Profiles of participating authors in the Festival of Books.
Wisconsin native Stacey Joy Netzel fell in love with books at a young age, so for her the graduation to writing them was natural. A member of Romance Writers of America (RWA) and Wisconsin Romance Writers (WisRWA), she credits her parents for encouraging her dreams of becoming a published author, Read more
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
Ed Janus spent two years as a dairy farmer in Crawford County, Wisconsin, where he fell in love with cows, fields, barns, and farmers. Since then he has interviewed hundreds of people as an audio journalist, writer, and oral historian and has created radio programs for public radio, the Voice of America, and publishers Read more
Libby Fischer Hellmann, an award-winning crime fiction author, has published seven novels. Her most recent, SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE, is a stand-alone thriller, goes back, in part, to the late Sixties in Chicago. She also writes two crime fiction series. The first, which includes the hard-boiled EASY INNOCENCE (2008) Read more
Peter Geye received his MFA from the University of New Orleans and his PHD from Western Michigan University, where he was editor of Third Coast. He was born and raised in Minneapolis and continues to live there with his wife and three children. Safe From the Sea is his first Read more
Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher and found they are very much alike. She is the inimitable creator behind Ernie Pook’s Comeek, the seminal comic strip that was syndicated scross North America in alternative weeklies for two decades. She is the Read more
After being an “at-home” mom and attending college part-time until she graduated, Alice pursued her career at the University of Wisconsin. Twenty years later she retired from her position as senior editor and publications director at the La Follette School of Public Affairs. In retirement she leads writing workshops for 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