Christopher Vondracek is a writer, musician, and poet based in Minnesota. The agriculture reporter for the Star Tribune, Vondracek previously worked as a journalist throughout South Dakota and in Washington D.C. He plays piano for the traveling radio variety hour the Rock Garden Tour, which has played from a governor’s barn to the Mount Rushmore cafeteria. His current band, the Golden Bubbles, which he co-leads with his brother, Leo, has released music in the Twin Cities scene, including the nationally reviewed 2012 album Seventy-Two. His poetry book, Rattlesnake Summer (2020), features a poem for each of South Dakota’s 66 counties. His stories and essays have been published in literary journals, including Structo, Passages North, and Cutbank, and he was a 2016 finalist Iowa Review Creative Nonfiction prize. Vondracek lives in Minneapolis with his wife Carrie and daughter Rosie.