19

Oct

Presented in partnership with the Arts + Literature Laboratory, three award-winning poets visit Madison for this special Watershed Reading. Featuring readings by Jeffrey Levine, founder of Tupelo Press and author of the new poetry collection, At the Kinnegad Home for the Bewildered; James Arthur, author of the brand new The Suicide's Son; and Anders Carlson-Wee, author of The Low Passions.

18

Oct

1992: After a confrontation at a riot grrl concert, seventeen-year-old Beth finds herself in a car with her friend's abusive boyfriend dead in the backseat, agreeing to help her friends hide the body. This murder sets Beth and her friends on a path of escalating violence and vengeance as they realize many other young women in the world need protecting too.

2022: Determined to use time travel to create a safer future, Tess has dedicated her life to visiting key moments in history and fighting for change. But rewriting the timeline isn’t as simple as editing one person or event. And just when Tess believes she's found a way to make an edit that actually sticks, she encounters a group of dangerous travelers bent on stopping her at any cost.

Tess and Beth’s lives intertwine as war breaks out across the timeline--a war that threatens to destroy time travel and leave only a small group of elites with the power to shape the past, present, and future. Against the vast and intricate forces of history and humanity, is it possible for a single person’s actions to echo throughout the timeline?

17

Oct

Poets Kevin Coval, Shira Erlichman, and Angel Nafis come together for a joint reading to start the Wisconsin Book Festival off right!

About Everything Must Go: Everything Must Go is an illustrated collection of poems in the spirit of a graphic novel, a collaboration between poet Kevin Coval and illustrator Langston Allston. The book celebrates Chicago’s Wicker Park in the late 1990’s, Coval’s home as a young artist, the ancestral neighborhood of his forebears, and a vibrant enclave populated by colorful characters. Allston’s illustrations honor the neighborhood as it once was, before gentrification remade it. The book excavates and mourns that which has been lost in transition and serves as a template for understanding the process of displacement and reinvention currently reshaping American cities.

20

Sep

The Wisconsin Book Festival and A Room on One's Own Bookstore present a joint reading by Oliver Baez Bendorf and Jennifer Nelson.

About Advantages of Being Evergreen: Equal part prayer and potion and survival guide, Oliver Baez Bendorf’s remarkable Advantages of Being Evergreen is an essential book for our time and for all time. With rigorous compassion and great formal dexterity Bendorf imagines a new world for all of our animal selves in which we are truly seen and truly safe. At the same time these are poems that never shy from the shocking violence and cruelty of this world. Over and over again people come together to make their individual and communal body whole, knowing all the while that so much of the world seeks to wreck even the simplest kinds of safety. Bendorf is making a future grammar for the moment all of our vessels are free and held. This is a book of the earth’s abiding wonder. And the body’s unbreakable ability to bloom. - Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of Rocket Fantastic.

17

Oct

A new home, a new marriage, a new family. It’s a lot to sort out. But before medicolegal death investigator Mattie can smooth out the unexpected chaos of her new life, duty calls. At the local ER, a battered and bruised teenage girl has been brought in by a mysterious man who claimed she’d fallen out of a car. The staff is suspicious, but while they attend to the teenager, the unidentified man slips out. Then the girl dies, but not before informing social worker Hildy Schneider that the man had her little sister as well.

Mattie’s exam reveals forensic evidence of long-term IV drug use and physical abuse, findings consistent with Hildy’s suspicion that the girl was a victim of human trafficking. They are able to confirm her identity as a teen who went missing six months ago, along with her sister—facts that are deeply unsettling to Mattie who now shares a home with her husband’s teenage daughter.

Working closely with Hildy and Sorenson homicide detectives, including her husband Steve Hurley, Mattie must delve into a dark underworld to stop the ruthless trafficking of human lives—before it's too late for another young girl...

11

Oct

A panel discussion of debut YA writers living in the Midwest. The authors will discuss their books, their paths to publication, their thoughts on writing for young adults, and their works in progress. The authors write in a variety of genres within YA, including mystery/thriller (Amelia Brunskill - The Window), science fiction (Adrienne Finlay - Your One & Only), and fantasy (Madeline Reynolds - Illusions).

