Michael Zimny is a Chicago native who moved to South Dakota after seven years as a creative copywriter in New York City. Before that he spent some time in the Army, and before that spent his college years earning a Bachelors in English Lit at the University of Memphis. He fled the rents of New York and fell in love with the prairie and the Black Hills. He works for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion, pulling levers for their social media operations and writing the Arts and Culture blog. He also writes for South Dakota Magazine and some other publications. Michael scours the state from Akaska to Wakonda looking for stories that only diehard South Dakota boosters would ever read, as well as stories that convey the joys of Dakotiana to the world.