Memoirs in prose and poetry, murder on an airplane journey and the importance of Pembina, N.D., in our history. Something for everyone today.

“Before I Lie”: by Dralandra Larkins (Book Baby, $25)

(Courtesy of the author)

I’m Black, brilliant, beautiful, wise!/Anxious and ambitious./A mystic./I am not your statistic./Passionate and persistent./A dreamer, multi-gifted./A generational curse breaker./A builder./I am not a maybe./I am not negotiable. — from “Before I Lie.”

Dralandra Larkins is on the rise in the Twin Cities literary community with a debut collection and a spot on the cover of the September issue of Minnesota Women’s Press. Poet Danny Klecko, who has read with Larkins and watched her dynamic onstage presence, says she’s someone to watch.

In her debut collection, Larkins writes in-your-face autobiographical poetry and, prose, illustrated with big, bold artwork by Brian Alexander Serrano, to tell her story in poems such as “An ode to the Hood” (in Minneapolis where she grew up), “Black myths,” “Healing the Scar That Sings Back,” and traits she carries from her ancestors. Running through the collection is the story of how she found her authentic self as her hearing disability was corrected with hearing aids and by learning ASL.

She writes: “These stories don’t beg for approval or wait for applause.”

Larkins is an award-winning spoken-word poet whose words catch the cadence of real-life language, as well as an educator and a multi-genre writer. She characterizes her work as “moving between stage and performance,” weaving together rhythm, intimacy and vulnerability to create a haven for healing rooted in her background as a social worker.

“Before I Lie” is for every young Black girl who never had access to a mic to tell her story, Larkins says. For white readers it is an introduction into a Black woman’s life.

Larkins will be at the Nov. 8 Twin Cities Book Festival and will read Nov. 18 at Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls., with the Loft Literary Center’s program manager Marianne Manzler and spoken-word guru Tish Jones.

“Wayfinding”: by Renee Gilmore (Trio House Press, $24.99)

(Courtesy of Trio House Press)

But, there was only one thing I found, quite by accident, that could reliably distract my agitated mood. As counterintuitive as it sounds, taking risks and engaging in daring or dangerous behavior, on a small or large scale, was the true antidote to my anxiety. –– from “Wayfinding”

The title of Renee Gilmore’s frank and sometimes heartbreaking memoir has two meanings. It refers to her family’s love of car travel and the car culture she learned from her dad. It also refers to the ways in which she healed after a hard childhood of abuse and, later, rape. This violence left her with undiagnosed PTSD, seeking solace in drink and bad company, and a sad first marriage. Eventually she found happiness with her current husband. Besides her own emotional troubles, Gilmore dealt with the mental difficulties of her daughter, whom she and her husband adopted out of the foster system.

Each section takes its title from map language, as in “Back Bearing,” a bearing that is the exact opposite of your destination or waypoint.

Gilmore is a neurodivergent (meaning her brain works differently), multi-genre writer, essayist and poet, with a master’s degree from Hamline University. She never gave up her love for travel, journeying to all seven continents. And she’s a fan of international F1 car racing and car shows. Her writing about cars is like a a hymn.

You can meet her at the Trio House Press booth at the Twin Cities Book Festival.

“Airplanes, Atlanta & an Assassin”: by Mary Seifert (Secret Staircase Books, $14.99)

If you think you’ve had troubles with connecting airplane flights, be glad you aren’t Katie Welk, who’s chaperoning her high school students to a competition in this 10th Katie & Maverick cozy mystery.

Katie and her friend Jane separate from the students during a layover and take a private plane that crashes. Katie’s kidnapped by a guy who’s not too bright but knows how to hold a gun on her. Soon Katie uncovers a web of secrets, stolen documents, corporate espionage and dangerous toxins, and she needs to untangle everything before a killer strikes again. Happily, she has the help of Maverick, her trained search-and-recue Labrador retriever. Who doesn’t love a cozy featuring a lovable Lab?

