10/05/2026
What an extraordinary way to begin our fall season! 🍁 🍂
Lakselaget had the privilege of spending Saturday afternoon with three truly remarkable women: authors Lorna Landvik, Antonia Felix, and Sheryl Ramstad. To call them simply “authors,” however, hardly begins to capture the talent, accomplishment, resilience, and life experience represented on our panel.
Lorna Landvik is the beloved Minnesota novelist behind 13 books, including Patty Jane’s House of Curl, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons, Once in a Blue Moon Lodge, and Last Circle of Love. She is also an actress, improvisational performer, and someone who can make an entire room laugh while simultaneously saying something wonderfully perceptive about life. Today she told us that her first novel was rejected 30 times. She refused to allow someone else’s “no” to be her final answer. Publisher number 31 finally said yes.
Antonia Felix is a New York Times bestselling author whose remarkable body of work spans nonfiction, biography, fiction, poetry, and drama. She has written biographies of women including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elizabeth Warren, Michelle Obama, and Condoleezza Rice, as well as musical figures including Andrea Bocelli and Harry Connick Jr. She is also an educator, an accomplished classical singer who has performed internationally, and a scholar whose work and interests have taken her around the world.
And then there is Sheryl Ramstad, whose life almost defies summarization. A federal prosecutor at 29, Sheryl survived a catastrophic plane crash that left her with burns over more than one third of her body and less than a one percent chance of survival. She went on to become a judge, mediator, public servant, Minnesota’s first woman Commissioner of Corrections, marathon runner, and Mt. Kilimanjaro climber. Then, at 62, after 37 years in law, she went back to school, earned advanced degrees in nursing, and began an entirely new career in healthcare, including working with burn survivors and participating in medical missions around the world. Eventually, she added “author” to that extraordinary list with her memoir, Living Life Full Throttle.
And somehow, with résumés like these, the afternoon never felt like a recitation of accomplishments. It was funny, candid, thoughtful, and wonderfully human.
We talked about creativity and where stories come from. We talked about rejection, writer’s block, editors, publishing, discipline, inspiration, book clubs, favorite books, and the wonderfully rich literary community we have here in Minnesota. We heard stories from Hollywood, New York, Ireland, Pakistan, courtrooms, classrooms, publishing houses, and countless unexpected turns along the way.
But perhaps what stayed with us most was the sheer range of possibility represented by these three women.
Careers can change. Lives can change. A devastating event does not have to determine everything that follows it. A rejection does not have to be the final answer. And there is no point at which we have to stop learning, creating, reinventing ourselves, or beginning something entirely new.
That spirit feels particularly at home at Lakselaget.
Thank you, Lorna, Antonia, and Sheryl, for sharing your stories, your wisdom, your humor, and your extraordinary talents with us. What a privilege to have three such accomplished women around one table and what a wonderful beginning to our new season.
Learn more about our guests:
Lorna Landvik: https://www.lornalandvik.com
Antonia Felix: https://www.antoniafelix.com
Sheryl Ramstad: https://www.sherylramstadauthor.com
