Barstow & Grand Celebrates Its Latest Issue With A Bash At The Brewing Projekt

Wesley Hazelberg

Many events mark this time of year in the Midwest: the people are bundling up, snow plows are emerging ready for duty, and B&G is releasing its newest issue.

That’s right! Barstow & Grand, the Upper Midwest’s premier literary journal, is back with issue #8. It’s launching at a release party on Nov. 20, at 7 pm at The Brewing Projekt, long a friend to local literature. This will be their first time hosting this event, so please enjoy their beautiful venue and readings by authors and poets included in the issue. And be sure to pick up a copy fresh off the press on your way out the door!

Members of the B&G editorial team gather to discuss the upcoming issue.

Barstow & Grand (named after the intersection in downtown Eau Claire) is a print journal published every fall that features writers of many different kinds from the Upper Midwest.

Whether you write prose, poetry, fiction, or nonfiction, all writers are welcome so long as you have a connection to that great region of the United States.

“ A few hallmarks of B&G are shining strong in this issue—we have another dynamic mix of local authors and writers with broader connections to the upper Midwest. You’ll see a lot of the themes that seem to carry a special Midwest connection—nature, family, rural life.”

— Eric Rasmussen, editor

“For our eighth issue, it feels like we’ve found our niche and are really settling into it,” says Eric Rasmussen, editor of Barstow & Grand. “A few hallmarks of B&G are shining strong in this issue—we have another dynamic mix of local authors and writers with broader connections to the upper Midwest. You’ll see a lot of the themes that seem to carry a special Midwest connection—nature, family, rural life, etc.”

One element that sets issue #8 apart from its predecessors is a higher portion of student authors being featured. I should know—I’m one of them! As suggested by a professor, I submitted a selection of five poems I had written in April of 2024, and by July I had received notification that one of my poems was accepted. It was thrilling to have a work of mine recognized in such a big way. The B&G Team has informed me and other writers of every big step taken towards the issue’s publication, and through monitoring these steps along the way I have learned a lot about the process and what it means to be published in a real, printed book.

Issue #8 is being released on Nov. 20, and its release party will be held on the same day at The Brewing Projekt in Eau Claire at 7 pm. This will include live readings of stories and poems by the authors. You won’t want to miss out!

All previous issues of Barstow & Grand are available at the B&G website or at the Local Store in Eau Claire. Purchasing is a great way to show support for writers in your community!

Milwaukee History Meets Murder Mystery: Amy Renshaw On Her Latest Novel “Strong Temptations”

credit: Renee Barth

Wesley Hazelberg

When there’s a whodunit in the hat department, who can solve it? None other than Sophie Strong!

In Amy Renshaw's Strong Temptations (the newest installment in her historical fiction series, which stars heroine Sophie Strong and started with the book Strong Suspicions), readers are welcomed into the glitz, glamor and darkness of Milwaukee in 1912. Renshaw describes the book as a cozy historical mystery, which it most certainly is: despite the mystery and murder, the tone remains lighthearted. First and foremost, however, it’s a story of the relationships of the characters involved.

“Though Sophie Strong may be a fictional character, she represents the many women journalists in the early 1900s across the US who played a pivotal role in pioneering women’s rights and the future of women in her field. ”

— Wesley Hazelberg

Though Sophie Strong may be a fictional character, she represents the many women journalists in the early 1900s across the US who played a pivotal role in pioneering women’s rights and the future of women in her field.  While Sophie longs for more opportunities to do hard-hitting journalism like her contemporaries, she’s held back by the more menial topics her editor views as appropriate for women to write on. She eventually convinces her editor to allow her to write a story undercover as a “shopgirl” in the Gimbels department store. She expects the assignment to be tedious, but when someone turns up dead, Sophie realizes there might be more to this store’s story than initially thought.

“Anyone who’s interested in women’s rights, the history of Milwaukee and Wisconsin, or even the history of the US in the early 1900s, I think, will enjoy it.”

— Amy Renshaw

Mystery fans will no doubt enjoy the story’s twists and turns, and history buffs will feel equally engaged by the details of the author’s meticulous research. “Anyone who’s interested in women’s rights, the history of Milwaukee and Wisconsin, or even the history of the US in the early 1900s, I think, will enjoy it,” says Renshaw. Readers will recognize glimpses of our region’s yesteryear from the settings, the apparel worn, and the topics discussed by the characters. They’re all perfect opportunities to transport the reader.  The greatest example of this is the story’s main setting: the Gimbels department store. It draws its details—from the floor plan to the store directory—from the real-world Gimbels on 101 W Wisconsin Street in downtown Milwaukee. This multistoried colossus of a department store took up an entire city block, and its popularity as a destination foreshadowed the shopping malls of today. The fascinating thing about stores like Gimbels, explains Renshaw, is how “they sort of invented the concept of shopping as an activity, especially as an activity for women … It was a way that women were emerging into the public realm, and it also generated a lot of employment for women.”

