John D. Schwetman is an Associate Professor of English in the Department of English, Linguistics and Writing Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He specializes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century U. S. literature. His chapter titled "Contact Points: The Roadside Diner’s Machinery of Work in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath" just appeared in a collection titled Left in the West: Literature, Culture, and Progressive Politics in the American West (U of Nevada P, 2018), edited by Dr. Gioia Woods. He is currently working on a book titled Far from Home, which considers the politics of region and place in twentieth-century US travel narrative. He is attending the 2019 MLA Convention to present on Robert Frost on the Robert Frost panel and is looking forward to spending a few days in "Stormy, husky, brawling" city that local son Carl Sandburg wrote about.