Still Here! Some Updates! Upcoming Classes 👩‍🏫

Welcome back! I’m still here, a phrase which makes me think of dance icon Bill T. Jones, his work with people with disabilities, and the fact that as a dancer (I’m sure some are like, Alison, you dance too, and yes, I do, but sometimes quietly) I’m in his lineage, as I studied Modern with Mary Harding at Arts High at Perpich Center for Arts Education even though I was in the lit department with John Colburn.

This email:

• announces my updated website
• Remember & Reimagine: Rollerskating, Artmaking, Community Building
• Loft Classes coming this summer!
• recommends a podcast episode that includes info on disabled people’s history, as well as on the history of prisons.
• local publication profiled the editor of MNopedia where some of my writing on 1890s patient experience appears
• ways to connect and to support

Updated Website

I updated my website recently. Note, there’s already a few things out of date, so I’ll be making a few more updates soon!

Recent Community Artmaking in Minneapolis: Remember & Reimagine: Rollerskating, Artmaking, Community Building

I got to participate in a lovely community artmaking, with puppets and a dj and rollerskating a few weeks ago. It was absolutely lovely to be in community making art, and especially to be painting with others, but not responsible for the outcome! For more info see my LinkedIn post.

Summer Loft Classes

I’ll be teaching in-person at The Loft Literary Center: - July 1, 2025 1pm Summer Sampler: Creative Process with Alison Bergblom-Johnson This is a quick one-hour sampler class. - July 15 - August 19, 2025 6pm - 8pm Improv for Writers: Exploring Interactive Methods to Draft and Revise Class This class will explore oral traditions, use theater and performance techniques and shake things up with an eye towards generating polished finished text. This class is particularly great for people who have a performance practice (such as improv, storytelling, theater) and want to write text to be read or for writers who want to be in their bodies.

The Loft does have some access funds. Also, if you need any assistance in signing up or choosing a class reach out to the Loft Education Department at edu@loft.org.

Gone South on the Last Leper Colony

Gone South Episode on ’The Last Leper Colony'
The podcast Gone South has done several seasons of deep dives into Southern true crime stories, one of those seasons was on a very queer story covered with sensitivity. The above linked essay is a one-off exploration of a space where disabled people lived, alongside a prison. Some of my scholarship and a central topic of much of my work has long been state hospitals as a history and contemporary spaces disabled people experience, create, and sometimes are forced to experience.

Local Website Covers Minnesota Historical Society’s MNopedia

Racket’s coverage of MNopedia editor Lizzie Ehrenhalt shows what an endeavor history is. I’m grateful to have work in that publication, and to be continuing to do scholarship on 1890s psychiatric hospitals in Minnesota: - Commitment and Guardianship of Lydia B. Angier, 1896–1907 - Death of Anna Salzer in Rochester State Hospital, 1897

Ways to Connect and Support

• I have a Patreon, and am moving towards using it more.
• I have a Substack called Selfitudes and am moving towards using it more.
• I’m on LinkedIn, Bluesky and other places like Instagram.
• I am planning to offer new art for sale and am envisioning an NFT project or two. I am also writing a lot and doing a lot of planning and processing.
• I want to normalize artists asking directly, so if my work means something to you please consider supporting via subscribing to Patreon or my Substack.

More soon!

Warmly, Alison

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