However, while the book can be very informative on history, the primary intent of the book—as with all of the best cozy mysteries—is to offer entertainment and escape to its readers. If solving a crime is how you relax after a long day, Strong Temptations is for you. Fans of Rhys Bowen, Victoria Thompson, and Ashley Weaver, will love the latest from Amy Renshaw.

Books are available at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library and the Altoona Public Library, as well as from online retailers.

Choosing to crack the spine: Four practical tips to sustain reading for pleasure

Maggie O’Brien

I can’t recall a time in the past ten years when I haven’t been reading a book. I have no interest in knowing a nightstand free of haphazardly-stacked novels due to the careful influence of my parents.

My mother, a kindergarten teacher of 32 years, passionately values children’s literacy. Despite ever-increasing odds, she attempts to foster a desire to read in every one of her students. 

Naturally, as soon as I started learning how to read, she began filling the house with books. As an early reader, some of my favorites included “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?,” “Spot,” “Goodnight Moon,” “Frog and Toad,” and “Curious George” books.

I read my dearest books over and over, and soon developed an interest in an array of genres and authors. My enthusiasm delighted my mother, and her support encouraged me to remain infatuated with books.

My mother adored reading just as much as she promoted it. She spent many summer afternoons on the deck beneath a large sunhat, flicking through pages of her current read while I swam or played outside.

Like clockwork, my dad read himself to sleep every night. Not a single night of my childhood went by without seeing him tucked into bed with a historical fiction novel or a mystery. Though these were his preferred genres, I watched him read anything from “Harry Potter” to “Atlas Shrugged,” and unconsciously noticed the value in every genre of literature. 

The author as a young reader.

I yearned to be just like them, devouring every book within sight. For a time, I did. But the beginning of high school marked a sudden shift in my presently constant reading habits.

While venturing into my freshman year of high school, I felt small and powerless as lengthy textbook readings and monstrous study guides led me to cast away my beloved novels.

After completing mounds of homework nightly, opening my current read began to feel far too overwhelming. So, though I was still incredibly fond of reading for pleasure, I reluctantly pushed it aside as I grew older and busier. 

My lapse in reading for pleasure during the school year unfortunately became a recurring one, and continued all the way into college. Plenty of my friends, colleagues, and even professors share this unwanted experience.

If you have noticed a similar decline or change in your reading habits, and want to restore your love of reading for pleasure, chances are you are not alone.

It’s important to acknowledge exactly why you may read for pleasure less now than before. This confrontation can happen however you’d like it to; journal about it, chat about it with friends or peers, or simply ponder when the change occurred.

Verbalizing, writing, or thinking about your reading habits may illuminate whether your lapse in reading for pleasure is constant or situational. With your newly realized awareness, you can make the most of the following suggestions on how to inspire and sustain reading for pleasure.

Take a book to go

This summer, one of my go-to activities after working at McIntyre Library involved heading to a park with a book. I’d nestle into my hammock at Domer Park or splay out on a quilt atop the grass at Rod & Gun Park and read for hours. I enjoyed this venture alone, or with a friend or two beside me. 

During the school year, I spend plenty of time doing homework in coffee shops, but I try to carve out a few hours a week where I leave my backpack behind and bring only my current read with me. 

This habit ensures I devote time to reading my “fun” books without feeling as if I’m neglecting my ever-present pile of homework. If you’re a student, give this idea a go when you find yourself struggling to make time for reading for pleasure during the semester.

My go-to coffee shop is SHIFT, but you can find dozens of reader-friendly joints on Water Street and Downtown. 

The possibilities are endless as to where you can journey with your read, since books are conveniently portable. For readers fond of the outdoors, Eau Claire is home to a bounty of wonderful parks, and Visit Eau Claire offers a beautifully organized list of all of them.

If you prefer reading indoors or want to be prepared with locations to frequent when the temperatures drop to frigid levels, consider the two lovely libraries in Eau Claire: McIntyre Library on the UW-Eau Claire campus for students and L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library for everyone.

Depending on the setting of your excursion, the subtle sounds of rushing water or clinking coffee mugs may just lull you into a dreamy state of concentration, as happens to me. 

Read what you enjoy

During the beginning of my second year of college as an English student, there existed a period in which I did not allow myself to read books that I did not deem “purposeful.” 

