Sheila Packa has received two Loft McKnight Fellowships, in both poetry and prose, and numerous other awards. She was Duluth's Poet Laureate of 2010-2012. According to Leah Rogne, PhD, of Minnesota State University in Mankato, Sheila Packa's poetry is at once deeply personal and widely universal in its evocative exploration of fundamental human experience. Using the red ore dust with which she was raised, she paints vivid images of birth and death, work and struggle, hope and despair. Packa captures the unrest of immigrants leaving their homes in Finland and the unrest of the bitter labor union conflicts of the early days of twentieth century on the Iron Range of northeastern Minnesota. At the same as she chronicles events from the broad sweep of history as the country extracted iron ore from the ground and labor from the immigrants, she shares tender stories from daily life, using the micro-lens of her personal experience. Especially arresting is the way Packa weaves into her book mat