UntitledTown Book and Author Festival 2019

This fundraising event helps UntitledTown develop future festivals.  Tickets are required.

Michael Perry will tell his famously hilarious and often poignant stories between songs performed by him and the Long Beds.  

“First time I ever heard Waylon Jennings,” says Michael Perry, “was on an 8-track tape in a four-wheel drive truck doing sixty miles an hour down a Wyoming hay meadow. We were running late for Bible study.”

The songs on Tiny Pilot are a direct reflection of that experience. Ranging from straight-up twang to churchly harmonies and populated by characters drawn straight from rural and small-town America, they launch from places like the overpass outside Perry’s beloved hometown of New Auburn, Wisconsin (population currently 562), a gospel service in a granary, and the kitchen floor of a woman about to drop a world of hurt on her drunken husband.

“I was raised by farmers and preachers and tough country women, and I suppose my songs reflect that,” says Perry. “Then again, certain wisdoms are available only from whistlers, frauds, and sinners, so I try to slide them a line or two as well.”

Raised in a church so austere that hymns were sung with no choir, no accompaniment, and no church (the congregation met in a farmhouse and sat on straight-backed wooden chairs) Perry and his brother learned to sit side-by-side and work out harmonies on the fly. Those Sunday mornings instilled in Perry a love of singing “clear and pure” that can be heard throughout Tiny Pilot – most especially on the songs, “842 Miles,” “If They Give You Wings,” and “Sweet Edge of Time.” Conversely, anyone introduced to Ol’ Waylon by means of a four-wheeling 8-track is bound to shoot for some boogety-boogety now and then, as Perry and the Long Beds do on “Undone,” “Somewhere South of Sunday,” and (in a respectful nod to Ol’ Hoss himself) “After Waymore’s Blues.”

Perry began writing songs in the early 1990s during long nights when he was struggling to survive on prose (he is the author of numerous books including: Population 485, Truck: A Love Story, The Scavengers,and the New York Times bestseller Visiting Tom). With no arts background (he has a nursing degree) he found himself drawn especially to the work of poets and singer/songwriters. (In interviews Perry tends to list his greatest literary influences as Dylan Thomas and Steve Earle – and not necessarily in that order.) “I remember writing late one night and hearing a Kevin Welch song with the line, ‘I whiskey’d up my coffee cup… sittin’ here tryin’ not to call you up,’” says Perry, “and I was floored by the rhythm and the story in that single line…” He began writing songs as a way to break up all-night typing sessions, and eventually he had enough of them that a musician friend invited him to play a coffee shop. “I’m not saying I was nervous, but I ripped out a sixty-minute set list in thirty-two minutes flat,” says Perry. By 2004, he had begun recruiting Long Beds. In 2006, he released his first album, Headwinded.

While the music made by Perry and the Long Beds has been variously described as ‘country folk,’ ‘roughneck folk,’ ‘folk-twang,’ and Americana, they prefer the description given by an audience member after a benefit concert in Perry’s old high school gym: “You sound just like Gordon Lightfoot… only zippier!” Nice – but there are limits. “Zippy or not,” says Perry, “when ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ comes on the radio, we sit down, shut up, and listen.”

Michael Perry resides with his family on a small farm in rural Wisconsin.

Heidi and Kathy will describe their successful collaboration on their nonfiction title "Hidden History of Sturgeon Bay" and will discuss how their method of "sharing the burdens and joys" could work for others.

Join Pamela Cameron & Renee Ostrowski in a reading for kids up through 0-7 about Sport, a real-life dog and his daring adventures on a Wisconsin lighthouse ship.

A reading of Wisconsin fiction, set in our towns & places. Kubasta's fiction (Girling, Brain Mill Press, 2017; and This Business of the Flesh, Apprentice House, 2018)  explores growing up in small towns— the subtle class distinctions, gender dynamics, environmental concerns, and relationships between people & animals.

Our Living Ancestors: The History and Ecology of Old-Growth Forests in Wisconsin (and Where to Find Them)

Old-growth forests touch the soul of many people. Despite the remarkable emotional appeal and scientific value of old-growth forests, only 0.3% of Wisconsin’s old-growth forests remain. Nevertheless, these scattered, small parcels still retain their ability to amaze hikers with their diversity, complexity, and beauty.
This book directs visitors to the 50 best old-growth sites left in Wisconsin. Each site has clear directions, a listing of ownership, size, and age, and a description of its ecological features, with perhaps a story of why it was saved. A map and photo(s) illustrates each site. An additional shorter chapter includes the “50 Best-of-the-Rest.”
The book is for a general audience, but its wealth of rigorously-researched and profusely-illustrated data may also serve as a general reference for professional ecologists and conservationists.

This is a ticketed event. Two options are available for tickets:
*Reserved seating with priority access to the author signing line are available with a $30 donation to UntitledTown per seat
or
* Free General Admission
Please secure your tickets here.

