Laurie Hertzel Presents Ghosts of Fourth Street: My Family, a Death, and the Hills of Duluth

Overview

Head to The University Club of Saint Paul for a conversation between Laurie Hertzel and Chris Hewitt.

A lifelong journalist, Laurie spent 15 years as the book's editor at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, Minn., and now reviews books for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Star Tribune, and elsewhere, and teaches in the low-residency MFA in Narrative Nonfiction program at the University of Georgia in Athens. She has also taught at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, and has conducted many workshops on memoir writing around Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Laurie's fiction has been published in North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review and the South Carolina Review, and her short story, Snapshots, won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize. She served two terms on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, including stints as President and as Chair of the Autobiography Committee. She has held fellowships from Duke University and the James Thurber House and her work has been honored with awards from the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the William Allen White Award, and the Society for Features Journalism. In 2023 she was honored with the Kerlan Award, given annually by the University of Minnesota to recognize contributions to children's literature.

Ghosts of Fourth Street is the story of growing up in a big, complicated family in the 1960s, a family steeped in stories and myth. When the oldest son dies, everything changes. The story is told through the eyes of nine-year-old Laurie, a solitary child sustained by books.

Chris Hewitt is a writer for the Star Tribune editor, as well as a book enthusiast. He shares his passion through books in his position as Books Editor and on his instagram @hewittstrib.