Saturday Schedule
Nov.6 10 am – 11:15 am CDT
LITERATURE OF PLACE – OUR OWN WISCONSIN
Three authors who use Wisconsin in a big way in their work discuss the importance place plays in literature, both fiction and nonfiction. Patricia Skalka, Amy Reichert, and Anna Lardinois will talk and answer questions about how the state of Wisconsin itself can change the way a story is presented.
MODERATOR: Larry Nelson
ANNA LARDINOIS
Anna Lardinois owns Gothic Milwaukee, offering the city’s most popular haunted, historical walking tours. She is also the author of Milwaukee Ghosts and Legends, and the creator of Walking Milwaukee, a collection of self-guided tours that explore the best of Cream City’s history and architecture.
AMY E. REICHERT
Amy E. Reichert, author of The Kindred Spirits Supper Club, The Coincidence Of Coconut Cake, Luck, Love, & Lemon Pie, The Simplicity of Cider, and The Optimist’s Guide To Letting Go, loves to write stories that end well with characters you’d invite to dinner. A wife, mom, amateur chef, Fix-It Mistress, a volunteer baby snuggler, and cider enthusiast, she earned her MA in English Literature and serves on her library’s board of directors. She’s a member of Tall Poppy Writers.
PATRICIA SKALKA
Patricia Skalka is the author of the award-winning Dave Cubiak Door County Mysteries. Currently, there are six books in the series: Death Stalks Door County, Death at Gills Rock, Death in Cold Water, Death Rides the Ferry, Death by the Bay, and Death Washes Ashore.
Skalka turned to fiction following a successful career in nonfiction. Her many credits include: Staff Writer for Reader’s Digest, freelancer, ghost writer, writing instructor, and book reviewer.
Skalka is past-president of the Sisters in Crime Chicagoland Chapter and a member of several professional organizations, including The Authors Guild of America, Mystery Writers of America, and Society of Midland Authors. She lives in Milwaukee and Door County, WI.
Nov. 6 11:45 am to 1:00 pm CDT
LITERATURE OF THE PAST – HISTORY TELLS OUR STORY
Four authors from very different backgrounds talk about how history shapes their own chosen genre. Whether nonfiction, fiction, or poetry, history weaves its way through these writers’ carefully crafted words. Simon Bronner, James Leary, Willa Richards and Colleen Nehmer share how history inspires their work.
MODERATOR: John Kasparek
SIMON J. BRONNER
Simon J. Bronner is the Dean of the College of General Studies and Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. He is the author of over 40 books, including most recently The Practice of Folklore: Essays Toward a Theory of Tradition which won the Chicago Folklore Prize. He is the recipient of the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award from the American Folklore Society.
JAMES P. LEARY
James P. Leary is the author of Yodeling in Dairyland: A History of Swiss Music in Wisconsin; Wisconsin Folklore; So Ole Says to Lena: Folk Humor of the Upper Midwest; Down Home Dairyland (with Richard March); Polkabilly: How the Goose Island Ramblers Redefined American Folk Music; a new edition of Richard Dorson’s Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers: Folk Traditions of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, and Alpine Dreaming. He is Professor Emeritus of Folklore and Scandinavian Studies and co-founder of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was named a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts, and Letters and a Fellow of the American Folklore Society. The American Folklore Society also bestowed upon him the Benjamin Botkin Award for outstanding lifetime contributions to public folklore. His work for Folksongs of Another America and Alpine Dreaming were nominated for Grammy Awards.
COLLEEN NEHMER (C.L. Nehmer)
Colleen Nehmer is the author of The Alchemy of Planes: Amelia Earhart’s Life in Verse. Her poetry has been published in Southern Poetry Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Pedestal Magazine, Southword, The Sunlight Press, An Ariel Anthology 2018, and other journals. Colleen won the 2019 Kay Saunders Memorial Emerging Poet Award and was a 2019 Best of the Net nominee. She writes everything from fairy tales to creative nonfiction to poems about body love and world history.
WILLA C. RICHARDS
Willa C. Richards is the author of The Comfort of Monsters. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review and she is the recipient of a PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize for Emerging Writers.
Nov.6 1:30 pm – 2:45 pm CDT
PASSPORT TO LITERATURE – TRAVELING WITH WORDS AS YOUR TICKET
Reading is often called a way to travel the world without ever leaving your chair. Authors BJ Hollars, Kristine Hansen, Barrett Swanson and Deborah Douglas share their maps and their journeys in many different ways through their writing.
