Born in 1872 near Trondheim in Norway and raised by a foster family, writer Johan Bojer won critical acclaim for his novels exploring the plight of the poor farmers and fishermen of his generation. In 1923, he journeyed to Litchville, North Dakota, to research the lives of the Norwegian immigrants who settled there in the 1880s. The product of his visit became The Emigrants, originally published in Norwegian. Considered by many to be one of his greatest works, it is a rich study in Bojer's unique humanistic philosophy.

Married to Ellen Lous Lange in 1899, Bojer and his wife had three children. Famous internationally, especially in France where he lived for many years, Bojer was a contemporary of Norwegian writers Knut Hamsun and Sigrid Undset (the author of Kristen Lavransdatter which is also set in Rissa, near Trondheim). He died of pneumonia on July 3, 1959.

Bojer's novel of Norwegian emigrants in the 1880s tells of young villagers who leave the Old World to seek a better life. Their trek takes them to homesteads in LaMoure County, North Dakota, where they find that breaking the sod and surviving blizzards are easier than feeling at home in this new land. 

Website Links:
Website Devoted to Stadsbygd and Its People
www.haarsager.org/stadsbygd/Bojer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Bojer

The oldest in a family of seven children, Louise Erdrich was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, in 1954 but grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where her parents worked for the Wahpeton Indian School. Her mother was French Ojibway and her father was German-American. Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.

She attended Dartmouth College, where her future husband, writer Michael Dorris, was the first chair of Native American studies department. She also received a master of fine arts degree from Johns Hopkins University.

Erdrich is the author of twelve novels, as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel Love Medicine won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse was a finalist for the National Book Award. The Plague of Doves won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore.

Hans Andersen Foss was born the son of a small tenant farmer in 1851 in Modum, Norway. Foss became a store clerk shopkeeper. Like many of his countrymen, Foss immigrated to the United States in 1887 where he first tried his hand at farming in Minnesota.

A lifelong proponent of the prohibition movement, Foss edited several temperance publications and for five years served as editor for the Norwegian language newspaper Normanden in Grand Forks. In 1906, Foss gave up the newspaper business and became a grain dealer, eventually settling in Minot, North Dakota, where he lived until his death in 1929.

Foss wrote several novels including Husmands-gutten (The Cotter's Son or The Cotter Lad), which was first serialized in the Norwegian-language newspaper Decorah-Posten published in Decorah, Iowa. The tremendous popularity of The Cotter's Son serial was credited with saving the paper from bankruptcy.

Foss's imaginative plots and energetic writing style made him a popular author in the Norwegian-American immigrant community. Unfortunately, his tendency to sermonize and the lack of English-language translation caused his books to quickly fall out of fashion in America. Foss's lasting literary contribution is principally his influence on later, more widely known writers such as Peer Olson Strømme and Ole Rølvaag.

Considered the most accurate depiction of the lifestyle of farm workers in Norway, The Cotter's Son tells the story of Ole Haugen, the son of the poor cotter (farm workers who lived in the small cottages on large European farms) and Marie Hovland, the daughter of a prosperous landowner.

Ole and Marie's childhood friendship blossoms into love despite their families' objections. The rigid class structure in Norway made marriage between them a social disaster for Marie's family and so Marie's father forbids their relationship. Determined to prove himself, Ole immigrates to America to seek his fortune. Many adventures await Ole during his three years living in Wisconsin and Chicago. In the meantime, Marie waits for her true love despite the emotional abuse of her father. After making a successful in business in America, Ole returns to Norway to finally win the hand of his beloved Marie.

The Cotter's Son was written in the author's native Norwegian language and has always enjoyed great popularity in Norway, where sixteen editions have been published. The novel did not attain such success in the United States, however, likely because it was not translated into English until the 1960s by Joel G. Winkjer. Out of print since 1963, the novel is now available in paperback from Smoky Water Press, Bismarck.

Website Links:
The Scandinavian Immigrant Writer in America by Dorothy Burton Skardal
http://www.naha.stolaf.edu/pubs/nas/vol
ume21/vol21_2.html

Scandinavian Immigrant Literature
http://www2.tcu.edu/depts/prs/amwest/
html/wl1148.html

Scandinavian America , from American Memories at The Library of Congress
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/immig/
scandinavian7.html

Lois Phillips Hudson was born in 1927 in Jamestown, North Dakota, where she spent her early childhood before moving with her family at the age of nine to the Pacific Northwest . Hudson holds a master's degree in Old and Middle English and Medieval Literature from Cornell University and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of North Dakota (1987). She taught in the English and Modern Language Department at North Dakota State University in the 1960s before moving to Arcata, California. In 1969 Hudson was appointed to teach in the creative writing program at the University of Washington, Seattle and is currently an associate professor emerita at the University of Washington. Married and the mother of two daughters, Laura and Lucy, Hudson lives in Redmond, Washington.

Lois Hudson is recognized as a major chronicler of America 's agricultural heartland during the grim years of the Great Depression. Her first novel, The Bones of Plenty , won the Friends of American Writers First Prize. Both the novel and her memoir, Reapers of the Dust: A Prairie Chronicle, originally published by Atlantic-Little, Brown, have been issued in a second edition by the Minnesota State Historical Society Press.

The Bones of Plenty is a powerful and absorbing novel about the struggles of a proud North Dakota wheat-farming family during the Great Depression. Hudson eloquently portrays George Custer, a determined and angry man who must battle both the land and the landlord; his hard-working wife Rachel; and their young and vulnerable daughter Lucy. Through their compelling story looms a sense of a whole nation's tragedy.

