2003 Wisconsin Book Festival Expands Statewide, Announces Additional Authors

Billy Collins, Anne Garrels, James Bradley, Carolyn Parkhurst, Colson Whitehead, Heidi Julavits, Dan Savage, Sherwin Nuland, Sam Hamill, and Guillermo Anderson are among the latest authors to join the Wisconsin Book Festival's schedule of events, Oct. 22-26 in Madison. All events are free and open to the public.

Madison, Wisconsin (PRWEB) August 29, 2003 -- The momentum builds behind the second annual Wisconsin Book Festival (October 22-26, 2003), as organizers announce the latest group of authors scheduled to appear at Festival events in Madison.

The list features many of the nations notable authors, including United States poet laureate Billy Collins; National Public Radio war correspondent Anne Garrels; World War II historian and Wisconsin native James Bradley; celebrated novelists Carolyn Parkhurst, Tim OBrien, Scott Spencer, Peter Straub, Colson Whitehead, Pete Fromm, and Kevin Brockmeier; Believer magazine editor Heidi Julavits; poet Sam Hamill; sex advice columnist and author Dan Savage; Buddhist teacher Steve Hagen; bestselling science writer Sherwin Nuland; Honduran musician/author Guillermo Anderson; and son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Robert Meeropol. Among the childrens authors appearing at the Festival are Esmé Raji Codell and Patty Loew.

Wisconsin authors figure heavily in the Book Festival, the latest additions to the lineup being Larry Watson, Jerry Apps, Paul Boyer, Sabine Gross, Max Harris, CJ Hribal, Patricia McConnell, Michael Perry, Craig Werner, Laurel Yourke, and musician/author Ben Sidran. Several Chicago-area authors will also be featured, including critically acclaimed short story writer Elizabeth Crane, novelist Jim Kokoris, and Katherine Shonk, whose first book of stories debuts this fall.

More than 100 authors and 80 free events are on the roster for the 2003 Festival, including several special events offered in partnership with the fifth annual CineFest Nuestra America Latino Film Festival. The latest list of participating authors can be seen on the Wisconsin Book Festival website at http://www.wisconsinbookfestival.org. A complete schedule of events will be released on the website in early September.

A program of the Wisconsin Humanities Council, the Wisconsin Book Festival offers a year-round, statewide series of free public events that celebrate the benefits of literacy and the joys of reading. In addition to the five days of capital city events, the Wisconsin Book Festival is expanding this year to include new events in Eau Claire (October 16-19), Milwaukee (October 9-10 & 22-26), and Fort Atkinson (October 11). Featured authors appearing at some of these events include renowned poet Sam Hamill, critically acclaimed novelist Michael Ondaatje, and award-winning childrens author/illustrator Tomie de Paola.

The Wisconsin Humanities Council is proud to help support and give recognition to our community partners who are working to expand the Wisconsin Book Festival statewide," notes Festival director Alison Jones Chaim. Through WHC grants and our special Book Festival event designation, we aim to encourage even more new and existing literary programs in the months and years ahead."

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

BILLY COLLINS
Billy Collins, the current Poet Laureate of the United States, is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently Taking Off Emily Dickinsons Clothes. One of the premier poets of our time, Collinss last three books have broken sales records for poetry. His work has been published in numerous journals, including The New Yorker, The American Scholar, and Paris Review. Collins is a Guggenheim Fellow and a professor of English at Lehman College in New York. His visit to the Wisconsin Book Festival is made possible by the Libraries at UW-Madison.

ANNE GARRELS
Since 1988, Anne Garrels has been a distinguished foreign correspondent for NPR, where she is heard by more than 17 million listeners weekly. She has covered conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and, most recently, in Baghdad. Garrels reported each day as one of only sixteen un-embedded American journalists who stayed in Baghdad's now-legendary Palestine Hotel throughout the American invasion of Iraq. Her forthcoming book Naked in Baghdad (September 2003) gives us the sights, sounds, and smells of the Second Gulf War with unparalleled vividness and immediacy.

JAMES BRADLEY
James Bradley is the fourth child of Iwo Jima flag raiser John Doc" Bradley and the author of the bestselling book Flags of Our Fathers and the forthcoming Flyboys (September 2003). Raised in Wisconsin, Bradley has studied at the University of Notre Dame, Sophia University in Tokyo, and the University of Wisconsin. He recently established a foundation to support American and Japanese student exchange programs and offer young people the chance to experience each other's cultures.