After reading Tuck and Yang’s “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor” and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s “The Undocumented Americans,” I felt as if I had too much to learn from literature to make time for “fun” books.

My new standards for the literature I consumed ruled out much of what I typically would reach for during the school year.

“A year later, I’ve realized that reading for pleasure is what keeps my mental health afloat amidst a sea of textbook chapters and theory-heavy readings. If I yearn to read a light-hearted YA novel or short book of poetry at the end of the day to decompress, I will. ”

— Maggie O'Brien

A year later, I’ve realized that reading for pleasure is what keeps my mental health afloat amidst a sea of textbook chapters and theory-heavy readings. If I yearn to read a light-hearted YA novel or short book of poetry at the end of the day to decompress, I will. 

The books we reach for when we feel overwhelmed or heavy-headed are simply indicative of the comfort we require at the moment. It is always my intention to avoid gatekeeping reading to nonfiction, jargon-filled literature, and to honor imaginative novels for their entertaining nature.

Anna Zook, Arts Librarian at McIntyre Library and Assistant Professor at UW-Eau Claire, nearly always has a book to pick up on the hold shelf, so I turned to her perspective on keeping up with her reading habits.

“I’ve always had a next book I was reading,” Zook said. “Even in college, when I had assigned reading, I had something that I was reading for pleasure.”

Zook explained that her reading habits remained the same and did not dwindle, but she favored one genre over the others. 

“Back then it was a lot of short stories. A lot of Raymond Carver and Flannery O’Connor,” Zook said. “The way I managed it in college was to read short stories more than anything else.”

Zook said that the number of short stories she read dropped off post-college and graduate school, in exchange for novels. This was a result of gaining a bit of time back after graduating. 

“The way I manage it now is by reading myself to sleep every single night,” Zook said.

Zook asserted that reading has been incredibly important for her mental health since childhood, and this awareness has supported her consistent reading into adulthood. 

“For work, I’ll read scholarly articles or things that will help make me a better teacher or trends in information literacy, but I always have something fun I’m reading that I’ll enjoy, that I can escape into,” Zook said. 

Zook has maintained her habit of reading for pleasure by prioritizing it from early college. It wasn’t a habit she had to restart simply because she never broke it from the time she was taught to read.

Most notably, Zook read what interested her and suited her situation intuitively. She never tried to force heavy reading upon her weary mind, and the result was a sustained practice of reading for pleasure.

Stay in tune with your local literary communities

If you’re struggling to prioritize reading for pleasure, maybe what you’re missing is inspiration. Luckily, Eau Claire and the Chippewa Valley happen to be hubs for literary events. I stumbled into Eau Claire having no idea just how warm and welcoming the literary community is here. Now, I benefit from the support of this community daily.

Let these organizations and establishments do the heavy lifting for you and just attend their carefully-crafted events for a glimmer of inspiration. 

You may leave with the sudden urge to pick up your current read at home, or even with a newly-purchased book tucked beneath your arm after an author bears their soul to you during a book talk.

There are a number of places in Eau Claire that put together and host events for the literary community.

For one, Eau Claire is home to two spectacular libraries: L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library and UW-Eau Claire’s McIntyre Library. 

Mcintyre Library recently won the 2024 Wisconsin Library Association Library of the Year Award out of 2000 Wisconsin libraries. This award goes to show just how special this library is, and if you’re not convinced, McIntyre Library also sponsors a Book Club called Subversive Book Club. 

Subversive Book Club highlights banned literature and meets to discuss the selected reads for the semester. What better way exists to sustain your pleasure reading habits than a loosely structured book club?

L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library hosts seven different online and in-person book clubs for various ages and interests if that idea piques your interest. Additionally, the community library holds multiple literary events weekly. Check out its event calendar if this intrigues you.

The Chippewa Valley Book Festival is teeming with opportunities to engage in the literary community and get motivated to read. This yearly festival is a celebration of writing and features a hybrid schedule of events to reach everyone, everywhere. 

CVBF’s mission is to “​​encourage reading, writing, and engagement,” so this organization is literally aiming to help you sustain healthy reading habits. 

The Chippewa Valley Writers Guild, a haven of support for writers in the Chippewa Valley area, sponsors literary events year-round. Take a look at the Guild’s website to see upcoming Guild events.

Even The Spectator, UW-Eau Claire’s student-run newspaper is a wonderful resource if you’re seeking book recommendations. The Op/Ed section features a column called “Book Club,” which former CVWG intern Gracie Schutte used to write weekly. 

I co-authored “Book Club” last year and discussed my favorite books and authors, novels I read for class, and the value of reading. Skimming through old articles of “Book Club” is an excellent way to find recommendations of all genres from various perspectives while learning a thing or two.

