The perpetual enthusiasm of the candidates for Aurora, Queen of the Snows of the St. Paul Winter Carnival recently inspired a subplot in a movie.

In Marisa Coughlan’s “Blue Eyed Girl,” the women are part of a Renaissance Fair princess troupe, but the Minnesotan was apparently inspired by the Pioneer Press coverage of the Winter Carnival candidates.

“I read the little blurbs about the various women that were part of this court — and they were so earnest about it! It was so pivotal to them and real,” Coughlan told a critic in Boston. “It gave them a sense of place, of belonging. It was a fascinating look into a character that needed to find a place — and found that to be their place. God bless anyone who, you know, finds their place in the world, right?”

The enthusiasm and earnestness continues with the candidates for the 2026 title.

“We have 12 impressive candidates this year that would all make awesome representatives of the city of Saint Paul and the Saint Paul Winter Carnival!” said Kara, candidate coordinator, in an email to the Pioneer Press.

So, ahead of the royal coronation on Friday, Jan. 23, at St. Paul RiverCentre in downtown St. Paul, let us introduce you to the 12 women with information from their official court bios:

Katelyn Bergstrom (Courtesy of the St. Paul Winter Carnival)

Katelyn Bergstrom, sponsored by River Hills Automotive

Bergstrom, who was born and raised in Northeast Minneapolis, has always loved the outdoors. After graduating from St. Anthony Village High School, she attended the University of Minnesota Morris, where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in anthropology and biology. She then went on to achieve her master’s degree from Bemidji State University in environmental studies, where she studied Black-backed and American three-toed woodpeckers in northern Minnesota. In her free time, Bergstrom enjoys kayaking, skiing, birding and spending time with friends and family.

Aspen Brenna, sponsored by Omodt & Sons Masonry, Inc.

Aspen Brenna (Courtesy of the St. Paul Winter Carnival)

As a lifelong resident of South St. Paul, Brenna says she developed a deep appreciation for the “history and community” of the nearby Capital City.

Brenna, who earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from the University of Minnesota Duluth, works as a substitute teacher at an early childhood education center.

When she’s not working, Brenna enjoys cheering on the Wild or the Frost at Grand Casino Arena. She also likes to spend time at home baking, researching national parks and relaxing with a cross-stitch project.

Anna Day, sponsored by Bungalow Inn of Lakeland

In her bio, Day says that her Winter Carnival dream began as a teen when she met Aurora for the first time, “sparking her love for the celebration’s magic and tradition.”

Anna Day (Courtesy of the St. Paul Winter Carnival)

Day graduated top of her class from Nova Academy of Cosmetology as a licensed nail technician.

At home, Day is working on building her personal library, which currently has 1,300 titles. She also enjoys baking in her free time, which began in the kitchen with Great Grammy Alice: The two baked banana bread and joined the Great Cookie Bake Off, a 50+ year tradition.

Erin Gustafson, sponsored by Bernie Swafford at Edina Realty

Erin Gustafson (Courtesy of the St. Paul Winter Carnival)

Gustafson, a marketing and strategy professional with a bachelor’s degree from the University of St. Thomas and an MBA from the University of Minnesota, frequently volunteers to help nonprofits increase their impact. At home in Woodbury with her husband, she enjoys hosting game nights with friends, supporting Minnesota’s arts community, knitting handmade gifts and hunting for the Twin Cities’ best bookstore.

Christine Hanley (Courtesy of the St. Paul Winter Carnival)

Christine Hanley, sponsored by Northern Prairie Financial

Hanley, who has 18 years of honorable service in the U.S. Navy, is a 2024 graduate of Northwestern Health Sciences University and a 2015 alum of Winona State and now works as a chiropractor. Beyond her career, Hanley says she finds joy in life’s simple moments: dancing in her kitchen, paddle boarding, sailing and baking sweet treats. She also enjoys exploring the outdoors and hiking with her son, Landon.

Shannon Hitchcock (Courtesy of the St. Paul Winter Carnival)

Shannon Hitchcock, sponsored by Joe & Stan’s Pub & Grill

Hitchcock, an alum of the University of Minnesota, is a former cheerleader for the Gopher men’s hockey team. In her career, she helps others build their dream homes. Family, friendship, and creating lasting memories are at the heart of her life, she writes in her bio. Although she loves to travel, she adds that she “still hates to pack for her next trip!”

