The 2011 Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books will feature two interactive reading programs — one for fiction and one for poetry — in which audience members get to do even more than ask some questions. They create the program. Modeled on Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project, Impact! Fiction and Impact! Read more…
Michael Leannah is a teacher in the Sheboygan (Wisconsin) public schools and a writer. His children’s fiction has appeared in magazines in the United States (see the May, 2011 edition of Highlights for Children) and Australia. His history of a Wisconsin department store chain is to be published by the Read more…
Laura Fitzgerald is a Wisconsin native who now lives in Arizona. She is the best-selling author of three novels: Veil of Roses, One True Theory of Love, and, most recently, Dreaming In English. Fiztgerald grew up in Wauwatosa, attended Divine Savior Holy Angels High School, and received her undergraduate degree Read more…
Lesley Kagen is a former actress, voiceover talent and restaurateur. The author of WHISTLING IN THE DARK, LAND OF A HUNDRED WONDERS, TOMORROW RIVER, and GOOD GRACES, she has two grown children and lives with her husband near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Visit her at lesleykagen.com
D.C. Brod is the author of the Quint McCauley detective series; Heartstone, a contemporary Arthurian thriller; and most recently Getting Sassy, a caper. Her next book, Getting Lucky, is due out in November from Tyrus Books. She lives in St. Charles, IL.
Gail Lukasik is a published poet and novelist. Lisel Mueller described her book of poems, Landscape Toward a Proper Silence, as a “splendid collection.” In 2002 she was awarded an Illinois Arts Council award for her poetry. She writes the Leigh Girard mystery series. Kirkus Reviews described the second book Read more…
Wisconsin author Deb Baker writes the humorous Yooper/backwoods mysteries, centering around a fictitious town in the Michigan Upper Peninsula where Gertie Johnson, mother of the local sheriff, solves murders the old fashioned way with friends Cora Mae and Kitty. Deb is working on the sixth in the series. Under her Read more…
Authors Ann Angel and Jacqueline Houtman will be honored at the prestigious Council for Wisconsin Writers Awards Luncheon on May 14 at the Wisconsin Club in Milwaukee. The awards honor works published in 2010. Additional details are available on the Council’s website, www.wisconsinwriters.org. Ann Angel of Brookfield will receive the Read more…
Mary Helen Stefaniak’s second novel, The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia (W. W. Norton), has been awarded a 2011 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction. The Anisfield-Wolf awards “recognize books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures.” Juror Rita Dove described Read more…
Jacquelyn Mitchard is the author of the number one New York Times bestselling novel, The Deep End of the Ocean — chosen as the first book for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club and named by USA Today in 2007 as one of the most influential books of the past 25 years, Read more…