Remember this hearty list of recommendations if you ever find yourself stuck in a reading rut or are feeling eager to get involved in the literary community and don’t know where to start.

Build a reading routine

The author among the stacks.

Though it may seem a bit excessive, planning out time to read can be an excellent starting point. Chances are you have your entire life scheduled out on your phone or computer. Consider blocking out an hour or so each day for reading. 

Scheduling reading may make it feel like more of a priority. If reading time is nestled between meetings, classes, and other activities, it should be regarded equally.

The term “reading” can become convoluted for those with academic or workplace readings to complete at home. Making time for school or work reading and “fun” reading by cutting off the former at a certain point may be a good way to start.

Your routine doesn’t have to be scheduled out to the minute, though. The intent is to prioritize reading for pleasure consistently. This might indicate adjusting your habits. The examples that follow suggest a few simple swaps.

If you’re catching the bus somewhere, try picking up your current read rather than scrolling on your phone. 

Perhaps you’ve just gotten home from school or work and need a break from the mania of these settings. Nothing can simultaneously quiet and excite your mind in the way a good book can.

Think of prioritizing reading as a form of self-care. Make it an occasion. Light some candles, brew a warm drink, and cozy up. Taking a few simple steps to get into the reading mindset may enhance your experience significantly.

Altogether, being intentional about the way you approach reading has the potential to aid in restoring or sustaining your reading habits.

Lately, I’ve been reading myself to sleep to prioritize reading for pleasure with the limited time I have. In experiencing the delightful way time stretches with the promise of ‘just one more page,’ I’ve come to recall the bliss of reading as a child.

It’s time to turn the page

You may have noticed a consistent theme in all of the tips: Read however and whatever you need to reclaim the easy joy it once brought you.

Reading for pleasure should be pleasurable. Make use of the wonderful literary resources and places to read in Eau Claire and find inspiration wherever you can.

It’s time to turn the page on feeling guilty for not reading enough. This year, take the time to restore your reading habit by following these tips and celebrate however far you get.

Searching for Peace on the Page: Cathy Sultan Completes Her Syrian Quartet with "Omar's Choice"

Wesley Hazelberg

When Cathy Sultan writes about the Middle East, the fiction fits the facts. From living through the Lebanese Civil War, to her fifteen years as an engaged peace activist, Sultan has learned the ins and outs of peace and war in the Middle East. Applying these experiences has made Sultan an effective writer about the region and its complexities.

I had the opportunity to interview Sultan in preparation for the launch of her newest book, Omar’s Choice, the fourth and final installment in her series, the Syrian Quartet. Taken from the publisher: “Omar’s Choice draws us into the shadowy role of ISIS in the bloody Syrian conflict. The story, begun in The Syrian, Damascus Street and An Ambassador to Syria, follows Omar, now a member of ISIS and John, a CIA operative, as they unleash a nightmare across Syria.”

In this ancient place of human heritage laid low by war and destruction, Sultan lays bare the consequences and dangers, both present and future, brought on by the West’s forever wars across the Middle East.

“Writing Toward Peace In A Time of War”—Sultan’s book launch and presentation—will be held on Thursday, Sept. 26, at 6 p.m. at the L.E. Philips Memorial Public Library. Omar’s Choice will be read, books will be available for purchase, and refreshments will be served.

Wesley Hazelberg: What do you feel is the most interesting element of your latest book? What do you think readers will be drawn to?

Cathy Sultan: It depends on the reader. As for interesting elements, Omar’s Choice is the most complex of the four books. I spent hundreds of hours researching the origins of ISIS, its links to Western governments and how it has been used across Syria to foment havoc. It is the beginning of the Russian involvement in the Syrian war and the US military’s disastrous bombing campaigns. And in this mix, my characters try to stay alive. Some do, some don’t. 

WH: How does it feel like to have written the final novel of a four-part series?

CS: I’m filled with mixed emotions. Clearly, I feel a sense of accomplishment but that said, a bit of nostalgia has already begun to creep in. I’ll miss my characters, even the ones I’ve chosen to kill off in this book. The story began with The Syrian in 2006, and it concludes in 2019. My job as an author has been to create a suspenseful political thriller that has kept my reader on edge and engaged. As a historical fiction writer my challenge has been to incorporate real life, current events that inform my reader, facts they may not have otherwise known, and have them say at the conclusion of the book, “I learned a lot.” I feel like I’ve done that.

WH: Were there any particular real-world moments that inspired Omar’s Choice? If so, could you share a bit more about them?

