On Thursday May 15th, 2025 at 7PM Michael Perry joins his friend, award-winning writer Frank Bures, for a night of conversation at The Volume One Local Store.

From Mike:

I’ve known Frank Bures for years. He’s a brave and terrific writer. By brave, I mean he’s gone after stories in places and ways I’d never dare. He also once nearly died in a canoeing incident and (barely) lived to tell (write) about it. I too once flipped a canoe, but I just lost my tent (well, it wasn’t my tent, whoops) (also the canoe got bent) (it wasn’t my canoe, whoops). I hope you can join us for this event–we’ll share the stories behind the stories in Frank’s new book, reveal secrets behind the red-hot glory of the freelance writing life (we’ve both been at it for years), and take some questions we are likely under-qualified to answer. All in the cozy setting of the well-stocked Local Store.

In the thrilling new collection, Pushing the River, the award-winning writer Frank Bures tells true stories as varied as the waters, weather, and rhythms of a canoe trip. From the terror of two kayakers who barely escaped from the 2011 Pagami Creek Fire in the Boundary Waters to two young campers who had a supernatural scare in Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park in the 1970s to the author’s own incredible near-death rescue, Bures narrates the full range of what it means to push the river. You can grab a copy here.

The heart of the book is a telling of the lost history of the Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby, an annual 450-mile race run on the Upper Mississippi in the 1940s and 1950s that gave canoe-racing legend Gene Jensen his start—and which changed the course of modern canoeing. The tale includes the dominance of racers from the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, including many members of the Tibbetts family, and the unacknowledged contributions of Ojibwe canoe builders Jim and Bernie Smith, whose design features are now part of contemporary canoe racing.

Pushing the River is essential reading for anyone who loves what legendary canoeist Bob O’Hara called “the sense of perpetual adventure” that comes in the seat of a canoe, where you never quite know what you will encounter around the river’s next bend.

Frank Bures is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in Harper’s, Outside, The Atlantic, and many other publications. His stories have been included in The Best American Travel Writing anthologies. He lives in Minneapolis.