Author/Author… Two neighborhood authors share their stories

By JILL BOOGREN

Winter’s a great time to curl up with a good book, but what of the people behind the stories? Here are two hometown authors, Kelly Barnhill and Lorna Landvik, each with newly-released novels, sharing their stories of living and working in south Minneapolis.

To say that Kelly Barnhill writes of otherworldly places would be an understatement. Her latest children’s novel, Iron Hearted Violet, is set in a kingdom with twin suns and a mirrored sky. Her previous novel, The Mostly True Story of Jack, takes place in a small town in Iowa with hidden secrets.

“Iowa is just magic,” she said. “That is just common knowledge.”

For Barnhill, magic is everywhere. On the block where she lives near Minnehaha Creek, at the Caribou Coffee where she turns out pages and pages of fiction, and even in some dreary, unexpected places. Sewers, for example.

It says something that one of Barnhill’s favorite projects was writing Sewers and the Rats That Love Them, which describes exactly where your water’s been.

Barnhill is fascinated by these human systems. “They’re like little empires,” she said.

Sewers was one of a number of high-interest nonfiction books for youth she wrote for Capstone Press, where she got to shed light on a whole world of the oozy, gross and creepy in gory detail: Blood-Sucking, Man-Eating Monsters, from the Horrible Things series, and The Sweaty Book of Sweat and The Wee Book of Pee, from The Amazingly GROSS Human Body series.

Barnhill said she may have been a natural choice to flesh these out.

“I typically do delight with these topics,” she said, and she especially likes writing for fourth to fifth graders.

“In my deepest places of my soul, I am a fourth grade boy,” she said. “These are my people.”

Barnhill had done some educational writing before and had used Capstone books as a teacher. The books had to be well-researched with the strict constraints required for specific reading levels. They also had to be engaging, informative, and funny.

“It taught me how to write for kids,” said Barnhill. “Even if you’re limiting language, you can’t limit ideas. Kids still want to be engaged. They still want to be learning.”

Barnhill, who was born here, calls Minneapolis a special place, where neighbors really care about each other and writers are extremely supportive of each other’s work. She lives with her husband and their two daughters, their son, and their dog Harper.

Barnhill breaks up her writing day by allowing a little time to read (“All writers are readers first.”) and jogging, although she often writes while she runs.

Able to hold three or four pages in her head while running, Barnhill explained the physicality of storybuilding and how it helps for her to be more engaged, reacting to the world around her, seeing the variations in air and light.

“Lake Nokomis, the creek, Fort Snelling are all very meditative places to work on these little knots of story,” she said.

The Barnhills love nature. She and her husband, who was an Eagle Scout, both worked with the National Park Service. Their kids are down by the creek every day, they enjoy walks from Minnehaha Falls to the river, and they take annual canoeing trips into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

They also spend time at a small cabin — a “shack in the woods” — where they truly unplug. There they do a ton of reading and art and tell stories in the dark by candlelight, “always candlelight.”

Her main character for Violet started off as a story Barnhill was telling her daughters.

“They wanted a story about a princess, and she had to be ugly,” said Barnhill. In the story, Cassian, an adult narrator, says something he immediately regrets, as caretakers sometimes painfully do.

“You want to suck it back in like a noodle,” said Barnhill, explaining that it’s useful to show kids that adults make mistakes, too.

Suggesting that once a teacher, always a teacher, Barnhill said that “even as a novelist for kids, there’s always an eye to teaching.”

“Kids love learning something new. It’s one of our basic human needs as a kid.”

Barnhill’s next book involves a swamp monster named Glerk who recites poetry.

Iron Hearted Violet is available at book stores and online.

Visit Kelly’s website at kellybarnhill.wordpress.com

Lorna Landvik, whose stories are usually set in Minneapolis or Minnesota, begins her latest novel, Mayor of the Universe, in Pierre, South Dakota. Until the aliens come. Then hold onto your hats, because you’re in for quite a ride.

Described as “fun, meddling in-laws,” aliens visit mild-mannered Fletcher Weschel and proceed to upend his less-than-formidable life.

