Long, careful writing about how we talk to each other.
Contributing Writer, Places
Walter Lindqvist
Bemidji, MN · Covers Small towns, civic talk, and rural institutions
Walter Lindqvist has written about small-town Minnesota and the upper Midwest for over thirty years, including a decade as a columnist for a northern Minnesota weekly. He is drawn to rooms where people meet without an agenda: coffee counters, volunteer fire halls, ice-fishing shacks. He travels with a thermos and asks permission before he takes notes.
Every first Friday, a hall in northern Minnesota serves 300 plates of hotdish. The dinner pays for equipment, but the real work is what happens in the line.
In a Vermont-style annual meeting held in a Minnesota school fieldhouse, neighbors still vote by voice and by raised hand. What happens to a place when the ritual ends.
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Sunday mornings
The Sunday Utterby
One essay, three good sentences we found during the week, and a short note from the editor, delivered before the coffee is cold. It runs about 900 words and is meant to be read slowly, ideally out loud to someone at the table.