Heather Quinn

Heather Quinn is a nonfiction writer, editor, and photographer. They live in Minneapolis with their husband and two young daughters. They write personal and lyric essays primarily but come at nonfiction from a journalistic background which taught them that truthtelling is a deeply creative act in and of itself.

Writing and photography have always been linked practices for Heather, the aim of both, as Joan Didion described writing, is to "make somebody see something the way you see it, trying to impose your idea, your picture." When they lived in San Diego, they spent much of their free time photographing the surrounding desert regions east of San Diego. They're still looking for subjects to photograph and write about in their new home in the midwest, and they try to take some kind of camera with them when they walk around the city pushing their daughters in their stroller. Heather earned her MFA from Portland State University and they participated in their graduation reading five days after giving birth to their first daughter by c-section, an experience that reminded them of the vulnerability trauma, and beauty of all births, whether literal or creative in nature.

As a photographer, Heather specializes in black-and-white landscape and fine art photography. Her favorite subjects are desert landscapes, abandoned buildings, and people from around the Salton Sea in the southeast corner of California.