13

Oct

Poetry. Women's Studies. Indictus re-imagines various creation myths to bear the invisible and unsaid assaults of women. In doing so, it subverts notions of patriarchal power into a genre that can be demolished and set again. Indictus is a Latin word, from which other words like "indict" and "indicate" are born. It translates literally as "to write the unsaid." There is an effort in this book to create the supernatural through the utterance of violence, because jurisdiction fails in real time. That sexual assault can so easily become a science fiction when power is rearranged to serve the victim speaks to the abject lack of control within victims to ever be redeemed. Crimes resolve to misdemeanors. In a world without my abusers, how can I soon become myself? Combining the mythological and autobiographical, this book attempts to indict us, so that the wounded might one day be free.

12

Oct

In luminous, vivid, searingly honest prose, the stories in White Dancing Elephants center on the experiences of diverse women of color—cunning, bold, and resolute—facing sexual harassment and racial violence, as well as the violence women inflict upon each other. One woman’s miscarriage is juxtaposed against the story of the Buddha’s birth. Another cheats with her best friend’s husband, only to discover it’s her friend she most yearns for. In three different stories, three artists struggle to push courageous works into the world, while a woman with an incurable disease competes with her engineer husband’s beautiful android.

Combining the speculative elements and wry psychological realism beloved by readers of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Margaret Atwood, Danzy Senna and Sandra Cisneros, this collection introduces Chaya Bhuvaneswar as an original and memorable new voice. White Dancing Elephants is the winner of the 2017 Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Prize.

11

Oct

With the birth of her first child, soon-to-be professor Laura Jean Baker finds herself electrified by oxytocin, the “love hormone”—the first effective antidote to her lifelong depression. Over the next eight years, her “oxy” cravings, and her family, only grow—to the dismay of her husband, Ryan, a freelance public defender. As her reckless baby–making threatens her family’s middle–class existence, Baker identifies more and more with Ryan’s legal clients, often drug–addled fellow citizens of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Is she any less desperate for her next fix?

Baker is in an impossible bind: The same drive that sustains her endangers her family; the cure is also the disease. She explores this all–too–human paradox by threading her story through those of her local counterparts who’ve run afoul of the law—like Rob McNally, the lovable junkie who keeps resurfacing in Ryan’s life. As Baker vividly reports on their alleged crimes—theft, kidnapping, opioid abuse, and even murder—she unerringly conjures tenderness for the accused, yet increasingly questions her own innocence.

12

Oct

Wisconsin People & Ideas, the Wisconsin Academy’s magazine of contemporary Wisconsin thought and culture, presents a reading featuring the winners of their 2018 Fiction and Poetry Contest.

Fiction readers include:

• [1st place] Michael Hopkins, Neenah -- "Static"
• [2nd] Jack Harris, Mazomanie -- "Aeshnidae"
• [3rd] AnnaKay Kruger, Madison -- "A Sweet Thing"

Poetry readers include:

• [1st] Jenna Rindo, Pickett -- "Head, Thorax, and Abdomen"
• [2nd] Thomas J. Erickson, Milwaukee -- "November"
• [3rd] Justine Jones, Madison -- "The Act"

The 2018 Fiction & Poetry Contests were supported by Wisconsin Academy donors, members, and the following sponsors: Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Book Festival, Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts. Learn more about how to submit your work to our annual fiction and poetry contests here.

19

Feb

Eighteen-year-old Robert Weekes is a practitioner of empirical philosophy—an arcane, female-dominated branch of science used to summon the wind, shape clouds of smoke, heal the injured, and even fly. Though he dreams of fighting in the Great War as the first male in the elite US Sigilry Corps Rescue and Evacuation Service—a team of flying medics—Robert is resigned to mixing batches of philosophical chemicals and keeping the books for the family business in rural Montana, where his mother, a former soldier and vigilante, aids the locals. When a deadly accident puts his philosophical abilities to the test, Robert rises to the occasion and wins a scholarship to study at Radcliffe College, an all-women’s school. At Radcliffe, Robert hones his skills and strives to win the respect of his classmates, a host of formidable, unruly women. Robert falls hard for Danielle Hardin, a disillusioned young war hero turned political radical. However, Danielle’s activism and Robert’s recklessness attract the attention of the same fanatical anti-philosophical group that Robert’s mother fought years before.

