Anything can inspire this author
Katharine Johnson up for state award
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Jana Peterson
Katharine Johnson's newest book, "Born in a Red Canoe," is in the running for a Minnesota Book Award in the Young Adult Fiction category. Johnson's three other books include "The Wind and the Drum," a story of the e Sámi people set on the tundra of 17th-century Sweden and Finland, which was the 2018 One Book Northland selection.
In a way, Katharine Johnson's writing career was sparked by a dislike of washing dishes.
The Cloquet author recounts how she was always trying to figure out ways to not do the dishes when she was a little girl.
"So when it was my turn one time, I just scooted upstairs and hid from my mother," she said. "I don't know what possessed me, but I said: 'I can't, I'm writing a book.' And lo and behold, she did the dishes for me."
She started, but never finished, that particular mystery novel, and decided years later that she "owed" her mother a book.
Consider that debt paid.
Johnson's most recen...
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