GARRY WILLS, NOAH ADAMS, ZIBBY ONEAL, AND OTHERS JOIN STELLAR LIST OF AUTHORS AT 2003 WISCONSIN BOOK FESTIVAL

Two hundred authors, including bestselling novelists Elizabeth Berg, Jacquelyn Mitchard, and Tim O'Brien, U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, and sex advice columnist Dan Savage, will read at the second annual Wisconsin Book Festival (Oct. 22-26 in Madison; statewide events year-round).

Madison- Two hundred authors and an expected 10,000 spectators will soon descend upon the capital city for the second annual Wisconsin Book Festival (October 22-26 in Madison, with statewide events throughout the year). Festival organizers at the Wisconsin Humanities Council today announced the latest list of authors scheduled to appear, which includes some of the countrys top novelists, historians, poets, journalists, and nonfiction authors. Events at the festival are free and open to the public. A detailed schedule, author bios, a recommended reading list, and a searchable events calendar-listing Book Festival events all around the state-can be found online at http://www.wisconsinbookfestival.org.

LATEST AUTHOR ANNOUNCEMENTS
Authors appearing at the 2003 Wisconsin Book Festival include National Public Radio commentator Noah Adams, Wisconsin Public Radio host Jean Feraca, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills, world-renowned journalist Robert Fisk, New York Times editorial board member (and Wisconsin native) Karl E. Meyer, syndicated columnists Patrisia Gonzales & Roberto Rodriguez, nonfiction authors Rob Nixon and Sarah Streed, memoirists Karen Karbo and Jane Jeong Trenka, novelists and short story writers April Reynolds, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Joshua Furst, Imad Rahman, and Tamara Guirado, poets John Koethe, Heather Dubrow, Aya de Leon, Shoshauna Shy, Paul Flores, Judith Strasser, Alison Townsend, Jesse Lee Kercheval, childrens author Zibby Oneal, crime novelist Donald Harstad, scholars Carol Berkin and Peggy Ellsberg, and the artist Lewis Koch. (Select author bios appear later in this press release.)

SPECIAL EVENTS
In addition to free readings, book signings, lectures, panel discussions, many special events are part of the 2003 Wisconsin Book Festival, including the annual fall book sale organized by the Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, and a special panel discussion on the secret world of children.

FRIENDS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON LIBRARIES FALL BOOK SALE
The largest used book sale in Wisconsin, organized by the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries, is open to the public October 22-25 in Memorial Library (728 State Street, Madison), offering more than 15,000 books on almost every subject. The preview sale (Oct. 22) requires a $5 admission fee. Regular sales (Oct. 23-25) have no admission fee, with the Saturday sale offering books at $2 per bag (bring your own bag). Money raised by the sale helps fund an annual lecture series, special purchases for the library collections, and a visiting scholar support program.

SECRET SPACES OF CHILDHOOD AUTHORS EXPLORE REAL AND IMAGINED WORLDS OF KIDS
To celebrate the publication of the groundbreaking new anthology Secret Spaces of Childhood (University of Michigan Press, 2003), the collections editor, Elizabeth Goodenough, and several contributing authors will participate in a panel discussion on the emerging field of childrens studies. Poet Laurence Goldstein (Cold Reading), childrens author Zibby Oneal (The Language of Goldfish), and scholar/poet Peggy Ellsberg (Crated to Praise: The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins,) will reflect upon how the secret hideouts of childhood-real and imagined-color our lives forever. The panel will be held Saturday, Oct. 25 at 11:00 a.m. at the Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium (816 State Street, Madison).

STATEWIDE GROWTH
In an ambitious effort to spread the festival statewide with events throughout the year, the Wisconsin Humanities Council (the nonprofit organization behind the Book Festival) offers competitive grants to establish or encourage the growth of free, public literary arts events in Wisconsin. The grants, awarded through the councils regular grant-giving process, have been used this year to support book festival events in Milwaukee, Eau Claire, Fort Atkinson, West Salem, Beloit, Waukesha, and other cities.

