Join us for a reading by fiction writer Susan Buttenweiser (author of the short story collection We Were Lucky with the Rain which has been called "funny, suprising, and immensely satisfying") and poets Lauren Camp (Took House which Hala Alyan called "an astonishing, enchanted world of nature and cityscape") and Sasha Debevec McKenney, who has recently returned to Madison as a fellow at UW's Creative Writing Institute. These three writers' work explores mental health, environmental crises, intimacy, isolation, and forgiveness.
October Watershed Reading
Lauren Camp is the author of five books, most recently Took House (Tupelo Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Pleiades, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, Poet Lore, Slice, DIAGRAM, and other journals. Winner of the Dorset Prize, Lauren has also received fellowships from The Black Earth Institute and The Taft-Nicholson Center, and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award, the Housatonic Book Award and the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award.
Susan Buttenwieser is the author of the short story collection, We Were Lucky with the Rain (Four Way Books). Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in numerous literary publications. She contributes news features regularly to Women’s Media Center and teaches creative writing in New York City public schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, with incarcerated women and older adults.
Sasha Debevec-McKenney is the author of the poetry collection Joy Is My Middle Name. She received her MFA from New York University. She was the 2020–2021 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin and a 2023-2025 Creative Writing Fellow at Emory University. Her poems have appeared in places like The New Yorker, The Yale Review, The Drift, and Granta. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut and is currently an Assistant Professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University.
The festival is also supported in part with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, The Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation.
PLAN YOUR VISIT
Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.
Our galleries are open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.