Lake Superior in Duluth, Minnesota, where Mardith Louisell was raised, continues to affect everything she writes as does her previous child welfare social work. Her fiction, essays and memoir can be found in South Dakota Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, Persimmon Tree, and Smokelong Quarterly and in the anthologies: Italy, A Love Story, The House on Via Gombito Street, and Best Travel Writing 2012. Beside Myself, a book of flash fiction with a single narrator is her current project. Her short story, “Had They Learned about Jayne Mansfield?” is her favorite title. She lives in San Francisco.