"Krueger skillfully combines the otherworldly setting of the Minnesota wilds with Native American lore to create a winning mystery with more than a few surprises."--Publishers Weekly

Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, William Kent Krueger briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. He currently makes his living as a full-time author. He’s been married for over 40 years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves. Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist is Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe. His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His last nine novels were all New York Times bestsellers. Ordinary Grace, his stand-alone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition for the best novel published in that year. The companion novel, This Tender Land, is scheduled for publication in September 2019.

Planning a mystery series? Don't know where to start with your ideas? In this craft talk, we’ll look at the elements needed to carry the weight of three, four, or even more books. We’ll also consider the challenges you face when you move past the first book.

Lakes Superior and Michigan have long played a vital role in shaping our state's history, culture and economy. For forty years, the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program has collaborated with governments and nonprofit organizations to preserve and protect this crucial resource, and, since 2002, has promoted public awareness of issues affecting the lakes in its annual Wisconsin Great Lakes Chronicle. Great Lakes Chronicle: Essays on Coastal Wisconsin brings together more than one hundred articles by coastal management practitioners, providing a broad perspective on issues affecting Wisconsin's Great Lakes shorelines, and advocating for the wise and balanced use of our coastal environment for the benefit of people now and in the future.

The Humane Gardener fills a unique niche in describing simple principles for both attracting wildlife and peacefully resolving conflicts with all the creatures that share our world. Detailed chapters address planting for wildlife with native species; providing habitats that shelter baby animals, as well as birds, bees, and butterflies; creating safe zones in the garden; cohabiting with creatures often regarded as pests; letting nature be your garden designer.

In her presentation Nurturing Habitat for Wildlife, author Nancy Lawson will expand on the message in her book and address practical ways to put humane gardening philosophies into action. Why do we call some insects “beneficial” while others are “pests”? Why are some plants considered “desirable” while others are “weeds”? In this myth-busting talk, learn how common growing methods divide the natural world into false dichotomies and perpetuate misconceptions about the wild species living among us.

Nancy Lawson has been brought to UntitledTown through the generous sponsorship of The Wild Ones - Green Bay Chapter, Green Bay Botanical Garden, and NEW Master Gardener Association.

Split Rock Review celebrates the release of Waters Deep, an anthology of Great Lakes poetry, co-edited by Crystal S. Gibbins and Michelle Menting. Come listen to a diverse group of contributing poets read from Waters Deep and discuss how they’ve been inspired by the Great Lakes and the woods, watersheds, hills, bluffs, iron and copper ranges, snow belts, rustbelts, and communities that surround them. From layers of history and human culture to natural landscapes and built environments, the voices, perspectives, and styles of the poets featured in Waters Deep are as varied and powerful as the lakes themselves. A Q&A session will follow the reading.

This is a ticketed event. Please secure your tickets here.

Lyle Hovde is at the onset of his golden years, living a mostly content life in rural Wisconsin with his wife, Peg, daughter, Shiloh, and six-year old grandson, Isaac. After a troubled adolescence and subsequent estrangement from her parents, Shiloh has finally come home. But while Lyle is thrilled to have his whole family reunited, he's also uneasy: in Shiloh's absence, she has become deeply involved with an extremist church, and the devout pastor courting her is convinced Isaac has the spiritual ability to heal the sick.

While reckoning with his own faith--or lack thereof--Lyle soon finds himself torn between his unease about the church and his desire to keep his daughter and grandson in his life. But when the church's radical belief system threatens Isaac's safety, Lyle is forced to make a decision from which the family may not recover.

Set over the course of one year and beautifully evoking the change of seasons, Little Faith is a powerful and deeply affecting intergenerational novel about family and community, the ways in which belief is both formed and shaken, and the lengths we go to protect our own.

Letters about Literature is a reading and writing contest for students in grades 4-12. Students are asked to read a fiction or nonfiction book, book series, short story, poem, essay, or speech (excluding song lyrics) and write to the author (living or dead) about how the book affected them personally. It is not a book report, but how the work touched them at some level. Letters are judged on state and national levels. Tens of thousands of students from across the country enter Letters about Literature each year.

The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress promotes the contest through its affiliate Centers for the Book, state libraries and other organizations. Each year, the Wisconsin Center for the Book administers the contest for Wisconsin.

This year Untitled Town Book Festival will host the awards ceremony for the 2018 Wisconsin semifinalists and winners. Winners are asked to read their winning letters; prizes and certificates are awarded during the awards ceremony.

For more than 50 years, the Shawano Area Writers have met each month to share what they've been working on. Now some of the writers are eager to share their work with a larger audience and showcase their unique stories. 

An intimate look at Chicago’s genesis story during the five months between April and August of 1812.  Residents of the remote military, French & Indian trading post experience an Indian attack, Chicago's first recorded murder, and the massacre or Battle of Fort Dearborn (depending on how you tell it). The story centers on John Kinzie, the area’s leading fur and Indian trader, who is embroiled in intrigue in the middle ground between the British, Native American tribes, and the land-hungry Americans on the cusp of the War of 1812.

