The Thinking Spot & The Bakken Museum present the 2nd Annual
MN STEM Book Festival
Save the Date: Saturday October 24th 10am-6pm
MN STEM Book Festival is a free, day-long celebration of Science Communication featuring a book fair, author presentations and panels, children’s activities and free access to The Bakken Museum!
2026 will be the 2nd Annual #MNSTEMBookfest - we can't wait to see you there!
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RSVP to let us know you're coming!
SPONSOR
Connect with an engaged audience of families, educators, and science enthusiasts!
Email us at info at thethinkingspot dot us
PARTICIPATE
Limited Vendor Spots available for Science-themed non-book products.
The Festival
A collaboration of The Thinking Spot and The Bakken Museum, the festival will feature:
AUTHOR PANELS
Showcasing STEM Authors and experts across a variety of STEM fields
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KIDS CORNER
Meet your favorite storytellers up close! All day long, our Kids' Author Table will feature Authors each hour for a book reading and themed activity - perfect for young readers to discover inspiring new voices!
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MARKETPLACE
Books, Toys, Puzzles and more...
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HANDS ON ACTIVITIES
STEM activities for ALL Ages; Bakken Rare books display
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Plus Full Bakken Museum Access
The Authors
Dr. Marlene Zuk is a prominent figure in the fields of ecology, evolutionary biology and animal behavior. In addition to over 17,500 citations of her work, she is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Throughout her career, Zuk has also been a strong advocate for advancing women’s equity in science. Zuk has also had a significant impact on general understanding of biological diversity through public talks and popular science books, including Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test, and her most recent publication Outsider Animals.
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Featured Books: Outsider Animals; Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test
Kathryn Nuernberger is an essayist and poet who writes about the history of science and ideas, renegade women, plant medicines, and witches. Her latest book is Held: Essays in Belonging, which is about symbiotic mutualisms, climate change, and finding family at the end of the world. She is also the author of The Witch of Eye and the poetry collections, RUE, The End of Pink and Rag & Bone. Her first lyric essay collection, Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past, won the The Journal Non/Fiction Award. Other awards include the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an NEA fellowship, and notable essays in the Best American series. She is a Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA program at University of Minnesota.
Featured Book: Held: Essays in Belonging
Award-winning author Cary J. Griffith grew up among the woods, fields, and emerald waters of eastern Iowa. His childhood fostered a lifelong love of wild places. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of Iowa and an M.A. in library science from the University of Minnesota.
Griffith’s books explore the natural world. In nonfiction, he covers the borderlands between civilization and wild places. In fiction, he focuses on the ways some people use flora and fauna to commit crimes, while others with more reverence and understanding of the natural world leverage their knowledge to bring criminals to justice.​He is the recipient of a Minnesota Book Award, and a Midwest Book Award.
Featured Books: Gunflint Falling; Gunflint Burning
Valerie Tiberius is the Paul W. Frenzel Chair in Liberal Arts and professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota. Her books include Well-Being as Value Fulfillment: How We Can Help Each Other to Live Well and The Reflective Life: Living Wisely with Our Limits. She lives in Minneapolis.
Her most recent book - Artificially Yours: Real Friendship in a World of Chatbots - asks Are relationships with chatbot companions any good? Are they good in the same ways as human friendships? How will this change as AI develops? This book takes a philosophical approach to these questions that starts by asking what friendship is and what the value of it is supposed to be.
Featured Book: Artificially Yours
Dr. Brittany Lewis, founder and CEO of Research in Action, a social benefit corporation, has spent more than fifteen years working in partnership with Twin Cities communities.
She was a Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank Scholar-in-Residence, recipient of a 2020 Bush Foundation Fellowship, and winner of the Minneapolis Civil Rights Department 2020 History Makers at Home Award. Named one of the top 100+ Leading Black Women in 2020 by the Minnesota Black Chamber of Commerce, she was selected to deliver a TEDx Minneapolis talk, “The Illusion of Choice.”
Featured Book : Building a New Table
Ruth DeFoster holds a PhD in mass communication from the University of Minnesota.She is an Assistant Professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she teaches courses on advertising, visual communication, popular culture, writing, and media.
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Her research focuses on media coverage of crime, mass shootings, terrorism and identity. Ruth's professional background is in journalism, and she has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor and journalist. She was the 2020 Head of the Cultural and Critical Studies Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and served as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Hubbard School from 2019-2023.
Featured Book : Fear Knot
Nate Pedersen is a bestselling nonfiction writer and World Fantasy Award–nominated editor based in North Mankato, Minnesota.
He is the coauthor, with Lydia Kang, MD, of Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything (Workman, 2017), Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World’s Worst Diseases (Workman, 2021), and Pseudoscience: An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them (Workman, 2025). He frequently lectures on history, folklore, and science for public audiences.
Featured Book: Pseudoscience
Shawn Otto speaks to audiences worldwide about the scientific foundations of democracy and the causes and dangers of anti-science authoritarianism. He is author of the award-winning nonfiction book The War on Science, which predicted the rise of anti-science authoritarians and the threat they pose to democracy. The book has been called "a game changer, and probably the most important book you'll read this year."
He has advised candidate science debate efforts in many countries. Otto was awarded the IEEE-USA National Distinguished Public Service Award for his work elevating science in American public dialogue. He is cofounder and producer of the US presidential science debates at ScienceDebate.org and the only person to get Donald Trump to answer science questions during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Featured Book: The War on Science
Meg Fleming is an award-winning children’s book author, a fan of all dogs and a big-time laugher. Also, a voice teacher and former music educator & performer, Meg draws on her love of rhythm, rhyme, and lyricism to create and imagine stories. Meg’s books are loved by dreamers and thinkers of all ages.
Meg enjoys visiting schools, libraries and writers’ conferences to share her passion for writing with kids and adults of all ages.
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Featured Book: Pretty Close But Not The Same
Lisa Westberg Peters is the author of twenty children’s books including Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story, the winner of the Minnesota Book Award. Her first book, The Sun, The Wind and the Rain, was named an Outstanding Science Trade Book, and many of her titles have received starred reviews.
National Geographic and Pearson Education recently purchased the educational reprint rights to her science poetry books, Earthshake: Poems from the Ground Up and Volcano Wakes Up!, respectively. Lisa is also the author of a memoir for adults, Fractured Land: The Price of Inheriting Oil.
Featured Book: We Can Hear Without Ears
Louise M. Aamodt is an ESL and science teacher, an active SCBWI member, and children’s book author. A Forest Begins Anew, which won the Marvelous Midwest Conference manuscript contest, is her debut picture book.
Featured Book: A Forest Begins Anew
Molly Beth Griffin is the author of many picture books including Ten Beautiful Things, Just Us, Rhoda’s Rock Hunt, and Rings of Heartwood: Poems on Growing.
She has also published YA, poetry chapbooks, and a series of beginning readers. Molly is a teaching artist at The Loft Literary Center and a graduate of Hamline University’s MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. She critiques manuscripts, visits schools and libraries, and hosts a monthly Picture Book Salon in Minneapolis, where she lives with her partner and their two children.
Featured Book: Babysitter Tree (releases Oct 20 2026)