Seifert, who has a background in mathematics, says she “ties numbers and logic to the mayhem” in this readable, entertaining series.

“The Beaver, The Buffalo, The Border”: by Gerald M. Sande (Anepeminan Press, $24.)

What a treasure of history Sande has given us as he writes of his childhood in Pembina, a small town in the extreme northeast corner of North Dakota founded in 1801. It’s subtitled “A Century of Small Town Pioneering,” but it’s about more than a small town because the area was vital beginning in the 18th century when the fur trade flourished, with voyageurs sending their valuable furs to St. Paul. Its history is part of the great expansion to the West.

Those were the days of the powerful Hudson’s Bay Company, based in London, versus The North West Company founded in Canada. He discusses the 1818 fixing of the international boundary between the United States and British North America, the 1852 destructive Red River flood, the 1861 establishment of the Dakota Territory.

This narrative is filled with names familiar to Minnesotans: Norman Kittson, John Jacob Astor, Jay Cooke, Ignatius Donnelly, James J. Hill, Zebulon Pike, Alexander Ramsey, Henry Hastings Sibley and the Rev. Henry Whipple.

History buffs will love the connections this book has to the history of St. Paul, which was growing right along with Pembina.

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The gerrymandering doom spiral is gaining downward momentum, exactly as expected.

Virginia is poised to become the second state, after California, where Democrats will seek to unravel reforms that took redistricting out of the hands of partisans. That’s in response to similar Republican power grabs in other states — especially Texas, where the GOP kicked off the nationwide partisan warfare this summer in a shortsighted attempt to protect its slim House majority.

Democrats currently control six of Virginia’s 11 congressional seats, accurately reflecting the commonwealth’s evenly divided electorate. By calling a special session, Democrats hope to nab an additional two or three districts by aggressively redrawing the map in their favor.

California’s redistricting effort will go before voters as a special ballot initiative on Nov. 4. Democrats there, who congratulate themselves as defenders of democracy, say the only acceptable response to Texas’s “election rigging” is to rig their own elections, too. Polls show that more than 60 percent of likely voters have embraced that backward logic, so Proposition 50 appears poised to pass.

Last month, North Carolina Republicans muscled through a map that they expect will help their party pick up one more seat in next year’s midterms. Missouri Republicans did the same a month earlier.

Despite the overly confident proclamations from partisan analysts about how such redistricting will change the balance of Congress, nobody knows how things will play next November. It was never certain that Texas’s efforts would win Republicans enough seats to stem the tide of a potential Democratic wave in the midterms. Nor has it ever been guaranteed that a Democratic wave would emerge, even if that’s the historical pattern. Anybody who has paid attention to the last decade of American politics should be wary of making firm predictions, especially amid a realignment in which young Hispanic and African American men have drifted toward Republicans.

As it looks now, Texas’s mid-decade gerrymandering could very well end up backfiring on the GOP; after all, California is far bluer than Texas is red. It could also end up as a wash, with broader political trends playing a more important role. It’s also very possible that there could a backlash to such raw displays of partisanship. This could boost Democrats statewide in the Lone Star State, where there may be a competitive gubernatorial or Senate race next year.

The guaranteed losers in all of these changes will be voters. By the time the midterms roll around a year from now, the country will have fewer competitive districts where politicians will have to work hard to win over Americans, especially independents. Credit goes to the Republican legislators of Indiana and Kansas who have admirably withstood intense pressure from national leaders to gerrymander their state’s map, at least so far. It’s a pity that so many others, including Democrats in Virginia, are willing to compromise their principles for perceived, short-term partisan advantage.

— The Washington Post

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SOMEWHERE UP NORTH, Minn. — Like so many big things, it started small, this fall tradition, a father and son from the Twin Cities area venturing to a friend’s place “Up North” to try their luck at ruffed grouse hunting during the long MEA weekend when kids get two days off from school.

It was October 1999 (give or take a year), and they’d just completed their firearms safety training together, so there was a bit of a learning curve in figuring out where and how to hunt the birds, which can be either incredibly wary … or incredibly not wary.