CAROLYN PARKHURST
Carolyn Parkhurst is author of the bestselling debut novel Dogs of Babel, which was the June 2003 selection of the Today Show book club. She holds an MFA in fiction from American University. She has published stories in the North American Review, Minnesota Review, Hawaii Review, and the Crescent Review. She lives in Washington, D.C.

GUILLERMO ANDERSON
Residing on the Atlantic Coast of Honduras (La Ceiba), Guillermo Anderson is among Central Americas leading performing artists and writers. He has recently released two books, Bordeando la Costa and Del Tiempo y el Tropico, which he will present at a special Book Festival event offered in partnership with the fifth annual CineFest Nuestra America Latino Film Festival.

ESMÉ RAJI CODELL
Esmé Raji Codell is the author of the bestselling debut Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, which won FOREWORD magazine's 2000 Book of the Year Award for memoir, and the American Library Association's distinguished Alex Award for outstanding book for young adult readers. She is also author of the childrens novel, Sahara Special, and the new book for adults, How to Get Your Child to Love Reading (August 2003). A dynamic and in-demand speaker, Codell lives in Chicago, where she runs the popular childrens website www.planetesme.com.

SAM HAMILL
Sam Hamill has written more than thirty volumes of poetry, three collections of essays, and translations in several languages. His collection Destination Zero: Poems 1970-1995 (1995) received a Pushcart Prize and Gratitude (1998), was a finalist for the 1999 Independent Publisher Book Award in Poetry. In 2000, Hamill's Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese was published. In January 2003, Hamill initiated the accidental groundswell" that became Poets Against the War. He is a contributing editor for The American Poetry Review, directs the Port Townsend Writers Conference, and is editor of Copper Canyon Press.

HEIDI JULAVITS
Heidi Julavits is an editor of the critically acclaimed new magazine The Believer, and is author of the novel The Effects of Living Backwards (2003). She has published fiction and nonfiction in Esquire, The Best American Short Stories 1999, Story, Zoetrope, McSweeney's, Harper's Bazaar, and Time. Her first novel, The Mineral Palace, was a Los Angeles Times Best Book, and was published in ten countries.

PATRICIA McCONNELL
Patricia McConnell received her Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Zoology. Co-host of Wisconsin Public Radio's syndicated Calling All Pets program, McConnell gives advice about animal behavior problems on over 110 radio stations across the country. She is the behavior columnist for BARK Magazine ("the New Yorker of Dog Magazines") and a Consulting Editor for the Journal of Comparative Psychology. She is the author of The Other End of the Leash.

ROBERT MEEROPOL
Robert Meeropol is the child of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. His latest book is An Execution In the Family: One Sons Journey (2003). Meeropol has been a progressive activist, author, and speaker for thirty years. He is founder and executive director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children (RFC), which provides for the educational and emotional needs of children in this country whose parents have been harassed, injured, jailed, lost jobs, or died in the course of their progressive activities.

SHERWIN NULAND
Sherwin Nuland is a clinical professor of surgery at Yale University's School of Medicine, where he has practiced and taught medicine since 1962. He is the author of numerous books, including the National Book Award-winning How We Die (1994), The Mysteries Within, Leonardo da Vinci, and The Wisdom of the Body. Lost in America: A Journey with My Father (2003), explores Nulands experiences growing up in the Bronx during the 1930s and 40s and coping with family tragedy and mentally illness. His forthcoming book, THE DOCTORS PLAGUE: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis, is the first in the Great Discoveries" series from Atlas Books and W.W. Norton, which brings new voices to the telling of great stories of scientific achievement.

LARRY WATSON
Larry Watson is the author of In a Dark Time, Montana 1948, Justice, White Crosses, and Laura. His most recent novel, Orchard, is a BookSense Top Ten pick for September 2003. He has won the Milkweed Fiction Prize, a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Regional Award, and numerous other literary prizes. Watson lives with his wife in Plover, Wisconsin.

COLSON WHITEHEAD
Colson Whiteheads first novel, The Intuitionist, won the New Voices Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His other novel, John Henry Days, won The New York Times Editors Choice Award, the Young Lions Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, the Village Voice, Salon, and Newsday. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and a MacArthur Fellowship. His most recent book is the forthcoming nonfiction work, The Colossus of New York: A City in Thirteen Parts (October 2003).

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