04

Nov

In Dead Presidents, public radio host and reporter Brady Carlson takes readers on an epic trip to presidential gravesites, monuments, and memorials from sea to shining sea. With an engaging mix of history and contemporary reporting, Carlson explores the death stories of our greatest leaders, and shows that the ways we memorialize our presidents reveal as much about us as they do about the men themselves.

02

Nov

The Great Recession not only shook Americans’ economic faith but also prompted powerful critiques of economic institutions. This timely book explores three movements that gathered force after 2008: the rise of the benefit corporation, which requires social responsibility and eschews share price as the best metric for success; the emergence of a new group, Slow Money, that fosters peer-to-peer investing; and the 2011 Wisconsin protests against a bill restricting the union rights of state workers.

02

Nov

This entertaining and enlightening graphic narrative tells the exciting story of the seventeenth-century thinkers who challenged authority—sometimes risking excommunication, prison, and even death—to lay the foundations of modern philosophy and science and help usher in a new world. With masterful storytelling and color illustrations, Heretics! offers a unique introduction to the birth of modern thought in comics form—smart, charming, and often funny.

These contentious and controversial philosophers—from Galileo and Descartes to Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Newton—fundamentally changed the way we look at the world, society, and ourselves, overturning everything from the idea that the Earth is the center of the cosmos to the notion that kings have a divine right to rule. More devoted to reason than to faith, these thinkers defended scandalous new views of nature, religion, politics, knowledge, and the human mind.

04

Nov

The Pox Lover is a personal history of the turbulent 1990s in New York City and Paris by Anne-Christine d’Adesky, a pioneering American AIDS journalist, lesbian activist, and daughter of French-Haitian elites. In an account that is by turns searing, hectic, and funny, d’Adesky remembers “the poxed generation” of AIDS — their lives, their battles, and their determination to find love and make art in the heartbreaking years before lifesaving protease drugs arrived.

03

Nov

From Natasha Pulley comes a story of a great friendship and a treacherous quest in the magical landscape of nineteenth-century Peru. In 1859, ex-East India Company opium smuggler Merrick Tremayne is nursing an injury that almost cost him his leg, trapped at his crumbling family estate in Cornwall. In the sprawling grounds of the old house, something is wrong; a statue moves, his grandfather’s pines explode, and his brother accuses him of madness. So when the India Office asks Merrick to smuggle cuttings from cinchona trees—the source of quinine, essential for the treatment of malaria—from deep within Peru, he knows it’s a terrible idea. The terrain is treacherous and a gang of criminals runs the quinine supply, and nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who’s made the attempt has died. Merrick can barely walk. But against his better judgment, he joins the expedition to the last outpost before the quinine woods: a tiny mission colony on the edge of the Amazon where a salt line on the ground separates town from forest. Anyone who crosses is killed by something that watches from the trees, but somewhere beyond the salt are cinchona, and the way around is blocked.

23

Oct

Your steps make a difference! Join Literacy Network supporters along the Lakeshore Path for the 25th year and help end the cycle of illiteracy. Funds raised from the run will benefit Dane County adults that are committed to improving their reading, writing and speaking skills to be better equipped to succeed in the workplace, understand health issues, and provide supportive environments for the education of their children. The Literacy Network provides free classes and with the help of more than 500 volunteer tutors over 1,200 adults are helped each year. It's your choice how far you go: 5K Run, 5K Walk, 10K Run or 1 Mile Kids Run! Every step makes a difference is ending illiteracy for adults in Dane County.

Check out the registration page for more event information or to sign up.

