Marge Rogers Barrett

Marge Rogers Barrett grew up in a small prairie town in southwestern Minnesota, one of seven children with a father of Irish and a mother of Belgian and German descent. Her family moved to St. Paul when she was a junior in high school. After graduation from a Catholic all-girl high school, she entered the convent at St. Catherine University in St. Paul. She left the order after college graduation with a BA in English and then taught in rural, urban, and suburban high schools. She married another teacher and was divorced within a year. Completing Master’s work in education and an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota, at different times, she counseled, administered, and taught at the University. During those years, she remarried and raised three children. She has taught at the Loft Literary Center since 2005 and is the author of a chapbook of poems, My Memoir Dress, and a memoir, Called: The Making & Unmaking of a Nun. She and her husband live on a bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis and see their children and six grandchildren often in Minnesota and New York.