Dave Rasdal

Dave Rasdal was born and raised in Iowa and has been a writer all of his life. For 30 years he wrote a feature column, Ramblin’, for The Gazette, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, daily newspaper with more than 200,000 readers. His writing has received numerous awards, including Master Columnist by the Iowa Daily Newspaper Association in 2013 and runner-up in 2007.

Since 1974, when Rasdal began writing his first novel for a college course taught by well-known Midwestern author Frederick Manfred at the University of South Dakota, he has been interested in writing fiction. He has written numerous short stories as well, two of which finished in the Top 100 of the Writers’ Digest fiction writing contest.

Rasdal’s newspaper career began as Sports Editor of the Spencer (Iowa) Daily Reporter in 1975. He became City Editor at the Cedar Valley Daily Times (Vinton, Iowa) in 1977. He first joined The Gazette in 1979 as a reporter, where he covered the police beat, government beats and wrote feature stories. He had written columns in Spencer and Vinton, thus beginning a weekly column for The Gazette in 1982 after becoming a regional reporter for the 17-county circulation daily.

A restless spirit led Rasdal to leave The Gazette in 1986, only to rejoin the newspaper in 1990 as a regional reporter and columnist once again. During his absence from the newspaper, Rasdal moved to the San Jose, California, area where he wrote public relations materials, resumes, freelance stories and fiction. He has submitted very little fiction for publication consideration, preferring to write instead.

In addition to completing and publishing his first novel “Night Beat” in 2019, which he began writing in 1987, Rasdal has completed two other book-length fiction manuscripts and has two others in the works, including a historical crime novel revolving around a young Iowa man caught up in the Iowa-Chicago connection of illicit bootlegging, prostitution and murder during 1920s Prohibition.

Rasdal recently wrote the historical “Czech Village & New Bohemia: History in the Heartland” for The History Press in 2016, ghost-authored the autobiography, “The Advantage of Being Born Poor,” for Cedar Rapids banker Ernie Buresh in 2015 and has published two books of his favorite Gazette columns, “Ramblin’: Reflections of Hidden Iowa” (published by The Gazette in 2011) and “Ramblin’: Recollections of 30 Years on the Road” which he self-published in 2014.