Hello friends
Last month WDA Minnesota launched a new feature, Letters From Minnesota.
This month, we have contributions from Cook, Winona, Duluth, Palisade, and Alexandria.
We invite you to contribute your Minnesota Letter to be featured in the Writers for Democratic Action Minnesota newsletter. We are seeking writers from all over the state of Minnesota. We are looking for flash essays or stories or poems. Here are some suggestions or writing prompts:
- What are the concerns in your area?
- What are the ways the community is dealing with that concern?
- What is happening in your community to strengthen democracy?
- Tell a story that is connected to your particular landscape
Letters From Minnesota is an opportunity to connect with and learn about Minnesota writers and their locale. WDA-MN is a non-partisan organization. Writers of all kinds have a unique ability to harness the written and spoken word for good, for truth, for justice and equality, and for the rights of all. WDA–MN aims to advocate for writers and for the written word as well as to empower writers to join the fight to protect our democracy. We support independent journalism, libraries, and indie bookstores. We believe in participatory democracy. Voting is important, but we can have more impact if we take action in our communities in word and deed.
Writers for Democratic Action Minnesota has arranged public poetry & writers' events, hosted a table at the Rain Taxi Minnesota Book Festival, published monthly newsletters that offer resources, opportunities, and curated news reports. The national WDA organization also has a Substack and invites writers anywhere in the US to send in essays for publication.
Send us your contributions at hello@writersfordemocraticaction.org.
Opportunities ^
Calls for work
Artists Respond: Roots of Democracy
Open Call from Springboard for the Arts
- Deadline:
- August 10, 2026
Artists and culture bearers help communities imagine, connect, and work together. Through storytelling, gathering, music, art, and cultural traditions, they help people feel seen, heard, and connected to one another — building the relationships and sense of belonging that are the foundation of a strong democracy.
Springboard for the Arts invites artists and culture bearers in West Central Minnesota to apply for Artists Respond: Roots of Democracy. This call is open to artists of all disciplines that are based in West Central Minnesota (Becker, Clay, Douglas, Grant, Otter Tail, Pope, Stevens, Traverse, Wilkin, and the White Earth Nation).
Writers Needed! Share Your Voice
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is accepting public comments on the proposed Tamarack Mine. This is your opportunity to tell decision-makers what matters to you before decisions are made
Your comments are really important at this stage. Show elected officials that we are watching & we care about this.
- Deadline:
- September 14
- Where:
- Submit your written comments online or by mail
"Talon Metals/Rio Tinto plans to mine a 'massive sulphide mineralization' with high levels of sulfide and toxic metals. Drilling in the huge 31,000 acre area where Talon controls private land and state leases (about 85% of the size of Minneapolis) controlled by Talon Metals in central Minnesota’s Aitkin County, Talon has already found sulfide ore both in the Sandy River and Tamarack River watershed, which flow through the Big Sandy Lake Flowage to the Mississippi River and along the West Branch Kettle River, which flows downstream to the St. Croix River."
Upcoming public comment meetings
Wear blue to the meetings to show your support for clean water
- August 5: DNR Public Meeting McGregor High School
- August 12: DNR Public Meeting Blaine Sports Arena
Panatrope Call for Writing
Activate your voice — storytellers, poets & independent journalists wanted
Deadline: August 31, 2026
Wildwood River Press* is announcing a new annual anthology of literary
and political writing, Panatrope. We invite you to submit writing
about what sustains you, about what has marked you, about where you
are from and what has made you. The deadline is August 31.
The term panatrope means "all octaves in music" and it was the name of
the first electric record player in the 1920s. Trope is a word used
in literary circles, and it refers to a pattern in a piece of writing:
a narrative structure, theme, image, or metaphor used by an author
across their body of work.
Write Action Circles
Margaret Hasse offers a guide to start your own Write Action Circle
According to the ACLU: "Letters and emails are an extremely effective
way of communicating with your elected officials. Many legislators believe
a letter represents not only the position of the writer but also many other constituents who did not take the time to write."
What / Why
A Write Action Circle is a group of people committed to conveying their opinions about current events to leaders in order to influence decisions, and to meet together periodically to exchange ideas and rally commitment.
