Loft Spotlights

Ethan Jacobs is a freelance writer currently based in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. He has written extensively in narrative and short fiction formats, and his work has received recognition both domestically and internationally in microfiction, short fiction, and narrative essay formats.

Anna Larranaga is a comedy writer, editor, and actor from Chanhassen, Minnesota. She is a founding editor of The Nordly and has edited hundreds of articles in her over three years working for the site. As a writer, she has worked on Minnesota Tonight, The Broadway Beat, and more.

Journalist and novelist John DeDakis is a former White House correspondent and senior copy editor on CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. DeDakis is the author of five novels in the Lark Chadwick mystery-suspense series. A native of La Crosse, Wisconsin, DeDakis now lives in Baltimore.

Allie Rigby is a San Francisco Bay Area poet and outdoor educator with roots in the chaparral suburbs of southern California. In 2020, Allie was granted a Literary Arts Residency through the Shuffle Collective, which further inspired her to pursue her MA in creative writing.

Papa Mbye just made his first ever album, and it's really good. The Loft talks with Papa about his artistic process, working in multiple mediums at once, and the reasons why Minneapolis sounds like nowhere else.

On December 8, we officially announced the Loft's new executive director, Arleta M. Little. Read on to learn more about her and find links to stories on her hire published by other media outlets.

Ellen Birkett Morris is an award-winning, multigenre writer, teacher, and editor based in Louisville, Kentucky. Morris is the author of the forthcoming short story collection Lost Girls (TouchPoint Press) and of Surrender (Finishing Line Press).

Kate Carmody is a recipient of a CINTAS Foundations grant supporting artists born in Cuba or of Cuban descent. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Potomac Review, Essay Daily, No Contact, Los Angeles Review, the Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Lunch Ticket, among others.

Kate Heartfield is the author of The Embroidered Book, a historical fantasy novel out in February 2022, and the Alice Payne time travel novellas (2018/2019). Her debut novel Armed in Her Fashion (2018) won Canada’s Aurora Award.

Troy Wilderson is a New Orleans–born writer, senior prose feedback editor for Typehouse Literary Magazine, and a manuscript reader for a local independent publisher. She teaches the art of short story writing online. Her short fiction has appeared in Roanoke Review, the Tishman Review, and more.

Lyndsey Ellis is a fiction writer and essayist with work that has appeared in Kweli Journal, Catapult, Electric Literature, Santa Monica Review, Joyland, Entropy, the Offing, Shondaland, and several anthologies. She has led several creative writing workshops.

Shirley Jones Luke is an educator, poet, and writer. Ms. Luke lives in Boston, Massachusetts, in the Lower Mills section of Dorchester. Shirley has an MFA from Emerson College. She works as a freelance writer, doing book reviews and pieces on educational issues.