Kristine Jepsen

This collection of profiles gives readers of Winneshiek County sites and materials a taste of what makes our communities so rich with history, industry, and heart.

I'm excited to share this essay-in-dialogue, published by one of my favorite mothering journals. Keep an eye out for the next chapter, featuring the fixations of a pre-teen (namely: the budding body, kissing and other signs of affections, and boys who say stupid things).

I love, love, love the Highlandville dances, a super-cool community treasure in my rural neighborhood. If you haven't been, do drive out and see one for yourself. I guarantee you'll find nothing like it this side of the 20th century.

I loved interviewing the folks at Polachek's, one of several local foods producers featured in this edition of the Driftless Food Guide. Favorite find: the ready-to-heat omelet patties, containing pork sausage, bacon, egg and cheese!

My chapbook-let, Jaw Wiring: What You Need to Know, is available from its publisher, Sweet: A Literary Confection: https://sweetlit.com/onlinestore/

Jaw Wiring, a hermit-crab essay, won the 2018 Flash Nonfiction Contest at Sweet: A Literary Confection. It is available at a classroom discount for teachers of writing interested in this example of the structure.

Imagine a May morning: you’ve just finished your first cup of coffee as you lace up your wading boots and eye the surface of South Bear Creek for clues to what its browns, brooks and rainbows are chasing....

"Beautiful Things" is a feature of the blog of River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction. I'm honored to have this piece appear among such good company.

See the Spring 2019 issue of my local Inspire(d) Magazine for a look inside:

Driftless Folk School - La Farge, WI

Eagle Bluff Skills School - Lanesboro, MN

Vesterheim Folk Art School - Decorah, IA

Inspire(d) Magazine | Winter 2018-19

Winter nights, even at Christmas, can be long and, in northern parts, cold. Fortunately, the Scandinavians have a traditional antidote to this frigidity: julebukking.

Photo credit: Jutta Klee via Getty Images

Late one July night, I hunched at my laptop reconciling bank accounts for our small Iowa farm. Outside, the cicadas whirred in the sentinel hemlock trees, while the window air conditioner in our bedroom around the corner fought the humid air around me. I sat flushed, my stomach roiling.
I was anxious about our struggling farm, which my husband and I were both supporting with other jobs, and about how we couldn’t seem to go a week without fighting...

My essay, "Beadwork," appears in this collection, edited by Alyssa Waugh.
Proceeds support the non-profits Girls, Inc, and No Means No Worldwide.

Women are superheroes. Strength is built into every aspect of our lives. I AM STRENGTH is a collection of true essays, poems, and art created by women from all walks of life championing our everyday struggles and triumphs.

Driftless families take education on the road.

For the summer issue of our award-winning local magazine, I talked with my friend Ted Wilson, a classical stonemason who got his start repairing stone fence on the moors of Yorkshire, Northern England. His first (and likely only) bridge spans the outflow of Dunning's Spring in Decorah, Iowa, before the waters join the Upper Iowa River.

For the first issue of this beautiful new guide, I interviewed Katie (Wiste) Bonow of Capra Nera Creamery. I first met her years ago, when as a high schooler she was working alongside her dad, Larry, as a professional fence-builder on our farm. At lunch time, they stepped into our house/office to enjoy some air conditioning for a few minutes, and Katie asked, "Did you know you have a blackberry bramble back there? The canes are hanging all over the fence." No, no I did not. Now I do. She and Larry picked the ripe fruit to take home.