The main task of each person in a Circle is to take action: write, email, or call leaders
such as Congresspersons, members of the MN Statehouse, top officials in government, etc.
and express their opinion on specific issues that the group takes on.
The group may also play a role in encouraging more people to stay abreast of issues and opportunities in order to shape the direction of political events by writing newspaper editorials, posting on social media sites, starting new Write Action Circles, writing friends to get them involved, and more.
Call for Storytellers
"Humans evolved opposable thumbs to be able to hold on. We evolved Story to know what to hold on to."
What’s your story? We’re celebrating the art of oral storytelling —
the every day way we all communicate with each other.
For our new podcast, 'North Star Lane', we’re collecting personal stories about connections —
to place, to the past, to each other.
Stories should be 3–10 minutes in length, and can range in tone from funny incident to elegy and everything in between.
Michael Goldberg is collecting the stories.
Send audio to him — or a note to arrange a phone call or zoom —
at goldberg.actionmedia@gmail.com.
Michael also produces live storytelling shows in Grand Rapids and elsewhere in the region. Let him know if you’d like more information about those.
North Star Lane is produced by Michael Goldberg, who lives in the woods of northern Minnesota and collects stories from his friends and neighbors. They tell stories about their connections – to place, to the past, to each other – and about things that are important to them. We think a lot of the same things are important to us all.
Events & Calls to Action ^
A Virtual Afternoon with Heather Cox Richardson & Siri Hustvedt
Writers for Democratic Action presents The Inaugural Gitlin-Auster Defender of Democracy Award to historian Heather Cox Richardson
- When:
- September 19, 2:00pm CT
- Where:
- Online
Writers for Democratic Action (WDA) began in 2020 as a small group of poets, fiction writers, and journalists, and is now comprised of more than 4,000 writers worldwide. WDA is a volunteer organization devoted to literature as a bedrock of democratic culture. At today’s virtual gathering the group will bestow the first Gitln-Auster Defender of Democracy Award – named after two WDA founding members, Todd Gitlin and Paul Auster.
The first recipient of this award is Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of history at Boston College and an expert on American political and economic history. She is the author of seven books, including Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America and the award-winning How the South Won the Civil War. Her widely read Substack newsletter, Letters from an American, synthesizes history and modern political issues, and is read daily by more than a million readers.
Following the award presentation, Richardson will be in conversation with the esteemed writer Siri Hustvedt, a WDA founding member. Hustvedt is the author of a book of poetry, five collections of essays, two works of nonfiction, and seven novels.
MN Primary Election
Voting open now!
- When:
- August 11
A primary election determines which candidates will be on the ballot in the November general election
Book the Vote
from National WDA
A national drive bringing together readers, writers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians to register voters
"Democracies die by foreign invasion, but they also die by homegrown authoritarian malignancies. That is happening now in the United States, and Writers for Democratic Action calls on YOU to stop it! Join us in protecting representative government with the most powerful weapon we still have: the Vote in 2026.
"WDA is launching BOOK THE VOTE, a drive to bring together readers, writers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians to register voters before the next elections. Books themselves are threatened now, which is no surprise since books have always been essential to democracy. The Bookstore and the Library can be the frontline of the campaign to rescue it."
Whoever Tells the Story Writes History
from The OpEd Project
Check out the workshops and publication opportunities for those who like to write op-eds.
Write Postcards to Swing States
Progressive Turnout Project
Sign up for our Get Out the Vote postcards. We'll send you the postcards for free, along with voter lists and instructions with proven message options. You will need to provide the Postcard Stamps (currently $0.61). All the mailing dates for these postcards are in October.
Support our Work
We have $500 in matching funds for folks that make a donation in August!
We run on a shoestring budget & on volunteer labor. Your support is vital and fuels our continued work and success.
We work in a collaborative with Northern Action to build communications across the region through web, print and in-person events.
For example, we created and printed postcards
for the 2025 Rain Taxi Twin Cities Book Festival. We have distributed countless
Get Out the Vote cards, educational packets (Know Your Rights), and other print materials
at tabling events. Our next tabling opportunity will be
at the MSP Airport, and we would like to offer more print materials
for visitors. Thank you for being a part of that mission!