CS: These four books have been about correcting narratives and lies that the West has perpetuated about Syria’s president, his use of chemical weapons among them. The books have also exposed the CIA’s involvement in the Syria conflict and its use of al Qaeda-linked fighters to accomplish its goals. Because I follow regional events closely I’ve been able to incorporate them into this story. By the end of the book, I believe my reader will be in a better position to question mainstream media’s account of events as they have unfolded and continue to play out across Syria.

WH: You mention on your website that many of the settings in your novels are places you have visited before on your travels, such as a hotel in Damascus in The Syrian and the Shatilla refugee camp in Beirut from Damascus Street. Are there any settings in Omar's Choice that you have similarly visited?  

CS: I am quite familiar with the route Nadia and Andrew take as they leave Beirut for northwest Syria. I’ve driven it many times. The little restaurant they stop in on the way to Idlib I also know. As for the other scenes, I’m familiar with the landscape across northeast Syria, having visited the area many years ago, so it was easy enough to create scenes in my head and bring them alive.

WH: The Syrian quartet utilizes fiction to explore real-world stories of international significance. How does fiction provide readers insight into these issues in a way that nonfiction might not?

“The main ingredient in historical fiction is the use of both fact and fiction. ”

— Cathy Sultan

CS: The main ingredient in historical fiction is the use of both fact and fiction. If the author creates an engaging storyline that captures the reader’s imagination the reader comes away not only enjoying the story but learning a lot about current events they may have not have otherwise known.

WH: What do people often get wrong about geopolitics in the Middle East that you feel like your work depicts the truth of?  

CS: Many people find Middle East politics complicated. Yes, they are. They require a bit of time and attention but given the current risk of a full-blown regional war, it is imperative we become better informed on issues that affect our lives and our future. It is these real-life issues that I address in these four books, but I dress them up in a thriller setting and makes them easy to absorb and retain. William Case, CIA director from 1981-1987 famously said, “We will know that our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” My books dissect fact from fictional nonsense. Knowledge brings power and the power of an informed public, when fully engaged, produces a chain reaction that reaches all the way to the highest levels of power. That’s the power I try to give my reader.

WH: As someone who lived in Lebanon throughout the Lebanese Civil War, you have unique insight into the geopolitics of the Middle East. What do you think the future of the Middle East looks like? And if you'd rather not make predictions, then what do you hope it looks like?

CS: A wise person never predicts what will happen in the Middle East because no one knows. The situation on the ground changes daily and sometimes hourly. I can say with certainty that if the US does not reign in a certain rogue state which it claims as an ally, the Middle East will face a regional war. It is relatively easy to create a pretext for forever wars but if you don’t have a Plan B to stop it when it spirals out of control, you are in real trouble. That’s where we are right now. 

WH: What do you hope people will take away from your event on September 26? 

CS: An awareness that we face a major crisis in the Middle East. At no time in recent history has our engagement been more urgently needed. It is up to all of us to use our collective voices to limit our leaders’ ability to engage in a conflict that does not threaten our national security or our lives or our livelihood.

Omar’s Choice is available on online and at local retailers.

You can also support Cathy Sultan’s work at her book launch, “Writing Peace in a Time of War” at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library on September 26 at 6PM.

All opinions are the author’s own.

‘Can I Call You Matt?’: One Packer Fan’s Letters to Matt LaFleur

credit: RT Vrieze of Knorth Studios

Elizabeth de Cleyre

In the fall of 2022, Matthew Mabis casually mentioned to friends at a bar about how he’d started writing letters to the head coach of the Green Bay Packers. The conversation moved onto something else, and later, Mabis joined his friends onstage to play a set. After the show, the band loaded all of their gear into one car for someone to bring home and unload, and the rest of them loaded into another vehicle. Mabis, alongside his friends and band mates Matt Vold, Dan Turner, and Jack Gribble, left downtown Eau Claire after midnight and headed east. They stopped in Wausau, hanging out at a bar and crashing at a motel for a few hours. Then they got up the next morning and drove to Lambeau, with enough time to tailgate before the game.

Although I’d lived in Wisconsin for six years at that point, this was a different level of fandom than anything I’d ever encountered.

You see, I grew up in a place called ‘Patriots Nation.’ My home state doesn’t possess its own NFL team, and defaults to cheering for its regional representatives. I went to high school during the heyday of the Tom Brady–Bill Belichick era, but never liked the Patriots, or Brady, or their fans. I could not comprehend why anyone felt so invested in the success of a for-profit team belonging to one wealthy white dude.

