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It's always exciting when I can find an excuse to revisit some of the interests that figured so prominently in my academic life--this interview with filmmaker Simone Ahuja still stands as one of the most fun pieces I've gotten the chance to work during my tenure with mnartists.org.

This second installment of our monthly featured collection series, TEN, offers a personal introduction to another staffer on mnartists.org's small team: Susannah Schouweiler, editor for the arts writing and criticism in MnArts Magazine and in its emailed 'zine, access+ENGAGE.

I THINK THIS GIG HAS MADE AN OBSESSIVE OF ME. To tell the truth, I've probably always carried a tendency toward the neurotic, but this job has taken those latencies and really brought them to the fore. And when I wake up to face the day and poke my way to the laptop with a cup of coffee in hand, it's that very fact that gives me daily cause to feel grateful.

And at the risk of sounding maudlin, that's because it's led me to all of you. It's only since I've taken this job, after spending countless hours looking through the artwork emerging from our state, that I've truly appreciated what we have in Minnesota. The work being done by artists here so impresses me--with its variety, its nerve, its irrepressible momentum, its caches of undreamed of talent--that it keeps me up at night, quite literally. When I remember my dreams, as often as not they're focused around doings at work--the artists or the writers, or the schemings afoot to raise the visibility of one or the other or, more likely, both.

How many can count themselves fortunate enough to have a job so challenging and so worthwhile that it consumes all their energies and, yet, demands--by force of the cause alone--still more? Who makes their daily bread at a task that engages them so fully?

So, before you browse through the tidbits of my own story in this collection, let me take this opportunity to thank you for giving me so very much to work with as I go about my business for mnartists.org. It's my cherished daily responsibility to sift through the offerings of mnartists.org and our surrounding "real-world" arts scene to bring you news, profiles, essays, and criticism drawn from the abundant art happenings in our area. I pore through your films, your songs, your paintings and photographs, your sculptures, and your performances. I read your comics and your articles, your reviews and your essays. I'm consistently amazed by the caliber of material I run across. The work I see from you often awes me, quite frankly.

I cannot imagine a more rewarding job than finding a way to tell your stories and to show more people what you do. I'm a very lucky woman to have the opportunity to do so.

Gratefully yours,
Susannah Schouweiler

access + ENGAGE, Regional, Unclassified

• Schouweiler, Susannah, Susannah Schouweiler
• My Father the Penguin (Ruminator magazine, January/February 2005), Susannah Schouweiler
• Schouweiler, Tom, Tom Schouweiler
• Ruminator Magazine, Ruminator Magazine
• A Note From the Outgoing mnartists.org Project Director, Kathleen Kvern
• Subscribe to mnartists.org's Newsletter, mnartists.org
• FILM: Look Again At India: Filmmaker Simone Ahuja of Blood Orange Media, Profile by Susannah Schouweiler
• Coming to a Radio Near You: Electric Arc Radio and the Lit 6 Project, Susannah Schouweiler
• Klefstad, Ann, Ann Klefstad
• MnArts Magazine: August 2008, Susannah Schouweiler, editor