22

Oct

Undone by motherhood, judged by her husband, thirty-two-year-old Rachel Clayborne flees with her baby in the middle of the night for the one place on earth that’s been her refuge: her grandmother’s lakehouse in northern Wisconsin. Hoping to reconnect with a former, healthier self, she instead faces a confused and dying grandmother, her ever-present nurse who seems bent on thwarting each of Rachel’s desires, and a changed ex-boyfriend—her first and most passionate love. As a constant rain threatens the nearby dam, Rachel struggles to discern what’s happened to the past, who she’s become, and what kind of a life she will make for herself now—one that clings to ghosts or opens bravely to a wild new geography. 
 
From the acclaimed author of Nina: Adolescence and The Priest’s Madonna comes a gripping new novel that depicts the transformative power of motherhood with honesty, wit, and compassion.

21

Oct

In his first collection in seven years, James Galvin expands upon his signature spare and gnomic lyric as he engages restrained astonishment, desire, and loss in a confessional voice. Whether considering masterpieces of painting or describing the austere landscape of his native Wyoming ranchlands, Galvin turns to highly imagistic yet intimate narratives to rain down compassion within isolation.

22

Oct

Comedian, activist, and hugely popular culture blogger at AwesomelyLuvvie.com, Luvvie Ajayi, serves up necessary advice for the masses in this hilarious book of essays. With over 500,000 readers a month at her enormously popular blog, AwesomelyLuvvie.com, Luvvie Ajayi is a go-to source for smart takes on pop culture. I'm Judging You is her debut book of humorous essays that dissects our cultural obsessions and calls out bad behavior in our increasingly digital, connected lives―from the importance of the newest Shonda Rhimes television drama to serious discussions of race and media representation to what to do about your fool cousin sharing casket pictures from Grandma's wake on Facebook.
 
With a lighthearted, razor sharp wit and a unique perspective, I'm Judging You is the handbook the world needs, doling out the hard truths and a road map for bringing some "act right" into our lives, social media, and popular culture. It is the Do-Better Manual.

24

Oct

In 50 self-searching, witty, and moving essays, letters, and poems, readers hear from those who often receive little airtime in popular culture: The partners & spouses of transgender people.  In this first-of-its kind collection, we catch glimpses of love, strife, and growth from those who witness and support gender transition, even as they themselves are going through their own transition in seeing gender, labels, and their own selves anew. 

22

Nov

Jack Felter, a history teacher, returns home to bucolic Franklin Mills, Ohio, to care for his father, a retired pilot who suffers from dementia and is quickly losing his memory. Jack would love to forget about Franklin Mills, and about Sam, the girl he fell in love with, who ran off with his best friend, Tony. Except Tony has gone missing.  Soon Jack is pulled into the search for Tony, but the only one who seems to know anything is Tony's last patient, a paranoid boy named Cole. Jack must team up with Cole to follow Tony's trail-and maybe save the world. Their journey will lead them to Manhattan and secret facilities buried under the Catskills, and eventually to a forgotten island in the Pacific-the final destination of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.  When Jack learns the details about the program known as the Great Forgetting, he's faced with the timeless question: Is it better to forget our greatest mistake or to remember, so it's never repeated?
 

24

Oct

Three freshmen must join forces to survive at a troubled, working-class Catholic high school with a student body full of bullies and zealots, and a faculty that's even worse, in Anthony Breznican's Brutal Youth.
 
With a plunging reputation and enrollment rate, Saint Michael's has become a crumbling dumping ground for expelled delinquents and a haven for the stridently religious when incoming freshman Peter Davidek signs up. On his first day, tensions are clearly on the rise as a picked-upon upperclassmen finally snaps, unleashing a violent attack on both the students who tormented him for so long, and the corrupt, petty faculty that let it happen. But within this desperate place, Peter befriends fellow freshmen Noah Stein, a volatile classmate whose face bears the scars of a hard-fighting past, and the beautiful but lonely Lorelei Paskal, who is so eager to become popular, she makes only enemies.
 