The citizens of early 2000s Patriots Nation hated a lot of teams, but there was a special animosity reserved for the Green Bay Packers. In 1997, the Packers defeated the Patriots 35-21 to earn their third Super Bowl victory. A guy from my hometown once told me he remembered that game vividly, even though he was only nine. It was the first time he could recall watching the Super Bowl with his father, and when the game ended, his father's disappointment at the loss was so palpable that this nine-year-old boy vowed to hate the Packers for all eternity.

My own introduction to Packers fandom came ten months after moving to Wisconsin, when I was asked to help coordinate a book fair during the town's annual literary festival. The organizers scheduled it for a Sunday in October at noon and I was unaware the Packers were also scheduled to play that Sunday in October at noon. It would be the team's first matchup in four years without quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who was out with a broken collarbone. But, I thought, surely the audiences for a literary festival and NFL game would not overlap. Surely the bookish types didn't clear their Sunday schedules to watch the Packers.

Never have I ever been more naive, or more wrong.

That day, more than anything before or after, proved I was in a strange new land — one where the football fans and literary circles converged. Tables were set up in The Local Store and Oxbow Hotel's gallery for author signings and booksellers, and the initial burst of activity subsided when the game began. One author sat behind a table with nary a trickle of readers seeking signed books — unusual, in this town. Before he left, he came up to say goodbye, and added how it's hard to compete with a Packer game. He said it kindly, even humbly, perhaps even pitying me — a newcomer to this land — for so blatantly misunderstanding its culture.

In a 2023 article for The Guardian, journalist Katie Thornton explains the ownership structure of the Green Bay Packers:

“Instead of a sole wealthy owner who won’t hesitate to leave if the city doesn’t pay up, the Packers are owned by more than 500,000 community shareholders - none of whom can own more than about 4% of the team’s stock. Unlike shareholders of other corporations, Packers owners can’t sell or cash in their shares. And unlike other teams, which generate windfall profits for the team owners, all Packers profits are invested back into the organization. Often these funds go toward stadium updates, giving the team a sort of opt-in public funding model that has repeatedly paid for the Packers’ community-oriented projects - even if they aren’t likely to yield a huge financial return. This structure has enabled the team and city to build a football mecca that, were it left solely to the high-rolling sports market, would have no business surviving in a small city like Green Bay, which has a population only a little over 100,000.”

“Once I realized the Green Bay Packers are the only publicly-owned major professional sports franchise in the United States, the fervor made sense. Here was a fanbase with a literal and figurative investment in the team.”

— Elizabeth de Cleyre

Once I realized the Green Bay Packers are the only publicly-owned major professional sports franchise in the United States, the fervor made sense. Here was a fanbase with a literal and figurative investment in the team.

To mention the Packers is to conjure up stories of parents who put the names of their one-day-old babies on the waitlist for season tickets. These babies become adults and gain access to their seats at Lambeau in their mid-thirties, just in time for them to start a family and add their baby’s name. Rather than passing down a lucky jersey, a signed football, or a piece of memorabilia, fans passed down season tickets and shareholder stocks, lending more weight to the intergenerational aspect of fandom. We may not always gravitate toward or fall in love with the teams our parents rooted for, just like we may not become committed to our ancestors’ religious denominations. But in Wisconsin, life revolves around the Packers: births, first communions, marriages, and deaths can be ushered in, celebrated, or mourned by the transfer of owner shares or the promise of season tickets.

Even though the book is titled Against Football, the author Steve Almond writes of his love for the sport, and how he believes, “football, in its exalted moments, is not just a sport but a lovely and intricate form of art.” Recounting the history of the game, he says, “football provided a lingua franca by which men of vastly different beliefs and standing could speak to one another in an increasingly fragmented culture.”

We witness it here in Wisconsin, where the literary circles and sports fanatics overlap. Almond points out author Don Delillo’s “exquisite renderings” of the game in his novel End Zone, which he says hinted at the idea “that sport awakens within us deep recesses of emotion, occasions for reflection, reasons to believe.”

Yet the bulk of Almond’s book tackles (pun intended) the issues with the game’s violence, which can cause long-standing health issues for players, most notably in the form of traumatic brain injuries and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. When he visits Ann McKee, M.D., a neurologist in Boston studying football-induced concussions, Almond points out the Aaron Rodgers bobblehead among her items and how she calls the team “her Green Bay Packers,” a fitting use of a possessive adjective for a team owned by the fans.

Even though McKee’s research proves the seriousness of these injuries, there’s doubt the evidence will change the NFL. Instead, the author writes, “The ultimate agents of social change aren’t researchers like her, but individual fans (like her) who confront the moral meaning of the research.”

