As a promising young writer, Cheri Johnson won a series of big awards like the Bush Fellowship and the McKnight Fellowship, which gave her the funding to focus on finishing her first book. But she took a wrong turn with that book and struggled for years to write a new novel and find a publisher.
After more than a decade, she’s finally published that book: “Anika Rose,” based loosely on “Rosemary’s Baby,” but set in Lake of the Woods County where she grew up. She tells KFAI’s Rob McGinley Myers what she’s learned through that process about why she writes.