MODERATOR: Carol Cannon
DEBORAH D. DOUGLAS
Deborah D. Douglas, an award-winning journalist, is the Eugene S. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at DePauw University and a senior leader with The OpEd Project, leading fellowships and programs that include the University of Texas at Austin, Dartmouth, Yale, Columbia, University of Illinois, Northwestern, University of Kansas, Urgent Action Fund in South Africa and Kenya, and Youth Narrating Our World (YNOW).
Douglas is author of U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places and Events That Made the Movement. (Moon Travel, 2021). She is among 90 writers and thought leaders who contributed to 400 Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019.
KRISTINE HANSEN
Kristine Hansen is a journalist covering food/drink, art/design and travel. Her stories have appeared on ArchitecturalDigest.com, Fodors.com, Vogue.com, Hunker.com and Islands.com, as well as Midwest Living Magazine and Milwaukee Magazine. She’s also written for TIME Magazine, Wine Enthusiast Magazine, Today.com, CountryLiving.com, FoodNetwork.com and the Travel + Leisure and Conde Nast Traveler websites. Occasionally, she pens content for brands, including Timberland and Meijer.
B.J. HOLLARS
B.J. Hollars is the author of several books, most recently Go West Young Man: A Father and Son Rediscover America on the Oregon Trail, Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians and the Weird in Flyover Country, The Road South: Personal Stories of the Freedom Riders, Flock Together: A Love Affair With Extinct Birds, From the Mouths of Dogs: What Our Pets Teach Us About Life, Death, and Being Human, as well as a collection of essays, This Is Only A Test. Additionally, he has also written Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America, Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa, Dispatches from the Drownings, and Sightings.
Hollars is the recipient of the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Nonfiction, the Anne B. and James B. McMillan Prize, the Council of Wisconsin Writers’ Blei-Derleth Award, and the Society of Midland Authors Award.
He is the founder and executive director of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild and the Midwest Artist Academy, as well as an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and a columnist for The Leader-Telegram. He lives a simple existence with his family.
BARRETT SWANSON
Barrett Swanson is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine. He was the recipient of a 2015 Pushcart Prize, and his short fiction and essays have been distinguished as notable in Best American Short Stories (2019), Best American Nonrequired Reading (2014), Best American Essays (2014, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2020) and Best American Sports Writing (2017). His work has appeared in many places, including Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, American Short Fiction, The New Republic, The Atavist, Guernica, The Guardian, Best American Travel Writing 2018, and Best American Travel Writing 2020. His debut essay collection, Lost In Summerland, was released by Counterpoint Press in May 2021. He and his wife live in the Midwest.
Nov.6 3:15 pm -4:30 pm- CDT
Literature of Our Planet – Wrap Our World with Words
Three writers from different genres, poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, celebrate our world and our environment with their stories and poems. Martha Bergland, Jeff Nania, and Lisa Fishman will discuss how literature can be a part of showing our love and appreciation to the earth, and a way to get our climate back on track.
MODERATOR: Marlin Johnson
MARTHA BERGLAND
Martha Bergland is the author of two nonfiction books, The Birdman of Koshkonong; The Life of Naturalist Thure Kumlien and Studying Wisconsin – The Life Of Increase Lapham, and two novels, Idle Curiosity and A Farm Under A Lake. She taught for many years at Milwaukee Area Technical College. She lives in Glendale, Wisconsin.
JEFF NANIA
Jeff Nania writes for Wisconsin Outdoor News and other publications. In his Northern Lakes Mysteries, he draws upon careers in law enforcement, conservation, and his passion for our natural resources. Whether he’s cutting wood, sitting in a wetland, fishing muskies, or snorkeling Spider Lake for treasure, Jeff spends as much time as possible outdoors.
LISA FISHMAN
Lisa Fishman’s seventh book was recently released: Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition. She is also the author of 24 Pages and other poems; F L O W E R C A R T; Current; The Happiness Experiment; Dear, Read and The Deep Heart’s Core is a Suitcase. Chapbooks include at the same time as scattering, Lining, KabbaLoom, and ‘The Holy Spirit does not deal in synonimes: a Transcription of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Marginalia in Her Greek and Hebrew Bibles. Fishman’s work has been published in many anthologies. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. A Pushcart Prize nominee and PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers nominee, Fishman continues to live on the farm she and her husband started in 1999 in Orfordville, Wisconsin, dividing her time between Wisconsin, Chicago, and Nova Scotia. She is a dual US/Canadian and is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada and the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.