Some might say dumb, but I’ve been humbled enough to say otherwise.

Whether the birds were wary or otherwise, there was plenty of public land to explore within a few miles of camp, and so opportunities weren’t hard to come by.

This wasn’t a hardcore dawn-to-dusk kind of hunting trip. Instead, days at camp were pretty laid-back. Ruffed grouse hunting doesn’t require venturing out before dawn — a big attraction for some in this crew — and can be as laid-back or intense as a hunter wants it to be.

A typical day would start with a late morning hunt, followed by a mid-afternoon siesta and a late afternoon hunt to close out the day.

As a campfire blazes, an NHL hockey game is projected on a 10-by-20-foot screen at a northern Minnesota hunting camp Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (Brad Dokken / Forum News Service)

Nights were usually spent by the fire — at least when it wasn’t raining — taking in the sounds and smells of northern Minnesota in the fall. Saturday night was devoted to watching “Hockey Night in Canada” on the Canadian Broadcast Corp., one of the few over-the-air channels available back in those early days so far in the boonies.

The ruffed grouse — or “partridges,” as many people Up North incorrectly call them — were abundant enough to keep this father and son coming back.

So it was that a tradition was born. Just like the traditions that take place at so many hunting camps everywhere.

Crew expands

Over time, other friends joined the crew and put the annual “October Trip” get-together on their calendars. A bunkhouse was built to accommodate the larger crew — up to nine people have been in camp at various times — and the addition of a patio made time around the firepit even more comfortable.

So did the addition of a projector, a portable 10-by-20-foot screen, a Roku stick and high-speed internet for streaming hockey games and the occasional B-movie outside by the firepit.

Totally unnecessary, of course, but now part of the tradition.

Also part of the tradition, thanks to the culinary skills of two in the crew, meals turned into five-star affairs. This year’s camp menu included steaks and garlic-mashed potatoes, antelope in plum reduction sauce with twice-baked potatoes, antelope stew with a zing that was absolutely amazing and, for the final evening, the traditional grouse casserole.

New twist

More recently, the Minnesota youth deer season that coincides with the MEA break has added a new twist to the weekend for the youngest member of the crew. Now 15, he shot his first deer during the 2021 youth season and has filled his youth tag every year since.

This year, he shot a 9-point buck late in the afternoon on the second day of the season. As if that wasn’t good enough, he also shot his first limit of ruffed grouse during the trip.

“For one 15-year-old, four days in October is better than Christmas,” his dad would say later. “It is groups and trips like this that will keep a kid coming back for the rest of his life.”

And so it went during four days in October, a fine gathering despite some occasional weather setbacks. While some of the “old guys” in the crew are slowing down and spend more time lounging by the fire than traipsing through the woods, the two “youngsters” in the group — the oldest “kid” now 37 — are keeping the tradition burning strong.

As it should be.

May that tradition burn for many years to come.

At hunting camps everywhere.

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Seventy-some years ago, local filmmaker Leya Hale’s grandparents met as students at the Sherman Institute in California.

The boarding school was one of many that Native kids, like Hale’s Diné grandparents, were forced to attend as part of federal assimilation programs, and the schools were notorious for abusive practices and harsh cultural suppression.

But these were not the stories Hale’s grandparents chose to tell about their education, said Hale, who’s Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota on her mother’s side and Diné on her father’s, and now works as a documentary producer for Twin Cities PBS in St. Paul. Instead of recounting the negative experiences, she said, they talked about the joy of meeting classmates from other tribal cultures and forming friendships through activities like dance and sports.

Leya Hale is a documentary producer for Twin Cities PBS in St. Paul. (Courtesy of Leya Hale)

This perspective also guides Hale’s upcoming TPT documentary “Medicine Ball,” which follows two Native basketball players at the University of Minnesota Morris, a campus that traces its own history back to a boarding school called the Morris Industrial School for Indians. In the documentary, the players — and the audience — learn about basketball’s historical and continuing importance to Native culture from Syd Beane, a local Flandreau Santee Sioux Dakota historian who grew up playing basketball in the boarding school system.

