Eric Dregni is an American author. He is an associate professor of English and Journalism at Concordia University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he teaches writing. He has written or cowritten travel memoirs and essays about Minnesota, Norway, and Italy, as well as guidebooks and books on popular culture in the American Midwest.
Childhood and personal life
Dregni lives with his wife, Katy, and three children in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis.[2] His family lived in Belgium when he was a child, and traveled in Britain and Northern Europe before they settled in Minnetonka.[2]
In the 1990s he played in the amateur novelty band Vinnie and the Stardüsters.[3][4] Dregni founded the band with John Perkins. The two met as teenagers on a junior high school church trip but formed the band as undergraduates at Macalester College. Dregni, a music major, graduated in 1990.[3]
Career
A MinnPost profile characterized Dregni's writing career as suggestive of a man on "an endless (and sometimes endlessly weird) vacation."[2] He has written several guidebooks to the American Midwest, the product of a series of road trips. His book In Cod We Trust came out of a Fulbright Fellowship that funded Dregni to spend 2003 in Norway with his wife and their newborn son.[5]Never Trust a Thin Cook was written after a series of extended visits to Italy, culminating in a yearlong residence in Modena in the 1990s.[2][6]
^Goetzman, Amy (23 October 2008). "A Minnesotan in Norway: Eric Dregni heads to the motherland to become a father and write 'In Cod We Trust' feature story)". MinnPost. ProQuest992822602.
^ abAger, Susan (6 September 2009). "Born to be mild // Twin Cities pop historians Michael and Eric Dregni are the James Micheners of the motor scooter world (book review)". Star Tribune. ProQuest428058202.
^Covert, Colin (22 February 1996). "Born to be mild // Twin Cities pop historians Michael and Eric Dregni are the James Micheners of the motor scooter world (book review)". Star Tribune.
^Haga, Chuck (3 April 2011). "Footprints of the [Norse] gods: NONFICTION In a followup to 'In Cod We Trust,' Eric Dregni examines the history and influence of Scandinavians in the United States (book review)". Star Tribune. ProQuest860141305.