Art Cullen - Storm Lake: Change, Resilience, and Hope in Americas Heartland

Never did I seriously think of writing a book. Editing a country twice-a-week newspaper in my hometown of Storm Lake, Iowa, was plenty for me. But about a week after I won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in April 2017, a couple of New York publishers asked me on the same day if I would like to write a book. I laughed at the first caller and took the second more seriously but still thought it ludicrous. I could not write much more than seven hundred words at a time. But a third and most important publisher, my big brother John of The Storm Lake Times, told me to call them back. I always listen to John.

We struck up a conversation with editor Wendy Wolf at Viking. I suggested a series of essays and personality sketches that would paint a picture of how rural Iowa had morphed since my career humbly launched thirty-eight years ago in Algona, Iowa. She wanted to know more about the family story, of how the second smallest newspaper (we think) in the Pulitzers 101-year history won for taking on corporate agriculture over pollution and local government secrecy.

So it became the story of a hometown newspaper founded in 1990 by John in a tempest, joined by his little brother as editor, and how we interpret this place on the broken prairie with a pretty (but polluted) lake. A patchwork expanse of corn and soybeans, peppered by industrial-scale hog and poultry confinement buildings, surrounds us while the steady slice of the meatpackers cleaver occupies us. People stream in from around the globe, from Cuba to Myanmar, speaking thirty languages, searching for the first rung on the American ladder to a dream. While much of rural Iowa is emptying out of people and aspirations, our little town is revitalized by immigrants to whom we introduce you. Some of us blame the newcomers for problems as old as the railroad, and succor it with a brand of radical politics steeped in resentment that finds voice in Donald Trump and our congressman Steve King.

The story goes back to Algona in a 1980s rural depression that saw farmers hanging themselves in barns. Could the rural places we loved survive? It goes back to Mexico in 2005 to find Storm Lakes twin city and font of our new neighbors praying for a shot at freedom. In the people we find the spirit that draws us to them, and which eludes so many others building a political pitch on running them off.

Our story dwells mainly in the here and now of Storm Lakebuffeted by the currents of corn markets and wind and rain and political sleight of hand. We explore how we can maintain the worlds most productive agricultural complex without destroying ourselves and the people downstream. The challenge is even greater with climate change bearing down on Iowasand everyonesway of life. Change is underfoot against that horizon that should sustain our special little place. Thats a story of hope, which is what farming and family newspapering are all about.

My thanks to the staff of The Storm Lake Times, especially John and my wife, Dolores, for supporting me while I was off writing a book. Also, thanks to Todd Case of Iowa City, Martin Case of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Michael Gartner of Des Moines for helping to guide me. And of course to the readers of TheStorm Lake Times for getting me this far.