Author Bios

Gary Eldon Peter is a Minneapolis-based author whose work focuses on LGBTQ+ identity, rural life, and the textures of everyday midwestern experience. He retired from the University of Minnesota after twenty-one years as a faculty member in the College of Education and Human Development, where he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in writing, American literature,…

Patti Smith was born Patricia Lee Smith on December 30, 1946, in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Deptford Township, New Jersey, the eldest of four children in a working-class family. From early childhood she was drawn to books, drawing, and the idea of making art. She graduated high school in 1964, worked briefly in…