Meet the MNHS Press Minnesota Book Award Finalists

About This Event

Double Discount Days invites you to chat with the MNHS Press authors honored as finalists at the 2025 Minnesota Book Awards. These books were recognized for their excellence in the General Nonfiction and Minnesota Nonfiction categories. Find the authors and have your books signed in the History Center Rotunda on June 7, from noon-2 pm. Plus, if you're a MNHS Member, double your discount in MNHS Shops June 5-8.

General Nonfiction Finalist
Red Stained: The Life of Hilda Simms
Jokeda "JoJo" Bell

Black actress and activist Hilda Simms was a rising star on the stage and screen in post–WWII America until accusations of un-Americanism and communist sympathies derailed her career.

Jokeda “JoJo” Bell is executive director of exhibitions and programming for the African American Interpretive Center of Minnesota. She is a PhD student in the history department at the University of Minnesota. She studies Black women and land ownership in the Upper Midwest.

Minnesota Nonfiction Finalists
To Banish Forever: A Secret Society, the Ho-Chunk, and Ethnic Cleansing in Minnesota
Cathy Coats

The largely untold story of the Ho-Chunk exile from Minnesota, in which local white residents sought to expel all Indigenous people from the region and deny Native claims to some of the richest farmland in the world.

Cathy Coats is a metadata specialist at the University of Minnesota Libraries. She previously worked at the James W. Miller Learning Resources Center at St. Cloud State University.

It Took Courage: Eliza Winston's Quest For Freedom
Christopher P. Lehman

In 1860, Eliza Winston escaped enslavement while traveling in Minnesota, where she secured her freedom through legal appeal. Her story adds powerful testimony to African American experiences and perseverance in antebellum America.

Christopher P. Lehman is a professor of ethnic studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. He is also the author of Slavery’s Reach: Southern Slaveholders in the North Star State, which won the Minnesota Book Award for Minnesota Nonfiction in 2020.