LAURIE HERTZEL

Freya Manfred's newest collec- tion of poetry, "Swimming With a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle," has been published by Red Dragonfly Press. She'll read at 7 p.m. Thursday at Birchbark Books, 2115 W. 21st St., Minneapolis. Here is one of her poems, titled "Grief":

Twelve white whooping cranes

their black beaks shining

float like spirits on the ice-blue lake.

And yet a bed of tears lies under me.

I cannot raise my eyes to the winter sky

as the cranes lift, one by one, and fly away.

Also ...

The speeches of Sen. Paul Wellstone have been collected and edited by Mark Ireland, with a foreword by Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. In the spirit of Wellstone's green bus, "Wellstone: Conscience of the Senate" (North Star Press of St. Cloud, 232 pages, $16.95) has been printed in green. There will be a book-signing at 2 p.m. Saturday at Common Good Books, 165 Western Av. N., St. Paul.

• "To Siberia," by Per Petterson, reviewed on these pages last week, is no longer available in the Vintage edition mentioned with the review. A new edition was published this month by Graywolf Press of St. Paul, however, and sells for $22.

• Alexandra Fuller will speak this week as part of the annual Pen Pal Lecture Series. Fuller, author of the memoir "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight," will speak at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and 11 a.m. Friday at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. Tickets are available by calling 651-209-6799.

• A story by Catherine Watson has been included in "Best American Travel Writing 2008," edited by Anthony Bourdain (Houghton Mifflin, $28). Watson, a Minneapolis writer, is the former travel editor of the Star Tribune.

• "Almanac" host Cathy Wurzer takes readers on a trip along Highway 61 in a book published this month by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. "Tales of the Road" traces the 440 miles from La Crescent, along the Mississippi River, to Pigeon River at the Canadian border. She'll be at Virginia Street Swedenborgian Church in St. Paul at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 3 to sign books.

• "Doorstep Democracy: Face-to-Face Politics in the Heartland," by James H. Read has been published by the University of Minnesota Press. Read is a professor of political science at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University in St. Joseph, Minn. This is his second book.

Laurie Hertzel • laurie.hertzel@startribune.com