Although Landvik said she doesn’t start out with a particular theme in mind, her stories often feature a central gathering place: Patty Jane’s House of Curl, Your Oasis on Flame Lake, Cup O’ Delight Cafe (in The Tall Pine Polka), which Landvik recognizes as places not just where people gather, but “where they can thrive.”

In Mayor, it’s the universe. “I think I’ve expanded,” said Landvik.

She never intended to write about aliens, they just kind of showed up, Lodge members, all (“That’s how I see the great beyond, they’re all Lodge members.”). A trip to Pierre told her Fletcher had to be from there.

“These are the thrilling surprises for me,” said Landvik. “When I realize I’m not as in charge as I think I am.”

Raised in Minneapolis from the age of about three, Landvik grew up on 38th Ave. S. across from the Navy Base (“It’s weird to think of there being a Navy Base in Minnesota”), often shagging balls that landed in their lilac bushes from big hitters in their baseball games.

Her family then moved closer to the Veterans Home. Landvik said she was allowed a “real Huck Finn” childhood.

“I had a banana seat bike I adored,” said Landvik. “With a transistor radio with straps attached to the handlebars.” She and her friends would ride to Lake Nokomis in the summer, and also out to Whiskey’s grave, which, Landvik pointed out, is a horse, and “...not where they buried hooch.”

As teenagers, kids hung out at Skylane Bowling, Marty’s (now Pizza Hut) and the Leola Theatre (U.S. Bank), and drank “charged sodas” at Zipp’s Pharmacy (Nokomis Shoes). Landvik remembers a very grown up moment buying Pond’s Cold Cream at the Five and Dime store. Nokomis Beach was a Baskin Robbins.

Landvik attended the former Morris Park Elementary and Nokomis Junior High schools, then Roosevelt High. She credits a pivotal sixth grade teacher with giving her the encouragement to follow her dream to write, as well as very supportive parents and friends.

“There were no doubts,” said Landvik. “There was no ‘You can’t do this.’”

Landvik is of Norwegian heritage and recalls family picnics and reunions full of storytelling and big laughs. Her parents were both good storytellers, and her mother was also a performer, as one of the “Mother Singers” at Morris Park. “Oh My Stars” (an expression used in Landvik’s novel of the same name) was her Mom’s version of swearing.

Asked what it would be like if all of her characters from previous novels were “coming home” for the holidays, Landvik said:

“I think there’d be no physical brawl, because there’d be good strong characters to keep ‘em in line. There’d be a singalong... more dessert than entrees, a lot of storytelling, candy dishes in every room... and a crackling fire where at the end of the night everyone gathers and listens to the older ones telling stories.” Kristi (from The View from Mount Joy), Landvik added, “might be sent away or they’d give her the wrong date.”

Landvik’s love of acting brought her to California, where she did stand-up and improvisational comedy and worked at the Playboy Mansion (strictly clerical!). She, with her husband and daughter, joined the Great Peace March across America. After that, they moved back to Minneapolis where their second daughter was born and Landvik began writing.

Landvik and her husband live and raised their daughters not far from where she grew up. She often walks her dog Julio at the Minnehaha Dog Park, where she gets a lot of her story ideas. No longer an active hockey mom (both girls played), she loves city life — the Riverview Theatre, Bryant Lake Bowl, Sea Salt — and watching the sunset at Lake Hiawatha.

Starting January 4th, Landvik’s annual “Party in the Rec Room” will be at Bryant Lake Bowl every Friday and Saturday night (7 p.m.). It’s a night of improv, fueled by the audience (and maybe one or two margaritas she mixes on stage).

Coming soon is her next novel, Best to Laugh, which Landvik describes as the most autobiographical of her fiction, in that her main character is in Los Angeles doing standup at the same time she was.

She’s also working on a sequel to Patty Jane’s House of Curl.

“Those characters have been nagging me throughout the years,” said Landvik. “They’re not quite done.”

Mayor of the Universe is available at Amazon.com in print or as a download. Or ask for it at book stores.

Find Landvik on Facebook at Lorna Landvik, Author and at her website: www.lornalandvik.com