In addition to funding opportunities, the council offers official Wisconsin Book Festival event designation to book-related activities organized by groups around the state. Designating other events as part of the statewide Book Festival program helps smaller organizations increase their reach," notes festival Associate Director Tilney Marsh. By including their events in our marketing efforts and on our searchable web calendar, were giving more people the opportunity to take part in the dozens of excellent literary programs happening in Wisconsin all year round."

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Noah Adams
Noah Adams has worked for National Public Radio since 1975. In March 2003 he became a special correspondent; prior to that he was senior host of All Things Considered, beginning in 1982. He is the author of the national bestseller Piano Lessons, Saint Croix Notes, and Far Appalachia. In his latest book, The Flyers: In Search of Wilbur & Orville Wright (2003), Adams offers a rich and personal account of the Wright brothers and their world, in time for the 100th anniversary of the first flight at Kitty Hawk. For his Wisconsin Book Festival appearance, Adams will be interviewed onstage at the Orpheum Theatre on Sunday, Oct. 26 at 5:30 p.m., for a special taping of the Wisconsin Public Radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge.

Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk, a world-renowned Middle East correspondent for London's Independent, currently resides in Beirut. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Trinity College, Dublin and an Honorary Doctorate of Literature and Journalism from the University of Lancaster, England. He was The Times Belfast correspondent from 1971 to 1975, and its Middle East correspondent from 1976 to 1987. Fisk has covered the conflict in Northern Ireland, Israeli invasions of Lebanon, the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the first Gulf War, wars in Bosnia and Algeria, NATO war with Yugoslavia, and the Palestinian uprisings. He received the Amnesty International UK Press Award in 1998 for his reports from Algeria and in 2000 for his articles on NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. He is the author of three books: The Point of No Return: The Strike which Broke the British in Ulster (1975), In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster, and the Price of Neutrality (1982, 1983), and Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (1990, 1992). Most recently Fisk contributed a chapter to Iraq Under Siege: the Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War (2000). Fisks visit is sponsored by the Palestine-Israel Peace and Justice Alliance, Harvey Goldberg Memorial Fund, Eugene Havens Center-UW Department of Sociology, and the Rainbow Bookstore Co-operative.

Joshua Furst
Joshua Fursts fiction has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The Crab Orchard Review and other periodicals, and he has been honored with a 1997 Nelson Algren Award and as a finalist in the 2001 Playboy College Fiction Contest. His plays, which include The Sculpture Garden (finalist, Fringe First Award, 1994 Edinburgh Fringe Festival), have been produced by theatre companies in the U.S. and Europe. A graduate of Tisch School of the Arts and The Iowa Writer's Workshop, Furst has held jobs ranging from advertising copy writer to union organizer for the United Farm Workers to producing and directing puppet shows with his own puppet troupe, Dogs on Strings. His first collection of short stories, Short People, was published by Knopf in 2003. Currently, he is at work on a novel about punk rock.    

Patrisia Gonzales
Patrisia Gonzales is the first Latina (Chicana-Kikapu) syndicated columnist in the country. She has been a fellow with the Kellogg National Leadership Program and the Center for International Journalism at the University of Southern California, and is a founding member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and a member of the Native American Journalists Association. Her book, The Mud People: Anonymous Heroes of Mexico's Emerging Human Rights Movement (2002), examines the transformation of ordinary people when involved in social change. With Roberto Rodriguez, Gonzales has been writing the syndicated Column of the Americas," distributed by Universal Press Syndicate, since 1994. Gonzales and Rodriguez will speak at a special event presented by The Capital Times, in cooperation with the fifth annual CineFest Nuestra America film festival. (http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lacis/new/outreachevents/cinefest/5thcinefest.html)

Karen Karbo
Karen Karbo is the author of three novels, each a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and the bestselling nonfiction book Generation Ex: Tales from the Second Wives Club. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, New Republic, and The New York Times. Her latest book, The Stuff of Life: A Daughter's Memoir, is the October 2003 selection of the ABC Radio Networks' Satellite Sisters monthly on-air book club, "Real Women, Real Lives, Really Great Books."

