About

Dana Yost was a state and national award-winning daily newspaper editor and writer for 29 years, spending most of his career at the Marshall (Minn.) Independent and West Central Tribune (Willmar, Minn.)

Since 2008, he has authored six books and a co-authored a seventh, and had poems published in numerous magazines and literary journals. He is a three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize.

Among his journalism awards, he was twice named the state’s best daily newspaper columnist in the annual Minnesota Newspaper Association contest, won the 2007 MNA best editorial portfolio first-place award for his collection of editorials, and in 2004 swept the top two places for stories about politics in the Minnesota Associated Press Association’s annual contest. In 2003, Yost received the prestigious Journalism Accountability Award from the Minnesota News Council. He was the editor of a Marshall (Minn.) Independent news staff that won two Associated Press Freedom of Information Awards and several national Associated Press citations and honors. The paper finished first for general excellence in the MNA contest in three of Yost’s final four years as editor and finished second the other year.

A graduate of Southwest Minnesota State University, he has lived his entire life in the rural Midwest, mostly in Minnesota, plus more than six years in Forest City, Iowa.