Stacy Johnson, sponsored by Party Time Liquor

Stacy Johnson (Courtesy of the St. Paul Winter Carnival)

Johnson once fulfilled a childhood dream by becoming a Walt Disney World cast member, an experience that she says “deepened her love for creating magic and helping others.” While she spent nearly a decade supporting adults with disabilities, she is currently focused on raising her family. A proud mother of three, she is a T-ball assistant coach and a passionate gardener who finds peace in landscaping. She enjoys long family bike rides, exploring new parks and planning road trip adventures.

Audrey Lee (Courtesy of the St. Paul Winter Carnival)

Audrey Lee, sponsored by Peak Spray Foam

Lee, of Maple Lake, graduated in December from the University of Minnesota Rochester with a degree in health sciences on the pre-med track; she hopes to pursue a career in women’s health and maternal care. She works as a caregiver at the Annandale Care Center. Lee, who held the title of Miss Maple Lake 2022-2023, serves as a volunteer board member with the Maple Lake Royalty Program. She also volunteers at the Ronald McDonald House. In her spare time, she loves spending time with her family (she has six siblings), spending time on the lake and reading novels.

Natalka MacDonald, sponsored by Quality Insurance Service

Natalka MacDonald (Courtesy of the St. Paul Winter Carnival)

MacDonald is a proud mom, wife and foodie who loves lake life west of Faribault with her husband, Jeff. Along with decades of experience leading teams, organizing community events and volunteering, MacDonald says that her journey as a breast cancer survivor has “deepened her resilience and has inspired others with her courage.” She also cherishes her Ukrainian heritage and enjoys international travel.

Megan Madson (Courtesy of the St. Paul Winter Carnival)

Megan Madson, sponsored by Alary’s & Camp Bar

Coming from a long line of hockey players, Madson says she has always loved winter: “As soon as the temperature drops, you’ll likely find her in the stands at a Minnesota Gopher or Wild game,” her bio states. As a school counselor and aspiring principal, Madson spends much of her spare time writing her doctoral dissertation, but also enjoys going to local museums or live music venues with her friends. You can also find her enjoying time with her family at the lake, playing cards and competing in the annual cornhole tournament.

Stacy Martin (Courtesy of the St. Paul Winter Carnival)

Stacy Martin, sponsored by Landmark Jewelers

Martin, a longtime St. Paul resident and community volunteer who currently resides in White Bear Lake, works as an outreach and education specialist for the state of Minnesota, where she helps members understand their public pension benefits. Martin is not new to the Winter Carnival community, having served as Corset Crew Captain for the Royal Order of the Klondike Kates and as a board member for the Ambassadors of the St. Paul Winter Carnival. Martin describes herself as a “true chionophile — someone who loves all things winter!” She says she “thrives in cold, snowy weather and enjoys frosty mornings, freshly fallen snow and the peaceful quiet that winter brings.”

Nicole Fae Newman (Courtesy of the St. Paul Winter Carnival)

Nicole Fae Newman, sponsored by Fury Motors

Newman describes herself as a “community-minded creative, mentor and proud mom of two.” With more than 20 years of experience in the beauty industry, she’s a licensed cosmetologist, educator and founder of The Annex, a nonprofit that provides mentorship and education for women in the beauty field. She is also the author of “She Owns It,” a book that empowers women to build confidence and step into leadership. She serves on the board of ERAA Youth Tennis, coordinates local volunteer events and loves planning themed parties and family adventures with her husband, Bob, and children, Vincent and Eris. Known for her signature copper-red hair and joyful energy, she says she “believes in making everyday moments meaningful and helping others feel seen and celebrated.”

Info on the royal coronation of Boreas Rex LXXXIX and Aurora, Queen of the Snows, at wintercarnival.com/events/2026/royal-coronation-presented-by-hamernicks-flooring-solutions.

Related Articles

Singing ‘frees my soul’: A Q&A with Ruby Ericson, the 2026 Klondike Kate

The 2026 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt has begun. Will you find the medallion — and $15,000?

2026 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt Clue 1

2026 Winter Carnival Senior Royalty includes longtime volunteer, first and only woman Vulcan

Vote now for canine royalty of the St. Paul Winter Carnival and Doggie Depot

On Tuesday morning, a Venezuelan couple came to Jane Graupman’s office sobbing over the unknown fate of their 20-year-old son, who had been taken away by masked federal agents.

“They were getting ready for work, and all of a sudden their house was surrounded by men with drawn guns saying, ‘Oh, it’s OK. It’s just some paperwork that needs to be fixed. Just open the door,’” said Graupman, executive director of the International Institute of Minnesota.

