Madeline Island School of the Arts Writers Retreat, and often takes classes at The Loft Literary Center. She works as an Addictions Counselor and enjoys time with her two dogs.
Sarah Pelinka
Sarah Pelinka is a collector of stories + wayward junk and mother of two spirited kids, Poppy and Holiday - they are her heart. Married to her high school sweetheart, she and Travis remain as tight as the Girbaud jeans that first caught his attention. Each day is a gift and Sarah surely lives by this. So much so, it remains the only gift she hasn’t yet tried to return without a receipt. While Sarah finds great joy in teaching science to middle schoolers, her passion for the arts is immense. She seeks and appreciates the meaning, beauty, and laughter within every situation.
Heather Petri
Heather Petri’s start to writing began in 7th grade, with epic and sweeping poems about boys and broken hearts. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. Poems, yes. Epic, not so much. After many broken hearts and a handful of decades later, Heather came back to writing as a way to process, learn, and heal. Turns out writing + therapy was the exact recipe she needed to come back to herself. As a writer, speaker, and storyteller, Heather candidly shares her journey and the many life lessons she learned along the way through parenting, heartbreak, grief, anxiety, depression, and the discovery of one’s true self. Communications Director by day, student by night, and creatively healing through all the moments between at heatherpetri.com. She welcomes you to join her journey there and on her socials, where she hopes you find a little bit of yourself there too.
Kyrra Rankine
Kyrra Rankine is an organizer, educator, mama, creative soul, adventurer, and perpetual connector. She started writing short stories and essays as a child and continues to this day when she isn't gardening or DIY-ing something in her very old house (you can follow her projects, shenanigans and dance-offs on Instagram @kizla).
As the wife of a Black man and mother to two biracial kiddos, Kyrra is deeply committed to undoing the white supremacist structures and systems that have resulted in widespread disparities facing Black, Brown, and Indigenous people in Minnesota. In her professional work at the Graves Foundation, she incubates new solutions in policy and leadership in the areas of k-12 education, homelessness prevention, foster care reform, and youth development. Kyrra lives in South Minneapolis with her family, doggo Leaf, about 63 houseplants, and 1,576 books.
Alice Seuffert
Alice Seuffert is an education researcher, food blogger and television foodie but her favorite role is being mom to Stella and Wes and wife to Will. Alice cooks regularly on television as the Kitchen Star on Twin Cities Live and as the Family Food Expert on The Happi House. She has also appeared on Good Morning America, Nightline, World News Tonight, Twin Cities Public Television, Fox 9 and KARE 11. Alice competes annually in the Minnesota State Fair cooking competitions, is often found drinking craft beer at a local taproom and has trained her kids to be excellent egg crackers with the hopes that one day they will make her breakfast in bed. Alice is currently writing her first ebook on freezer meals for moms. Alice blogs about creative comfort food and her parenting adventures at Dining with Alice. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and
Kris Woll
Kris Woll began her writing career at age seven as founder, editor, and writer of a family newspaper, The Woll Street Journal. In the years since, she has written essays and stories on food, home, and personal histories for a variety of publications. She leads occasional workshops on building a creative writing and journaling practice and was a Loft Literary Center Excellence in Teaching Fellowship award winner in 2019. Kris works in higher education and lives with her family in Minneapolis.
EMCEE: LORNA LANDVIK
Alumni, LTYM TWIN CITIES 2013
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" >>
