About:

In August 2021, LITTLE MO WRITERS incubator instructors Debra Marquart and Tayo Basquiat selected eleven writers from a pool of applicants for the Little Mo Writers Incubator Workshop, a program designed to guide and support the writers on a book project. The cohort met every other week in online workshop to discuss and receive detailed feedback on their work. Every participant made remarkable progress, tackling the difficulties involved in the writing craft and moving their projects forward. In this Page Turner event, these writers will read from their work-in-progress and hopefully inspire other writers out there to apply for the 2022-23 cohorts!

Join us for 90 minutes of getting to know the LITTLE MO WRITERS and hearing their latest work in progress. This event will feature the following writers:

Tasha Carvell 

Tasha Carvell was born and raised in Fargo. She graduated with a degree in English Literature from Carleton College in Northfield, MN. She is a reporter for KFGO News Radio in Fargo where she lives with her husband Nick Vaughn, son Ike, and dog Oshie.

Megan Laudenschlager 

Megan Laudenschlager is the Founder and Executive Director of Strengthen ND. Ms. Laudenschlager is a 2014 Bush Foundation Fellow, 2020 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Social Impact Strategy, and an alumnus of the Harvard-Kennedy School of Government’s Leadership in the 21st Century Program and the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana State University. 

Conrad E Davidson 

As a Professor of Theatre and Communication Arts, Conrad Davidson worked professionally as an educator and theatre artist for over forty years, teaching communication,  playwriting, and theory.  He is the author of 45 plays, seven published with over 1200 productions, including several one-act plays produced by independent theatres in New York. Retired since, 2018, Davidson continues to write and create stained glass and wood projec

Kyle Jansson

Kyle Jansson (pronounced Yawn-son) has worked for more than 20 years as a historian and journalist. The son of parents and grandparents who lived in Griggs County, N.D., Jansson's master's degree thesis explored how North Dakota communities related to baseball before 1940. He serves on the board of the Norwegian-American Historical Association.

Christie Iverson

Christie Iverson is retired and has recently taken up the pen.  She lives in Bismarck,ND with 3 dogs and a cat.

Sue Skalicky

After careers in mortuary photography, journalism, teaching high school, writing, motivational speaking, and driving UBER, Sue Skalicky brought her curiosity and ambition to Humanities North Dakota in 2019. An avid yoga​ practitioner, Sue never gets bent out of shape. She has two published books, Change For A Penny and The Silent Sound of Darkness.

Carol Fordahl

Carol Fordahl resides in Adams County, in southwestern North Dakota near Hettinger. She lives on the farm and ranch that she and her late husband, Dave, operated as Cedarflo Angus Ranch. She’s retired and currently writing a memoir of those years and her childhood.

Kurt Peterson

Kurt Peterson was born in North Dakota and, at a young age, ran away from home and joined the Army. At the completion of his duty, he and his wife and daughters returned to North Dakota. Kurt has published one book called Q: The Very First Gospel.

Michele Willman

Michele Willman is an English instructor, a researcher, a writer, and a mother and is ceaselessly

interested in learning new things. With these identities at the forefront, she is at work on a novel,

Respite, about early twentieth-century farm life in North Dakota, a collection of stories on

motherhood, and a project on traveling mothers. Her work has appeared in MidAmerica and in

collected anthologies. She lives in Grand Forks with her spouse, four daughters, and two dogs.

Samantha Larson

Since 2017, Samantha Larson has served as an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh (UWO). She identifies as an activist scholar with interests in social equity, resilience, sustainability, and more recently, community healing. She received her Ph.D. in Public Affairs from the University of Colorado Denver (2017), M.S. in Sociology from North Dakota State University (2011), and B.A. in Social Science from the University of North Dakota (2005). Samantha was born and raised on a farm in rural North Dakota. She's a 2002 graduate of Carrington High School.

Beth Nodland

Beth Nodland is a Bismarck native (BHS ‘80).  For 15 years Beth has operated North Dakota’s only woman-owned archaeology firm, Juniper, LLC. She serves on Bismarck’s Historic Preservation Commission and has been researching her hometown’s history in preparation for a book she’s writing about some of Bismarck’s earliest residents, and in preparation for this year’s 150th sesquicentennial. She lives in Bismarck with her husband, John Morrison, son Lochlan, and dog Henry Jones.

This event is pre-recorded and for viewing only. Attendees will not be able to ask the writers questions.