Minneapolis-born Cora Johnstone Best achieved international success as a mountaineer during the 1920s. She was a pioneer in the sport, becoming a licensed guide at a time when women were rarely given the opportunity to be lead climbers.
Ethel Ray Nance was an African American activist and writer. During the 1920s, she broke various racial and gender barriers in Minnesota, participated in the Harlem Renaissance movement, worked as a secretary for the National Urban League, and contributed to Opportunity magazine.
In 1888, a St. Paul Globe exposé of women’s working conditions penned by “Eva Gay” launched the career of Eva McDonald Valesh, a young writer. During the time that she lived in the state, Valesh left a big impression on Minnesota journalism, politics, and labor organizing.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Evangeline Whipple used her wealth to improve the lives of women, people of color, and the poor. She supported social justice for Native Americans in Minnesota, for African Americans in Florida, and for villagers and World War I refugees in Bagni di Lucca, Italy.
In the 1970s, Maude became concerned that Ojibwe people were forgetting their history and culture. Inspired to make a change, she set out on a mission to lift her memories from her mind and record them on paper. She enlisted the help of scholarly writers and produced several books: When I Was A Little Girl (1976), At The End of the Trail (1978), What My Grandmother Told Me (1983), and Portage Lake (1991).
Distinguished playwright, short-story writer, poet and painter.
Nisei inmate, librarian, poet, and memoirist.
Acclaimed poet, feminist writer, and human rights activist. Much of Yamada’s work draws on the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.
Best known for her Betsy-Tacy series of thirteen books, she authored six historical novels for adults as well as five additional books for children.
Laura Ingalls Wilder was sixty-five when she published Little House in the Big Woods, a novel for young readers inspired by her childhood in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. Her book, and the others that followed, made her an icon of children’s literature.