Craig Volkwas born and raised in Mitchell, South Dakota. He received undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of South Dakota and earned an MFA in playwriting and screenwriting from the Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut. Volk spent twelve years in the television and film industry in Los Angeles, California, including time spent as a writer for the Emmy-winning series Northern Exposure. He is the author of three published collections of poetry, and his stage scripts have been selected three times for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. His play Mayakovsky Takes the Stage won the 2007 PEN-USA award for best drama. Volk is an associate professor of theater, film, and video production at the University of Colorado-Denver.
Margaret Spader Neises (1897–1954) was a second-generation American, born to German immigrants who moved to South Dakota to farm. She married Lawrence Neises in 1922, and they settled near Howard, South Dakota, before leaving the farm and moving to Mitchell during the Great Depression in the early 1930s.
Joan Neises Volk (1924–1999) was born in her great-grandmother’s house on the Spader family farm. She attended Notre Dame Academy in Mitchell and called the town home for over sixty-five years, raising five boys with her husband, Erwin.