One might even go so far as to argue the agents of social change could come specifically from the Packers fanbase, the only team with a vested interest in listening to their supporters.

The author, Matthew Mabis, as a young fan (right).

Credit: Ann Mabis.

Matthew Mabis is one of those fans. If you happen to catch the English teacher watching the game at a local haunt, you might be lucky enough to hear some of his cogent commentary. While other fans are yelling and swearing at the television, Mabis is calm and measured. After the completion of a pass or touchdown, you’ll hear a slow clap from his side of the bar, perhaps paired with an encouraging yet understated affirmation. When the cheering dies down, you might hear Mabis chime in with a detailed play recall.

One of his previous apartments contained a shrine of team memorabilia set up on an old radiator. Before games, he and a friend would make bloody mary’s and read from Jerry Kramer’s Instant Replay, the former Packer’s diary of the 1967 season. It would be head coach Vince Lombardi’s last year coaching the team, which won the Super Bowl against the Oakland Raiders. During these weekly meetings of Packer Church, Matt Vold would open up to the corresponding date of that day’s game and read aloud from a passage.

“When Mabis started this project, he had no intention of publishing the letters. He only wanted to reach one person: Head Coach Matthew Patrick LaFleur.”

— Elizabeth de Cleyre

In 2022, Mabis turned toward the page. When Mabis started this project, he had no intention of publishing the letters. He only wanted to reach one person: Head Coach Matthew Patrick LaFleur. At the beginning of the 2022-2023 season, Mabis didn’t know it would be quarterback Aaron Rodgers’s last season with the Packers, after an eighteen-year stint, or that Rodgers would be out the following season after sustaining an injury on the first drive of his first game with the New York Jets. He also did not know that veteran quarterback Tom Brady would retire after twenty-three seasons in the NFL, first with the New England Patriots and then the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Although the Packers did not make it to the Super Bowl, Mabis unintentionally captured a historic season from the perspective of a lifelong fan and former coach.

One does not need to be a football fan — or even a Green Bay Packers fan — to appreciate the letters, which starts off with an intimacy the narrator hasn’t yet earned: “Can I call you Matt? I’d like that.” Over the course of eighteen weeks, the narrator extends himself to his reader, casting out pieces of wisdom and moments of levity while wholeheartedly supporting and encouraging the recipient. Over time, we learn more about the game than we do about the narrator, but there are glimmers: the narrator’s sublime confidence, for instance, is stunning and awe-inducing, like when he tells the coach of the Packers that he has a lot to learn about competition, and asserts how he is the authority here, as the born-and-bred fan.

In week eight, we find out he’s so superstitious he’s “running out of outfits.” He writes, “Every time we lose, whatever gear I’m wearing enters retirement for the season, and the last month has sapped my wardrobe.” He blames himself for a recent loss, saying he “recycled a losing outfit” in anticipation of a blowout win. He asks, “Was this loss my fault?” And finally asks if Coach LaFleur can send his “ol’ pal Coach Mabis a little something? I need socks.”

By the time we reach Thanksgiving, twelve weeks into the season, the narrator’s aside about the turkey-heavy holiday and ensuing Black Friday sales provide another layer in this surprising portrait of a sports fan, often stereotyped as unquestioning of the country’s traditions and practices. Here is a fan who is not willing to blindly accept the status quo. Here is a narrator who believes that to love something is to question it, and to help it grow and become better. Here is a narrator who recognizes the good in others, and aims to encourage their potential.

It’s hard not to compare him to Ted Lasso, another Midwestern football coach with unflagging optimism and a deep love of the game and its players, and even his opponents.

Letters to Matt LaFleur collects the unabridged typewritten letters from 2022-2023 with Mabis’s 35mm and medium format film photographs from over the years, designed by RT Vrieze of Knorth Studios and with a foreword by author Ken Syzmanski. When I first heard Mabis talk about these letters at that bar in 2022, I immediately envisioned it as a book, and am honored he entrusted me and my company Heron Press as the publisher.

A few days after the first printing arrived, I lugged boxes of books to Milwaukee for the annual Zine Fest, hosted at the public library. Sitting behind a small table, I watched as people who didn’t know Mabis or anything about the project picked up the book, flipped it open, read a line, and started laughing. Each person who bought a copy told me a story about someone they knew who would love it. One woman mentioned her father had recently passed, and her eyes welled with tears as she told me how she was buying this for her brother so they could remember their dad. Another told me about their first time at Lambeau one winter, and the charms of bundling up beside their family and braving the cold together. Later, someone reached out and said the book reminded them of their grandfather, who sparked their love for the team.