Stories from the Wreckage: A Great Lakes Maritime History Inspired By Shipwrecks

​​​​Every shipwreck has a story that extends far beyond its tragic end. The dramatic tales of disaster, heroism, and folly become even more compelling when viewed as junction points in history--connecting to stories about the frontier, the environment, immigration, politics, technology, and industry. In Stories from the Wreckage, John Odin Jensen examines a selection of Great Lakes shipwrecks of the wooden age for a deeper dive into this transformative chapter of maritime history. He mines the archaeological evidence and historic record to show how their tragic ends fit in with the larger narrative of Midwestern history. Featuring the underwater photography of maritime archaeologist Tamara Thomsen, this vibrant volume is a must-have for shipping enthusiasts as well as anyone interested in the power of water to shape history.

Join author J.P. Leary as he discusses the history and impact of Act 31, the 1989 state law known as Act 31 requires that all students in Wisconsin learn about the history, culture, and tribal sovereignty of Wisconsin’s federally recognized tribes.

The Story of Act 31 tells the story of the law’s inception—tracing its origins to a court decision in 1983 that affirmed American Indian hunting and fishing treaty rights in Wisconsin, and to the violent public outcry that followed the court’s decision. Author J. P. Leary paints a picture of controversy stemming from past policy decisions that denied generations of Wisconsin students the opportunity to learn about tribal history.

The poetry collections by Crystal S. Gibbins and Michelle Menting explore and complicate the traditions of nature poetry. The poets will read from their books, and as editors of the place-based magazine Split Rock Review, offer what they look for in submissions of contemporary nature poetry during the Anthropocene.

Join this panel of local Native American Authors discussing the craft of writing and securing our voices in the literary world. 

Researching local history reveals fascinating stories about physical objects (artifacts). Unlike buildings and streets, artifacts generally remain unaltered and provide a physical connection to the past.

This presentation will describe the stories behind the research into artifacts of the early Green Bay Fire Department---an inherently intriguing experience.
 

This is a ticketed event. Two options are available for tickets:
*Reserved seating with priority access to the author signing line are available with a $30 donation to UntitledTown per seat
or
* Free General Admission
Please secure your tickets here.

A NOVEL OF FRIENDSHIP AND REDEMPTION IN THE FACE OF TRAGEDY.
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for a Chicago art gallery, is about to pull off a coup, bringing an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDs epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister.

Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago epidemic, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways the AIDS crisis affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. Yale and Fiona’s intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of 80’s and the chaos of the modern world, as both struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.

PRAISE FOR THE GREAT BELIEVERS“Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers is a page turner… among the first novels to chronicle the AIDS epidemic from its initial outbreak to the present—among the first to convey the terrors and tragedies of the epidemic’s early years as well as its course and repercussions…An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis.”—Michael Cunningham in The New York Times Book Review

“Makkai knits themes of loss, betrayal, friendship and survival into a powerful story of people struggling to keep their humanity in dire circumstances.”—People Magazine

“Cultural revolutions of the past painfully reverberate in Rebecca Makkai’s deft third novel, The Great Believers, which captures both the devastation of the AIDS crisis in 1980s Chicago and the emotional aftershocks of those losses.”—Vogue
“Busily Dickensian, her prose a relentless engine mowing back and forth across decades… missing no chance to remind us what’s at stake… Warmly dimmensional… Compulsively readable.”—The San Francisco Chronicle

“Symphonic… The Great Believers soars… magnificent… Makkai has full command of her multi-generational perspective, and by its end, The Great Believers offers a grand fusion of the past and the present, the public and the personal. It’s remarkably alive despite all the loss it encompasses. And it’s right on target in addressing how the things that the world throws us feel gratuitously out of step with the lives we think we’re leading.”—The Chicago Tribune

“Deeply moving…Makkai does an excellent job of capturing the jaded, ironic and affectionately jibing small talk of a group of cultured gay friends in the Reagan era…[Captures] a group of friends in a particular time and place with humor and compassion. Conversations among her gay male characters feel very real — not too flamboyant, not too serious, always morbidly witty. It’s hard not to get drawn into this circle of promising young men as they face their brutally premature extinction.”—Newsday
“Two distinct narratives intertwine ingeniously…The stories meet up to heartbreaking effect.”—New York Magazine

“A poignant, historical journey through a virus’s outbreak and legacy.”—Conde Nast Traveler
“This book will be compared to similar mammoth works of fiction, but Makkai differs in that she seems to care about her characters and her readers… each character – main or secondary – is fully developed, and it is hard not to care for them. The pain and prejudice they suffer becomes personal as their lives are carefully told… A forceful work of fiction that will captivate readers.”—Baltimore Outloud

“Rebecca Makkai’s beautiful (literally—look at that cover!) novel takes us to an art gallery in Chicago at the height of the AIDS crisis. From Chicago to Paris, THE GREAT BELIEVERS is a sweeping story of multi-generational trauma and the solitude that the AIDS epidemic created, as an entire generation was decimated by the virus.”—Fodor’s Travel

“Makkai is very good at conjuring a gay community enacting the usual dramas of love and lust and ambition and jealousy in a world where all the usual dramas suddenly can carry a fatal charge.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A striking, emotional journey… Makkai creates a powerful, unforgettable meditation, not on death, but rather on the power and gift of life. This novel will undoubtedly touch the hearts and minds of readers.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)