A deft practitioner of meter and rhyme, Sutter is a fireside storyteller who makes the language thump and sing.

Barton Sutter is the only author to win the Minnesota Book Award in three different categories: for fiction with My Father's War and Other Stories, for creative non-fiction with Cold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map, and for poetry with The Book of Names: New and Selected Poems (BOA Editions). Among other honors, he has won a Jerome Foundation Travel & Study Grant (Sweden), a Loft-McKnight Award, and the Bassine Citation from The Academy of American Poets. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin, Superior.