Profiles of participating authors in the Festival of Books.
Isabel Sharpe was not born pen in hand like so many of her fellow authors. After she quit work to stay home with her first-born son and nearly went out of her mind, she started writing. Yes she was the clichéd bored housewife writing romance, but it was either that Read more
A. Manette Ansay grew up in Wisconsin among 67 cousins and over 200 second cousins. She is the author of six novels, including Good Things I Wish You (July, 2009) and Vinegar Hill, an Oprah Book Club selection, and Midnight Champagne, a finalist the the National Book Critics Circle award. In Read more
Todd Sattersten is the co-author of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time (Portfolio, 2009). He developed this project while working at 800-CEO-READ, where he was most recently President of the Milwaukee-based business book retailer. This capped five years of innovative projects including the book giveaway site InBubbleWrap, the annual 800-CEO-READ Business Read more
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
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
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
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
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
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
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