Mercyhurst University kicks off its annual Literary Festival with a visit by Stephanie Gorton, author of Citizen Reporters: S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and the Magazine That Rewrote America. Gorton will speak Thursday, March 19, at 8 p.m. in Taylor Little Theatre. The event is free and open to the public. Citizen Reporters, published this February, is a fascinating history of the rise and fall of influential Gilded Age magazine McClure’s, as well as a timely, full-throated defense of investigative journalism in America. Ida Tarbell, who grew up in Titusville, was a star reporter for McClure’s, a woman who defied gender expectations and became a notoriously fearless journalist. The writers – from their reporting on labor unrest and lynching to their exposés of municipal corruption – brought their readers face to face with a nation mired in dysfunction. For information on Literary Festival events, contact Dr. Jeffrey Roessner, jroessner@mercyhurst.edu or 814-824-2136.

Photo of Stephanie Gorton by Rachel Hulin.