Megan Marsnik is the author of Under Ground, an historical fiction novel that chronicles the struggles and triumphs of Katka Kovich, a young woman who emigrates to northern Minnesota from Slovenia and becomes embroiled in the immigrant labor uprising and miners’ strike of 1916. The granddaughter of Slovenian immigrants, and the daughter of political activists, Marsnik was born and raised in Biwabik, a small town in northern Minnesota. The novel was selected for serialization by the Star Tribune and was published in daily installments from May until September of 2015, and won the Slovenian Literary Award in 2021. 

Together with Screenwriter Mark Bradley, Marsnik wrote the script for a five-part television adaptation for Under Ground which was recently selected as a finalist for “Best Script” by Catalyst. She has written two other novels and published several short stories and poems. She is currently working on memoir about teaching remotely during the Minneapolis Uprisings after the killing of George Floyd. You can read an unpublished excerpt in “Other Works.”

Marsnik earned her MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she won the Jack Kerouac Award for Outstanding Prose for her short story collection, Mine Town Memoirs. She also spent a year at the University of York in England, where she did a concentration in Gender Studies.  She teaches philosophy and creative writing at an inner-city high school in Minneapolis, where she teaches many first and second generation Americans. Megan enjoys rowing, hiking, kayaking, canoeing and Nordic skiing.