The mother did as she was told, and her 20-year-old son was immediately removed from the home, the latest in a growing number of planned detentions involving recent immigrants with lawful refugee status who have applied for but not yet received their permanent residency, otherwise known as their Green Cards.

Before long, Graupman said a distraught Sudanese family arrived at the International Institute with a similar story — their son was gone.

Transported to Texas

The refugees are quickly transported to the Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling, “and within 24 hours, they’re taking them to Texas, with no due process, no access to an attorney, and no clarification of what’s going on,” Graupman said.

Graupman, whose St. Paul-based nonprofit helps resettle refugees in Minnesota, received an explanatory memo on the matter from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security less than a week ago. DHS, it said, is “reexamining” the refugee status of 5,600 Minnesotans who have entered the country legally but have not yet been granted their Green Cards, which provide proof of permanent residency for non-citizens.

The pipeline cases, according to the memo, will be put through “vetting enhancements,” including fresh background checks, re-interviews and merit reviews — all part of Operation PARRIS, or “Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening,” an offshoot of the federal fraud investigations that got underway last year in Minnesota.

The memo says Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, will be heavily involved in the process, but it makes no specific mention of planned arrests. Another Twin Cities-based nonprofit, the Advocates for Human Rights in Minneapolis, estimated that as of early this past week at least 100 people had been detained.

“Minnesota is ground zero for the war on fraud,” reads the Jan. 9 memo from DHS. “This operation in Minnesota demonstrates that the Trump administration will not stand idly by as the U.S. immigration system is weaponized by those seeking to defraud the American people. American citizens and the rule of law come first, always.”

The efforts build on a presidential executive order issued last January and a presidential proclamation from last June that require federal agencies “to identify and implement new vetting enhancements to safeguard the nation from foreign terrorists and other public safety threats.”

‘They took my son, they took my husband’

How Operation PARRIS has played out this past week for clients of the International Institute, Graupman said, has been nothing short of terrifying, with no evident focus to her on any one ethnicity or particular country of origin. Despite the stated goal of keeping Americans safe, criminal history, or the lack thereof, appears irrelevant, she said.

“Today we’ve probably had a dozen families that have been impacted by this,” said Graupman on Tuesday. “We’ve had people walk in all week, and they say, ‘they took my son, they took my husband.’ It started this weekend.”

The target — 5,600 Green Card applicants — roughly reflects the number of refugee arrivals in Minnesota in the past three years, Graupman said, and those individuals have already been through a gauntlet of some 14 to 15 health and background checks to enter the country.

“They’re inferring that they’re fraudulent applications, but I have a hard time believing that because of the thorough screening that people go through to get here,” Graupman said. “They have biometric scanning, DHS checks, FBI checks, USCIS checks. The checks go on and on and on.”

She added: “These are people here with legal status. What the common denominator seems to be with all these families is they haven’t been in the country that long. The Trump administration has a list of 40 countries they’re not processing Green Card applications for. They’re on pause.”

Growing restrictions

Those restrictions are growing. The Trump administration announced this past week that it would suspend immigrant visas from 75 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Russia and Somalia, beginning Jan. 21.

In an interview Wednesday, a woman who has been living in Minneapolis since civil war reignited in her home country of Sudan in 2023 said ICE agents came to her parking lot on Friday and photographed her car. Five agents returned Monday and stationed themselves at her front door, back door and window, asking to be let in.

The woman, who said she has been trying to fix a typo showing an erroneous date of entry to the U.S. on her Green Card, declined to open the door and demanded to see a warrant signed by a judge. After repeating their demands, the agents said they would return.

“We were so scared because we were at home and the kids are at school,” said the woman, who lives with her brother’s family, including four children. “If something happened to us, we don’t know what would happen to the kids.”

Ethnic Karen refugees living in fear

George Thawmoo, a co-chair of the Karen Organization of Minnesota, said there’s a number of reasons why refugees might not apply for a Green Card within a year of arriving in the U.S., as required by immigration law, or might fail to file to get their Green Card renewed. Some immigrants are simply overwhelmed by the experience of moving to a new country, they’ve lost supporting paperwork, or they fear and don’t understand the system.

Those issues amount to paperwork errors that could be easily be corrected, he said, and have nothing to do with national security.

