Reporter, book-award winning author Hertzel to appear at Cloquet Public Library

Author and former Duluth News Tribune reporter Laurie Hertzel will read from and sign copies of her new book “News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist” at the Cloquet Public Library at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 7. Hertzel was recently awarded the People’s Choice Award from the Minnesota Book Awards for 2011.

Hertzel’s 18-year career with the Duluth News Tribune began when journalism was a predominantly male profession and she was assigned to writing obituaries. She eventually became a beat reporter, feature writer, news editor and columnist, all the while documenting societal changes. She writes about the establishment of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, the rise of Indian treaty rights, and her assignment in the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era.

Reporting from Duluth’s sister city of Petrozavodsk, Hertzel met an elderly woman who told her she had been born in Cloquet. She was just one of many American-born Finns who Hertzel would interview about their life in Soviet Russia where their families had moved in the 1930s in response to Lenin’s call for workers of the world to unite. “Karelian Fever” ended in tragedy as many faced firing squads under Stalin’s purges shortly after their arrival. Hertzel later wrote former Superior resident Mayme Sevander’s account of her family’s experiences in “They Took My Father.” Hertzel has also been awarded the Thomas Wolfe prize for short fiction. She is currently books editor for the Star Tribune.

Copies of “News to Me” will be available for purchase after the library reading. The event is free and open to the public. For further information, call the library at 218-879-1531.

The program is supported by the Minnesota Book Awards through a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education-State Library Services and the Minnesota Library Foundation. The Minnesota Book Awards is a project of The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library, in partnership with the Saint Paul Public Library and the City of Saint Paul. For more information on the Minnesota Book Awards, visit www.thefriends.org.

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