“This film is me carving out a little space for us to share those stories — resilient, hopeful stories — that came from that era,” Hale said. “It’s important to educate and bring awareness to the most awful things that occurred during that time. But it’s also for our own community’s sake to remember those good stories, because it’s those good stories that made us survive.”

Modern basketball was invented in the 1890s at a training school run by the organization then called the Young Men’s Christian Association (now the YMCA). Boarding school administrators, tasked with assimilating Native kids into white Christian American society, approved of the sport’s origins and hoped it would push kids to develop a religious sense of self-discipline.

Native students, for their part, also quickly embraced the game for its similarities to common tribal ball-and-basket sports they were familiar with.

Contrary to administrators’ hopes, basketball ultimately became a way for Native students to build camaraderie within an oppressive environment and strengthen a shared Native identity across tribal backgrounds, Beane said on an episode of the Minnesota Historical Society’s “Minnesota Unraveled” podcast.

The basketball court “was one of the places where the culture was retained,” he said. “It’s what saved them from that trauma.”

Hale’s film “Medicine Ball” is in post-production and is scheduled to premiere next year, though a specific release date has not yet been announced.

When it does premiere, though, it won’t be in the style of a traditional documentary, with talking-head interviews spliced alongside historical footage, Hale said. She wants to make the point that history can be a story, not a set of facts to memorize, so she said she tries to take a more contemporary cinematic approach.

“Even though we’re PBS, we don’t have to always produce traditional PBS films,” she said. “I really try to create films that take you on a journey. You’re feeling those ups and downs of someone’s life and you’re learning with them, and those types of stories really connect you to whatever you’re watching.”

A 6-year-old Leya Hale, front row on the right, stands with her family’s Eagle Spirit Dancers group in this family photo. Hale, now a documentary producer at Twin Cities PBS, makes films exploring various aspects of Native American history and culture. (Courtesy of Leya Hale)

Hale studied media and communications as an undergraduate in California and earned a master’s degree in American Indian Studies from the University of South Dakota, then moved to the Twin Cities for a job at the Division of Indian Work teaching an after-school program on producing TV public service announcements. In the early 2010s, she was hired as a temporary production assistant for the TPT documentary “The Past Is Alive Within Us: The US-Dakota Conflict,” and was ultimately promoted to co-producer and offered a full-time role creating original history documentaries at the station.

In contrast to a movie studio set, which might be supported by an entire production team, Hale is the primary writer, director, casting agent and business manager on her projects at TPT. It’s up to her to find ideas, secure funding and bring the story to screen.

“You have help all the way, but you’re the one leading it all,” she said. “We’re low budget here, we’re not Marvel Studios, so you have to stretch a dollar and make sure you’re telling the best story you can possibly tell with the amount of resources you’re able to obtain.”

That’s where organizations like Vision Maker Media come in. The nonprofit, which distributes grants to filmmakers like Hale who are telling stories of Native culture and history, has supported several of Hale’s films, including “Medicine Ball.”

But the funding landscape for public broadcasting has changed considerably over the past few months, making stories like “Medicine Ball” harder to tell, Hale said. Over the summer, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — the nonprofit that directs federal money to public radio and television stations — was defunded and shuttered over alleged concerns of partisan bias.  This not only affected programming and staffing at local stations like TPT but also other organizations like Vision Maker, which received CPB funding.

In 2025, Hale was among 22 Indigenous filmmakers who received money through Vision Maker’s annual Public Media Fund to help with research and production costs; that pool of money, the organization says, is now empty.

Even if she has to be more creative in finding those resources, as she put it, the story Hale is telling in “Medicine Ball” — of Native young people, today just as in boarding schools a hundred years ago, finding basketball a symbol of hope and connectedness — remains important, she said.

“I was always taught that our people are resilient,” she said. “That in any situation we’re in, we always find the ability to share stories that help you through those negative experiences.”

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