MN authors on this week's Realgoodwords

Molly Hootch Hymes joins me this week to talk about her memoir, "Molly Hootch: I Remember When - Growing Up on the Kwiguk Pass of the Lower Yukon River". Molly is a Yupik Eskimo who grew up in the village of Emmonak, Alaska. She's lived in Bemidji for the last 30 years and has finally put on paper the stories of her childhood. Molly especially respected her father and as she puts it, "how he could make ANYTHING out of nothing". The family lived a subsistence lifestyle. Molly Hootch's name became well known later in her teens. The "Molly Hootch Case" was a peition to bring hometown high schools to rural students in Alaska instead of being shipped off to boarding school.

The other MN author I feature this week is Catherine Holm of Cook. Catherine's new book of short stories published by Holy Cow Press in Duluth is called "My Heart is a Mountain - Tales of Magic and The Land". It's gotten great reviews including Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Olen Butler who said, "Catherine Holm writes with great and winning assurance and with nuanced compassion. My Heart is A Mountain is a truly lovely book by a fine writer."

One of my favorite stories in the book is the final one called "Farmwoman". It's sad, but it really shows how land and what you do with and tend to on your own land comes to define you. When you lose that land it's hard to have the same identity.

Catherine Holm will be at the Lyric Center for the Arts in Virginia for Monday February 7th at 6:30pm. She'll also be signing books at Howard Street Booksellers in Hibbing on Wednesday February 9th from 2-3:30pm.

Check out the RealgoodArchive for past author interviews on Realgoodwords.