Join us on Saturday, November 18, 2023 at 7 PM for a reading to launch the opening of the submission period of the 2023 Wisconsin Writers Awards with a reading by writers who received honorable mentions in the 2022 contest. Writers Heather Swan, Maggie Ginsberg, Alison Townsend, Ingrid Andersson, and Laura Anne Bird all had their work recognized by judges for the 2022 contest and received a 5-day stay at Ernest Hüpeden's Painted Forest. Come hear their remarkable work and learn more about the Wisconsin Writers Awards.
Wisconsin Writers Award Kickoff
Heather Swan's poems have appeared in such journals as Terrain, Minding Nature, Poet Lore, Phoebe, The Raleigh Review, The Hopper, Midwestern Gothic and Cold Mountain, and in many anthologies. She is the author of the poetry collections A Kinship with Ash (Terrapin), which was a finalist for the ASLE Book Award, and Dandelion (Terrapin). She is also a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, the Maud Weinshenk Award, the August Derleth Prize for Poetry, and an honorable mention for the Lorine Niedecker Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in Aeon, Belt, Catapult, Edge Effects, Emergence, ISLE, Minding Nature, and The Learned Pig. Her book Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field (Penn State Press) won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. A companion book, Where the Grass Still Sings: Stories of Insects and Interconnection, will be published in spring 2024. She teaches environmental literature... Read More
Maggie Ginsberg is a senior editor at Madison Magazine and author of the novel Still True, published by the University of Wisconsin Press in September 2022. Still True is the honorable mention selection for the 2022 Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award, a 2023 Midwest Book Awards silver medal winner in the Literary/Contemporary/Historical Fiction category, and one of three finalists in 2023 WFWA STAR Award for Outstanding Debut. Still True is Maggie’s first work of fiction, but she’s been a nonfiction freelance writer since 2006. Her magazine articles have earned numerous honors from the City Regional Magazine Association, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Milwaukee Press Club.
Alison Townsend is the author of two books of poetry, The Blue Dress, selected for the Marie Alexander Prose Poem series at White Pine Press, and Persephone in America, which won the Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition. A collection of short prose, The Persistence of Rivers: An Essay on Moving Water, won the Jeanne Lieby Nonfiction Prize. Her poetry and essays appear widely, in journals such as The Kenyon Review, Parabola, The Southern Review, and Under the Sun, and have been recognized in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Essays 2020. Her awards include a Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor’s Regional Literary Award (for contributions to the literature of the Upper Midwest), and the 2020 Rattle Poetry Prize. She’s had residencies at Hedgebrook, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Spring Creek... Read More
Ingrid Andersson’s writing is rooted in her life and work as a daughter of farming immigrants and as a midwife. Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, featured as poem-of-the-day, won an Editor’s Choice award, and has appeared in About Place Journal, Ars Medica, Eastern Iowa Review, Literary Mama, Midwest Review, Midwifery Today, Minerva Rising, Plant-Human Quarterly, The Progressive Magazine, Torrey House Press, Wisconsin People & Ideas, and more. Ingrid’s poetry collection, Jordemoder: Poems of a Midwife (Holy Cow! Press, 2022) won the 2023 Edna Meudt Award from the Wisconsin Writers Association. Ingrid lives in Madison, WI with her husband, dog, chickens, and bees. For more information, please visit: https://www.ingridandersson.info/
A Milwaukee native, Laura Anne Bird graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in English. She lives in Madison with her husband, three teenagers, and little dog. When she’s not reading, writing, or reviewing books, she loves to exercise and explore the outdoors. Crossing the Pressure Line is her first novel. You can find her on Instagram @laura_at_the_library.
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Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.
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