Lewis Koch
The artwork and photography of Lewis Koch has appeared in solo exhibitions in London, New York City, Rotterdam, Brussels, Seoul, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere, and in numerous group exhibitions. His works are in permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Hamburg), Museet for Fotokunst (Odense, Denmark), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. As an artist-in-residence at Copenhagens Fotografisk Center, Koch created Touchless Automatic Wonder (2001), a comprehensive overview of his work in photography, installation, and public artwork (www.digitalroom.org). His installation Notes from the Stone-Paved Path: Meditations on North India," a pairing of photographs and book pages gathered from a Tibetan community near Dharamsala, is featured at the UW-Madison Memorial Library Special Collections Gallery from Sept. 22-Nov. 7, in conjunction with the 32nd Annual Conference on South Asia. A public reception for the artist will be held in the gallery on Thursday, Oct. 23 at 6:00 p.m.

John Koethe
John Koethe was educated at Princeton and Harvard and is Professor of Philosophy at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His most recent work, North Point North: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He is also the author of Blue Vents: Domes, for which he received the Frank O'Hara Award for Poetry; The Late Wisconsin Spring; and Falling Water, for while he received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Koethe has been granted Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, and was appointed the first Poet Laureate of Milwaukee in 2000. His other books include The Continuity of Wittgenstein's Thought and Poetry at One Remove.

Zibby Oneal
Zibby Oneal is the author of nine books for and about young people, including The Language of Goldfish (1980). Her 1982 book A Formal Feeling was honored with the Phoenix Award by the Childrens Literature Association in 2002. In Summer Light was the recipient of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for fiction in 1986. Oneal teaches courses in creative writing and childrens literature at the University of Michigan, as well as a memoir writing course at a retirement center in Ann Arbor. A contributor to the new anthology Secret Spaces of Childhood, Oneal will appear on a special childrens studies panel at the Wisconsin Book Festival and will also give a separate childrens book reading.

April Reynolds
April Reynolds teaches philosophy and creative writing at New York University and lives in New York City. Knee Deep in Wonder, her first novel, received a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Award for unpublished work. Reynolds will be featured at the Wisconsin Book Festivals gala Friday Night Festival of Fiction, presented by Isthmus, on Oct. 24 at 7:00 p.m. at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison.

Roberto Rodriguez
Roberto Rodriguez is the author of several books, including Assault with a Deadly Weapon and On the Wrong Side of the Law, based on his triumph in two police brutality trials against the Los Angeles County Sheriffs office stemming from a 1979 incident. Since 1990 he has been a senior writer for Black Issues in Higher Education. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Lowrider magazine, the Eastside Sun, and La Opnion, the nations largest Spanish-language daily. With Patrisia Gonzales, Rodriguez writes the syndicated Column of the Americas," distributed by Universal Press Syndicate since 1994. Rodriguez and Gonzales will speak at a special event presented by The Capital Times, in cooperation with the fifth annual CineFest Nuestra America film festival. (http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lacis/new/outreachevents/cinefest/5thcinefest.html)

Garry Wills
Garry Wills, one of our nations most distinguished historians, has written numerous books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln at Gettysburg. He has won two National Book Awards and the 1998 National Medal for the Humanities. A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, he is an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University. His other books include Saint Augustine, Papal Sin, Chesterton, Jack Ruby, The Second Civil War, Nixon Agonistes, Bare Ruined Choirs, Inventing America, Confessions of a Conservative, The Kennedy Imprisonment, Cincinnatus, Reagans America, Under God, Witches and Jesuits, John Waynes America, and, most recently, Why I Am a Catholic (2002). Willss forthcoming book Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power will be released in November 2003 by Houghton Mifflin.

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