POSTPONED: Nancy Drew: Iowa's Heroine to the World

This event has been cancelled--we are working to reschedule with the speaker for a different date. 

Barbara Lounsberry will present her program, "Nancy Drew: Iowa's Heroine to the World" on Saturday, June 14 at 2:00pm at the Marshalltown Public Library. The presentation will take place in the library's community meeting rooms. 

Nancy Drew is the most popular female detective in fiction. Few know, however, that Nancy is an Iowa heroine and that her creator was Mildred Augustine of Ladora. Nancy Drew and Mildred Augustine are extraordinary role models for Iowa girls and boys, women and men. An academic pioneer (the first woman to earn a master’s degree from the University of Iowa’s School of Journalism), Augustine earned six airplane pilots’ licenses, including one for sea-planing, wrote 130 stories for young people and wrote her newspaper column, “On the Go,” until her death at age 98. Augustine wrote in the first Nancy Drew volume, The Secret of the Old Clock, published in 1930, “Nancy Drew took pride in the fertility of her state and saw beauty in a crop of waving green corn as well as in the rolling hills and the expanse of prairie land.” This program, with lots of images, is meant to inspire young and old.

Barbara Lounsberry recently retired as a Professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa. She was named the University’s Distinguished Scholar in 1994 and its Outstanding Teacher in 1998. She is particularly interested in the subjects of Midwestern life and literature. Born and raised in Iowa, Professor Lounsberry believes Iowa culture, like its soil, is incredibly rich.

This event is sponsored by Humanities Iowa,  the State Historical Society, Inc, and the Friends of the Marshalltown Public Library. For more information, please visit the library's website at www.marshalltownlibrary.org or call the library's Information Desk at 641-754-5738 ext. 4.