15th YEAR BRINGS CELEBRATION AND CHANGES TO THE SOUTHEAST WISCONSIN FESTIVAL OF BOOKS
Five Events Planned for 2024-2025
Major New Sponsor Needed
When the UW Regents announced that UWM-Waukesha would close in June 2025, the Executive Committee of the Festival of Books knew they had a job ahead. UWM-Waukesha’s Foundation has been the primary sponsor of the Festival since its inception in 2009. The Festival was to provide outreach from the UWM-W to the to public, to showcase the many authors on the faculty and to promote literacy in the community. UWM-Waukesha’s large connected campus offered an event with a hundred authors under one roof. The Festival has been held annually since 2010.
In the spring, the Board of the Foundation contacted Festival founder Laraine O’Brien for help in determining the future of the Festival. She contacted about 40 people who had worked on the Festival over the years. About 20 of those people have been meeting for the past few months. The group decided to continue the Festival with celebration events this year and seek a new sponsor for a full festival next year, in 2025. The committee hopes to announce a new sponsor before the end of 2024 so that work can begin on a complete Festival for the Fall of 2025. Festival events that will not be held this year are the Keynotes, the Author Panels, the ALLWRITERS’ Workshops, and the Don Taylor Writers Marketplace and Exhibit Area (the online version will continue).