As a story of farm life in the 1930s on the prairies of North Dakota, The Bones of Plenty has been compared in its treatment of the Dust Bowl years to Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, with some critics suggesting a more honest and realistic treatment of the subject. The book appears regularly on high school and college recommended reading lists of the rural or Midwest American literature.

Besides the twin evils of drought and depression, George Armstrong Custer is handicapped by some of the personality traits associated with his famous namesake: he is rash, impulsive, and overly optimistic. Equally scornful of government programs and collective action by farmers, he tries to rely on his own abilities, takes long chances, and fails. Although the novel is about the "farm problem," no solution is offered. The author reminds her readers that for many farmers the depression has never ended. Like short stories, the novel is skillfully written. It consists of a series of episodes, many of them drawn from her own experience. (Hamlin Garland and Midwest Farm Fiction)

Louis L'Amour (1908-1988) was a prolific western writer who once said, "I write my books to be read aloud and I think of myself in that oral tradition." He wrote more than 400 short stories and 100 novels, as well as numerous television scripts and screenplays. His books have been translated into 10 languages. At the time of his death, there were more than 200 million copies of his books in print.

On March 22, 1908, Louis Dearborn LaMoore was born in Jamestown, North Dakota, the seventh child of Dr. Louis Charles LaMoore and Emily Dearborn LaMoore. Dr LaMoore was a large-animal veterinarian, local politician and farm-equipment broker who had arrived in Dakota Territory in 1882.  His mother, herself a skilled storyteller, was trained as a teacher before her marriage, and so the environment was a great one for the children to learn and grow in intellectually.  His parents schooled him in family and western lore, unknowingly laying the foundation for his literary career.

In 1923, the LaMoore family moved to Oklahoma, and, at fifteen, Louis decided to leave school to pursue self-education by way of work and travel and constant reading. He held wide variety of jobs from this point, much of it hard, physical labor. He worked as a longshoreman, lumberjack, elephant handler, hay shocker, miner, boxer, and cattle skinner, all richly adding to his knowledge and well of experience which he would draw from later in his writing career. He also changed the spelling of his surname to L'Amour.

His love of traveling took him up and down the West Coast, and soon he embarked on a sailing trip to the Orient and later traveled to Europe. L'Amour's writing was greatly influenced by these early years of freedom and wandering. He gained great knowledge as a result, and it is not surprising that his male protagonists would often have conflicting feelings towards settling down. His autobiography was titled The Education of a Wandering Man.

In the late 1930s L'Amour returned to Oklahoma to pursue a writing career. He published a book of poetry in 1939, but his career was interrupted by World War II. In 1942 he entered the army, serving as an officer in tank destroying and transportation units in France and Germany. Upon the end of the war he resumed his writing pursuits and published stories in pulp magazines of all types, from detective and adventure magazines to sports, with his greatest financial success in western magazines. In 1953 he published his first novel, Hondo, and thereafter L'Amour consistently produced three novels a year until his death in 1988. He gained steady popularity throughout his career, to the point where hundreds of millions of copies of his books were sold.
L'Amour was the only novelist in America to be accorded the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, both of which were awarded to him by President Ronald Reagan. L'Amour, a nonsmoker, died in Los Angeles on June 10, 1988, of lung cancer.

Susan Power is a writer and storyteller with experience in technical writing and editing. Her writing has earned her the Pen/Hemingway Award for first fiction for The Grass Dancer. She is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (Yanktonnai Dakota) but grew up in Chicago. Her other honors include being an Iowa Arts fellow, James Michener fellow, Bunting Institute fellow, and Alfred Hodder fellow.

Power's other books include a novel Strong Heart Society and a book of short stories, Roofwalker. She has also had short stories published in Atlantic Monthly, Best American Short Stories of 1993, and other collections.

Ole Rølvaag (1876-1931) was born in Dønna in northern Norway in 1876. At fourteen years of age he joined his father and brothers in the Lofoten fishing grounds, where he worked until he immigrated to the United States in 1896 and became a naturalized citizen in 1908. He settled in Union County, South Dakota, and worked as a farmhand until 1898. With the help of his pastor, Rølvaag then enrolled in school.

In 1901 Rølvaag graduated from Augustana Academy in Canton, South Dakota, a school that later became Augustana College. The wooden cabin where Rølvaag wrote Giants in the Earth sits on the campus of his alma mater. He later earned a bachelor's degree from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, in 1905, and a master's degree there in 1910.  He married Jennie Berdahl, and they had four children; one of their sons, Karl, became the 31st governor of Minnesota.  He studied for some time at the University of Oslo, and was a professor at St. Olaf College from 1906 until his death in 1931.

Larry Watson was born in 1947 in Rugby, North Dakota. He grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota, and was educated in its public schools. Larry married his high school sweetheart, Susan Gibbons, in 1967. He received his BA and MA from the University of North Dakota, his Ph.D. from the creative writing program at the University of Utah , and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Ripon College. Watson has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1987, 2004) and the Wisconsin Arts Board.

Larry Watson is the author of the novels In a Dark Time, Montana, 1948, White Crosses, Laura, and Orchard; the fiction collection Justice; and the chapbook of poetry Leaving Dakota. Watson's fiction has been published in more than ten foreign editions, and has received prizes and awards from Milkweed Press, Friends of American Writers, Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association, New York Public Library, Wisconsin Library Association, and Critics' Choice. Montana, 1948 was nominated for the first IMPAC Dublin international literary prize. He has published short stories and poems in many literary journals, and written book reviews and essays for Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and other periodicals.

Watson taught writing and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for twenty-five years before joining the faculty at Marquette University in 2003 as a Visiting Professor. He has also taught and participated in writer's conferences in Colorado , Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Wisconsin, St. Malo and Caen, France .

He and his wife Susan live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They have two daughters, Elly and Amy, and two grandchildren, Theodore and Abigail.