Wisconsin Book Festival and Madison Public Library will host their annual Fall Celebration Oct. 23-26 at Central Library and other venues in downtown Madison. The festival features more than 55 events over the three days, all of which are free and open to the public.
This year’s festival is especially notable because it coincides with the 150th anniversary of the Madison Public Library. When the library was founded in 1875, it operated out of a single room in city hall and served a city with a population just under 10,000.
Attendees can expect events spotlighting genre-spanning authors, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir. These include lectures, author conversations and book sales. Free books will be available at select author appearances.
The majority of the festival will take place at Central Library, but partner venues will also host parts of the weekend. These include Arts + Literature Laboratory, UW-Madison’s Discovery Building and the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Jane Rotonda, the Wisconsin Book Festival Director, works full-time to plan the fall celebration and other standalone events throughout the year. She explained the library decides which authors to bring in by looking at upcoming book releases. They also have an open proposal period, where authors can submit themselves for consideration.
Celebrating Wisconsin writers is one of the festival’s core goals.
Uniquely, this year’s festival features Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett. The pair are promoting Barnett’s new book “Friends with Words: Adventures in Languageland” but are best known as co-hosts of the radio show “A Way With Words” where they discuss the history and nuance of language. They will be at Central Library on Oct. 26.
Wisconsin-based fiction writer Jane Hamilton will visit the Central Library on Oct. 23 to talk about her latest book, “The Phoebe Variations,” a coming of age novel.
David Wroblewski, a writer from Oconomowoc, will be promoting his book “Familiarais,” a prequel to the best selling novel "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,” on Oct. 24.
Friday will lean even further into the Wisconsin theme with Mineral Point Excellence in Education Foundation Board Chair Kristen Mitchell. She will be discussing artisanal cheese history book “The Wisconsin Whey: Cheesemaking In The Driftless” by Judy Newman Coburn. Cheese samples will be provided at the presentation.
“It’s these heartfelt stories about farmers and their relationships with these animals and the land they live on,” Rotonda said. “It’s about creating this legacy within a community. It’s one of the really fun pillars of our identity as a state.”
Beyond author presentations, the library will also have a poetry reading and panel on Saturday Oct. 25. This will be hosted by poet and academic Donika Kelly, poet and naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield and writer and editor Keetje Kuipers. All three writers will be reading from their latest collections of poems.
For more information on the festival, including a complete list of events and speakers, readers can look to Wisconsin Book Festival’s official website.