20

Jun

Dean Bakopoulos, whose work New York Times bestselling author Lorrie Moore has praised as “full of insight and inspiration and the best kind of divine comedy,” returns with the keenly funny and honest Summerlong. Mixing the light-hearted with the literary, this third novel from the acclaimed writer deftly tackles the subjects of midlife crises and extramarital longing with characteristic humor and aplomb. “Summerlong is Dean Bakopoulos at his finest,” says Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs. “Daringly funny, heartbreakingly sad, and forever on the watch for redemption. This is a book for any season, any reader, anywhere—it shimmers with magic, lust, and love.”

17

Oct

Wisconsin People & Ideas magazine annually hosts statewide fiction and poetry contests, which award cash awards of up to $500 for works by the best Wisconsin writers as well as other prizes, including a reading at the Wisconsin Book Festival.  Featuring articles by and about the best scientists, artists, writers, and community leaders our state has to offer, Wisconsin People & Ideas is your guide to contemporary Wisconsin culture at the intersection of the sciences, arts and letters. 

Featured poets for 2014 include Dion Kempthorne (Richland Center), Jeanie Tomasko (Madison), and Judith Harway (Shorewood). Karen Loeb (Eau Claire), Jennifer Sauer (Madison), and Marilyn Shapiro Leys (Prairie du Chien) will read their prize-winning stories from the 2014 contest as well.

18

Oct

Fifteen-year-old Alyx Atlas was raised as a boy, yet she knows something others don’t. She’s a girl. And after her dad dies, it becomes painfully obvious that she must prove it now—to herself and to the world. Born with ambiguous genitalia, Alyx has always felt a little different. But it’s after she sustains a terrible beating behind a 7-Eleven that she and her mother pack up their belongings and move from California to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to start a new life—and Alyx begins over again, this time as a girl.

18

Oct

With her evocative prose, Pastan matches the hothouse tension of Du Maurier’s story Rebecca while infusing her new novel, Alena, with its own hairpin twists and turns and devastating denouement. She draws upon her own experience to wonderful effect, giving readers entree into the alluring and sometimes disconcerting world of avant-garde art and artists. The result is a lyrical murder mystery that is just as tantalizing to those who have never read Rebecca as the many for whom it is a cherished classic. From a dazzling inside look at the Venice Biennale to the inner workings of a cutting-edge museum set on a moody and atmospheric Cape Cod, Pastan offers a window into a world of scintillating artistic, erotic, and emotional entanglements.  Haunted and haunting, Alena is an inspired and provocative story that explores creative and romantic rivalry and the blurred borderline between art and artist.

31

Mar

The Wisconsin Book Festival is excited to be partnering with A Room of One's Own Bookstore to welcome Stephan Pastis, creator of the popular Pearls Before Swine comic strip and Timmy Failure, a hilarious book for kids! Stephan will be giving a sidesplitting slideshow for his latest Pearls Before Swine collection, Pearls Falls Fast, for a reading and book signing.

Please keep your hooves, paws, and snouts inside the ride at all times--- the Pearls Before Swine gang is back! Pearls Falls Fast: A Pearls Before Swine Treasury continues the saga of lovable Pig, cynical Rat, and the whole crew with two years' worth of the award-winning, New York Times best-selling comic strip Pearls Before Swine. This treasury includes strips from the collections Unsportsmanlike Conduct and Rat's Wars, along with new commentary from cartoonist Stephan Pastis himself, showcasing even more of his cynical wit and humor than the papers can handle.

19

Oct

2013-14 Wisconsin Poet Laureate, Max Garland, will read a selection of his poetry.  The Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission, who selected Garland as Wisconsin Poet Laureate, praised his poetry for its richness of language, human understanding, and accessibility to broad audiences.  As Wisconsin’s Poet Laureate, Garland hopes to “reach out to those who may feel alienated from the world of poetry (or art), and yet have deeply felt experiences to record and honor…. [P]oetry is still a means of expression open to everyone.  It’s one of those things that’s just too important to be left to experts.” In particular, Garland is “interested in promoting the connection between poetry and place, and urging young, as well as young-at-heart writers, to write of the places they know and explore their relationships with those places in poetry.”