Related Articles

MN National Guard mobilized, ready to assist local law enforcement

Conservative influencer Jake Lang faces counter-protest, punches at pro-ICE rally in Minneapolis

Trump administration social posts amid Minnesota immigration tensions seen as appealing to far right

St. Paul woman, U.S. citizen, released from ICE detention after two days

Events quietly canceled around the Twin Cities with some citing protests of ICE presence

He said ICE agents removed an ethnic Karen man from a laundromat and transported him to federal detention. They followed another Karen man home from a son’s haircut appointment on Saturday and gained entry into his apartment complex in St. Paul, where they asked to interview his wife, a mother of four children who has lived in the U.S. since 2024.

Shortly after the man let them in, she was detained and flown out of state for processing. She leaves behind a 4-month-old baby, and clearly not by choice, he said.

“She’s in Houston now,” Thawmoo said.

SEATTLE — Rashid Shaheed returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown, Kenneth Walker III rushed for three scores and the Seattle Seahawks advanced to the NFC championship game with a dominant 41-6 victory over the San Francisco 49ers on Saturday night.

Sam Darnold threw a touchdown pass and got his first career playoff win in his first season with the Seahawks (15-3), who will host either the Chicago Bears or the Los Angeles Rams next Sunday with a trip to the Super Bowl at stake.

The Seahawks led 7-0 13 seconds into the game thanks to Shaheed, who fielded the opening kick and took it 95 yards to the end zone. It was the fourth kickoff return for a touchdown to open a playoff game since 2000 and the longest postseason kick return in franchise history.

Darnold, who had been listed as questionable because of an oblique injury, guided the Seahawks on two more scoring drives before San Francisco got on the board with the first of its two field goals.

After he flopped in his playoff debut last season with the Minnesota Vikings by taking nine sacks in a 27-9 loss to the Los Angeles Rams, Darnold completed 12 of 17 passes for 124 yards and connected with Jaxon Smith-Njigba for a touchdown in the star receiver’s playoff debut.

The 49ers (13-6) were never competitive in the second-most lopsided playoff loss in franchise history. San Francisco lost 49-3 to the New York Giants in the divisional round in the 1986 season.

The Niners were missing three injured All-Pros: tight end George Kittle, linebacker Fred Warner and defensive end Nick Bosa.

San Francisco’s Brock Purdy completed 15 of 27 passes for 140 yards with an interception and a lost fumble against the Seahawks’ “Dark Side” defense. Seattle also recovered a fumble by tight end Jake Tonges.

Walker’s three rushing touchdowns tied him with Shaun Alexander for the most in a playoff game in franchise history.

Related Articles

Broncos outlast Bills in overtime, but QB Nix breaks ankle

Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur agrees to contract extension

Harbaugh, Giants finally finish deal for head coach

Frederick: Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah seems to have learned lessons. Now can he act on them?

The Loop NFL Picks: Divisional Playoffs

T.J. Hughes tied the game in the final minutes, then Jayden Perron scored the winner in overtime as top-ranked Michigan edged the Gophers men 3-2 on Saturday night at Mariucci Arena.

Minnesota (8-14-1 overall, 4-8-0 Big Ten) got second-period power-play goals from Brodie Ziemer and Brody Lamb to take a 2-1 lead into the final period.

“Tonight was a complete reversal in our effort, our physicality,” Minnesota coach Bob Motzko said. “We made it a hockey game. We just couldn’t get our hands on it in the third period and ended up chasing it around a little bit. But for the most part they got back after it tonight.”

Garrett Schifsky had a first period goal for the Wolverines (19-4-0, 10-3-0)

Women: Minnesota 11, Bemidji State 1

Abbie Murphy had four goals and Ava Lindsay added three as the third-ranked Gophers routed the host Beavers.

Josefin Bouveng, Bella Fanale, Kendra Distad and Emma Kreisz added the other goals for Minnesota (20-4-0, 14-4-0).

“A great performance from our group from top to bottom,” Gophers coach Brad Frost said. “A solid effort right from the drop of the puck, playing the right way and being rewarded for it.”

Minnesota goalie Layla Hemp stopped 24 of 25 Beavers shots.

Morgan Smith had the lone goal for Bemidji (5-16-3, 2-15-1).

Related Articles

Gophers hockey: Women top Beavers, men fall to Wolverines

Change in goal for Wolverines as top-ranked Michigan visits Gophers

Men’s hockey: Gophers swept at Penn State

Men’s hockey: Gophers blanked at Penn State

World Juniors: It was unofficial, but these Minnesotans were USA’s first