Buehler, Luisa

Luisa Buehler writes the Grace Marsden Mystery Series.  Reviewers have called her series “a cold-case-sizzle”.  The stories follow the cold trail of bygone crimes using a blending of a traditional whodunit with a hint of romance and a touch of the supernatural.  The series won The Readers Choice Award for Read more…

Hellmann, Libby Fischer

Libby Fischer Hellmann’s 6th novel, DOUBLEBACK, a thriller, was released in October, 2009, by Bleak House Books. In it PI Georgia Davis is paired with video producer and single mother Ellie Foreman, the protagonist of Libby’s other 4-book series. Libby also writes short stories and edited the acclaimed CHICAGO BLUES. Read more…

Martin, Philip

  Philip Martin is a Milwaukee-based and award-winning book author, editor, and indie-press publisher. Previously acquisitions editor for The Writer Books (connected with The Writer magazine), he now directs Great Lake Literary, offering support services for up-and-coming authors.  His session at the Festival will focus on one of his areas of Read more…

Rath, Sara

SARA RATH is a versatile, award-winning author with over a dozen books in a variety of genres, including four volumes of poetry, seven nonfiction books (including three biographies) and is currently writing her third novel.  Critics have said she has a “wicked sense of humor,” and her work is sometimes “laugh Read more…

Chard, Philip

Philip Chard is President & CEO of NEAS, Inc., a global EAP, Work/Life and behavioral solutions firm serving over 300 companies representing 1.9 million lives. He writes an award-winning weekly column in the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL titled “Out Of My Mind,” and is author of The Healing Earth, which won Read more…

Baker, Deb

Wisconsin author Deb Baker has written two mystery series. The Dolls To Die For series features a Phoenix, Arizona doll collecting club and member Gretchen Birch, who solves murders with her new age Aunt Nina while sharing a doll restoration business with her mother. Deb also wrote the humorous Yooper/backwoods mysteries, Read more…

Cardenas, Brenda

Brenda Cárdenas is the 2010-2012 Poet Laureate of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her collection of poetry Boomerang was published by Bilingual Review Press in 2009, and her chapbook From the Tongues of Brick and Stone by Momotombo Press (Institute for Latino/a Studies) in 2005. She also co-edited Between the Heart and the Read more…

Gartung, Karl

Karl Gartung grew up in Liberal, Kansas (an actual place and a real contradiction). Thirty years ago he founded Woodland Pattern Book Center with Anne Kingsbury and Karl Young. Fortunately, that center continues as an outlet for new literature, art and music, a point of contact for the writers of Read more…

Saller, Carol Fisher

Carol Fisher Saller is the author of The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships With Your Writers,  Your Colleagues and Yourself) as well as several books for children.   She is a senior manuscript editor and assistant managing editor at University of Chicago Press and Read more…

Laur, Mary E.

Twenty-odd years after she edited the yearbook at Catholic Memorial High School in Waukesha, Mary E. Laur is a member of the editorial team that produces the iconic Chicago Manual of Style (soon to be published in its 16th edition). Although her official title at the University of Chicago Press Read more…