Laurie Hertzel is the author of two memoirs – News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist, winner of a 2011 Minnesota Book Award readers’ choice award, and Ghosts of Fourth Street, both published by the University of Minnesota Press. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction from Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina, has taught memoir writing at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and elsewhere, and is the former President of the National Book Critics Circle board. She was honored with the Kerlan Award in 2023. She teaches in the low-residency MFA in narrative nonfiction program at the University of Georgia.