Decorah residents and Luther College students will have a chance to hear award-winning author and illustrator Nora Krug when she delivers Luther’s Opening Convocation address Thursday, Sept. 3. The free public event begins at 9:40 a.m. in the Center for Faith and Life Main Hall on the Luther College campus.
Krug is the author of “Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home,” a 228-page visual memoir that examines the meaning of home, identity and inherited history. The book will also be the first selection discussed by Luther students enrolled in Paideia during the fall 2026 semester.
A public address focused on belonging
In “Belonging,” Krug explores “Heimat,” a German word for the place that first shapes a person. The concept includes the way one generation’s sensibilities and identity can be passed to the next.
Krug uses letters, archival materials, flea-market finds and photographs to investigate what it means to belong. The book combines elements of a graphic novel, family scrapbook and investigative narrative as Krug considers her identity as a German woman living with the weight of catastrophic history.
The memoir also reflects on the responsibility people carry as inheritors of their countries’ pasts, according to the author’s website. That focus connects directly with Luther’s Paideia program, which is a signature program at the college.
“‘Belonging’ asks questions about the boundaries between individual, family and national identities, and about the gap between self-perception and how others see oneself,”
Brian P. Caton, director of Luther’s Paideia program, said the book was selected because of those questions.
Krug’s career and recognition
Krug is an associate professor of illustration at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, a Diplom in visual communications from the University of Arts Berlin and an M.F.A. in illustration as a visual essay from the School of Visual Arts in New York.
“Belonging” was named a best book of the year by The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, Kirkus Review, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Globe. The memoir won the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, the Art Directors Club Gold and Discipline Winner Cubes, the Society of Illustrators Silver Medal and the British Book Design and Production Award, among others.
Krug was a fellow at Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies in 2024 and 2025 and was also a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
The Sept. 3 convocation is free and open to the public. Luther College lists Michelle Volkmann, media relations specialist, as the contact for the event.