Kristine Kopperud

Main: An Anthology features 12 stories about the stores, services, and specialty shops that once ruled Main Street America. You’ll visit card and clothing stores, explore auto repair and costume shops, watch family-recipes for sweet treats and salty snacks come to life, ride along with painters and pest control experts, attend music lessons and music fests, and roam city streets, village paths, and rural roads. Our contributors share how these family businesses defined and redefined themselves.

"Beautiful Things" is a feature of the blog of River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction. I'm honored to have this piece appear among such good company.

I was a guest writer for my writer-friend Alyson Shelton's "Where I'm From" project, in the vein of the George Ella Lyons poem by the same name. My reading of my work starts around 7:02.

For more information, do visit:
https://www.alysonshelton.com/where-im-from.html#/
https://www.youtube.com/@Byalysonshelton

I have three pieces in this anthology, co-edited by my friends and fellow writers, Keith Pilapil Lesmeister and Margaret Yapp. It's a collection of works performed at the Elks Lodge in Decorah, Iowa, during poetry slams hosted by my then-local arts center, ArtHaus, from 2009 to 2014:

"Live from the Elks: An ArtHaus Anthology," offers a nostalgic journey into the vibrant poetry scene that once echoed through the halls of the Elks Lodge. This literary compilation showcases the diverse talents of local writers who played a pivotal role in shaping artistic expression in Decorah during that period

This column for Teton Family magazine explores what happens when grandparents relocate nearby.
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On a sunny Monday morning, Megan LaTorre, of Victor, nabs a picnic table in the Driggs City Park, a large summery “mom tote” over her shoulder, and a to-go carrier of steaming Rise Coffee House pick-me-ups in hand. Her kids, four-year-old Teagan and seven-year-old Taggart, are already running in wide loops ahead of her, racing each other to the play equipment.
“Scheduling fail,” she says, grinning, as she settles in. She’d been planning for the kids to start two separate outdoor camps that ...

Survive&Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine, is a publication of St. Cloud State University, Minnesota.

This flash nonfiction essay explores how trauma and pursuit of recovery are as everyday as making meals, washing dishes, or letting your gaze wander out a kitchen window.

Recommended Citation

Kopperud, Kristine (2022) "Kitchen, Fully Updated," Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine: Vol. 8: Iss. 1, Article 13.

Available at: https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/survive_thrive/vol8/iss1/13

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If you hike regional trails during the height of summer, there’s a good chance you’ll be sharing them with cattle or sheep. Maybe you’ve slowed to a standstill on Ski Hill Road, once or twice, to yield to a herd of cows (some with bells on!). Or maybe you’ve come around a bend in the Big Holes and been swept directly into a wooly sea of ewes and lambs. Whatever your opinion of cow pies (and what happens when a bike tire hits one at top speed), range grazing on state and federal lands is bra...

New story in old stomping grounds. Here's a somewhat self-effacing look at single parenting in Small Town, USA.

This is the second half of my interview with host Paulette Kamanecka, featuring the insight of Dr. Natalie Stevens, a clinical psychologist at Rush University Medical Center who studies trauma and pregnancy.

Part I of II
This interview with host Paulette Kamanecka unpacks personal experience that I write about often. However, actually telling these stories out loud, face-to-face (albeit via Zoom) has proven hugely valuable to me as a writer. It's a different kind of contract--speaking and listening--than what binds writer and reader on the written page. I'm proud of this content.

Alumna Heidi Ross founded a lab in rural Panama that does what international amphibian research said was impossible: save frog species from extinction by breeding them in captivity. The El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center (EVACC) has notched success with eight species and counting, including Panama's iconic Golden Frog. EVACC has been featured in The New York Times, several documentaries, and seminal books on conservation and climate change. Ross and her husband, herpetologist Edgardo Griffith, are now recognized among the most influential conservationists in the world.

This fun profile for The Heritage Farm Companion magazine features Roxane Mitten, Matt Drewno, and Jen Williams

My essay, How to Paint: Tips from a Small-Town Contractor, appears in this anthology from Books by Hippocampus, edited by Donna Talarico. Each story in this collection features an element of small-town business, from Main-street storefronts to family-run meat lockers.

Read more and order here:

https://books.hippocampusmagazine.com/product/main-anthology/

Description
Main: An Anthology features 12 stories about the stores, services, and specialty shops that once ruled Main Street America.
You’ll visit card and clothing stores, explore auto repair and costume shops, watch family-recipes for sweet treats and salty snacks come to life, ride along with painters and pest control experts, attend music lessons and music fests, and roam city streets, village paths, and rural roads.
Our contributors share how these family businesses defined and redefin...

I performed crucial production and final edits for this landmark book by Kenton Seth and Paul Spriggs. We cut the manuscript by a full third in just under one month!

Reviewed by The New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/realestate/crevice-rock-gardening.html