Mary Lethert Wingerd

Mary Lethert Wingerd (1948-) was born in St. Paul and teaches history at St. Cloud State University. She is the author of Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of Place in St. Paul and North Country: The Making of Minnesota, for which she won a Minnesota Book Award and a Hognander Minnesota History Award.

In Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of Place in St. Paul, Wingerd explores the civic history of the Twin Cities and their diverse and divergent cultural backgrounds. North Country: The Making of Minnesota tells how the Ojibwe and Dakota tribes and European settlers hesitantly cooperated at first and later dissolved into war. In this book, Wingerd explores how Minnesota became a state, highlighting a more raw and truthful narrative than has previously been explored on this topic.