Melissa Helton
Literary Artist
2025 Artist Enrichment Grant | (Hindman) $1,565 to research her family’s ties to Cloquet, MN and the broader Norwegian / Scandinavian community there. Her maternal family lost their ancestral culture upon immigration. Her nonfiction, photography, and poetry about this reconnects the stories about her great-grandmother’s silencing that filtered through the generations of women. She seeks to understand the familial ground (literal and figurative) that we spring from, and how that can shape her as mother to AFAB children in a culture that is hostile toward immigrants and their families.