In his essay “Calling Audibles,” Wisconsin-based author Barrett Swanson writes about how the language of football changed after 9/11, moving away from “militaristic diction” and toward “the starchy jargon of capitalism,” yet neither captured the beauty of the game. He was a quarterback in high school, and after classes, he and his father would throw wordless passes through the backyard, writing, “Somehow the trajectory of the ball authored sentiments that would have otherwise gone unexpressed between us. Every pass was a physical manifestation of the connection I hoped to establish with him but that our paucity of words chronically denied.”

To Swanson, football is a game of communication and connection. What I love about Letters to Matt LaFleur is how it’s ostensibly about football, but at its core are friends, family, and community — even the community we try or attempt to cultivate in a one-sided correspondence. (Despite multiple attempts, and unanswered voicemails to the Green Bay Packer mailroom, I cannot confirm whether there are more letter-writers out there, but it seems safe to say few are sending such detailed weekly missives from a Smith-Corona Corsair typewriter.)

Swanson points out that although altering how we talk about the sport doesn’t solve all of our societal ails, “perhaps the most potent metaphor for our national sport is one that calls attention to that rare miracle of connection between two individuals.” To walk into a local haunt on a Sunday and see Mabis and his partner, both decked in green, and seated beside Vold and his partner in their Packer gear, is to witness a profound ritual of connection and a deep and abiding love. Not just for the game or the team, but for the people on the barstools and bleachers beside us, sharing in every loss and win.

Elizabeth de Cleyre is a writer and editor. She’s the founder and editor of the longform interview series Yesterday Quarterly, the prose editor of Barstow & Grand’s issue 6 & 7, and selectively offers editorial services and communications consulting. In 2017, she helped cofound Dotters Books in Eau Claire, WI, and later founded Heron Press to publish projects like YQ and Matthew Mabis’s book Letters to Matt LaFleur. Her writing appears in Ploughshares online, The Millions, Brevity, Barstow & Grand, EAA SportAviation, and the Italian anthology Storie dal Wisconsin (Black Coffee Edizioni), among others.

Luke's Picks: Poems In Preparation For Ada Limón's "Poetry and the Natural World"

Luke Gentile

Ada Limón is a prolific poet who has published six poetry books. Her works include The Carrying (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry) and The Hurting Kind (nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize), among others. Ada Limón is currently the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. On May 23, the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters will host Ms. Limón for an in-person event in Madison, Wisconsin. The Chippewa Valley Writers Guild will host a virtual watch party for Ada Limón’s event, Poetry and the Natural World, at 6:00 PM in the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire’s Centennial Hall, room 1704. For more information on the event, please visit this link.

To prepare for the event, I will write about my three favorite Ada Limón poems. The first of which is her poem, “Forsythia.”

Forsythia

The poem opens with beautifully crafted world-building and imagery, followed by using sensory tactics to immerse the reader into the peaceful atmosphere of the poem. This feeling of peace continues as she and her significant other embrace nature, where the poem takes a shift. Ada Limón recalls the name Forsythia and the story behind it. The name connects to her losing a loved one and their last words being, “More Yellow”. Ada Limón reflects on this and connects it to the flower of which this poem is titled, “Forsythia”. Something that may be of interest would be questioning the use of the color yellow and what it symbolizes, which could be answered during the Poetry and the Natural World Q&A event. This poem and the following Ada Limón poems will be linked under each summary. 

Sundown and All the Damage Done

The next Ada Limón poem is “Sundown and All the Damage Done”. Much like “Forsythia,” Ada Limón starts the poem with stunning imagery and sensory tactics, which she utilizes to create a stunning, almost familiar atmosphere. She then introduces the magnolia tree, marking a shift in tone as she continues to write about life and death; specifically, how long individuals have on earth and the “strange contentment to this countdown.” This piece serves as a reminder to enjoy your life and to spend your time on earth doing what you love. Ada Limón wonderfully conveys this idea in her poem, and those who are interested in reading her poem should pay attention to the closing sentence and why it ends with a question. 

Give Me This

My favorite Ada Limón poem is “Give Me This.” The poem starts with strong imagery which paints a scene and introduces the tone. In a similar fashion, she introduces a groundhog utilizing the sensory tactile touch. The groundhog begins to steal vegetables from the garden, but the scene suddenly shifts to a singular question. I’ve omitted the question to encourage you to read “Give Me This” by clicking on the link below and experiencing it for yourself. Ada Limón ends the poem reflecting on both the question and the groundhog's action to steal to eat. This poem serves as a reminder that we are still connected to Mother Nature and her creatures. 

These are just a few of Ada Limón’s poems, which can be found on her website, Ada Limón. If you enjoyed these poems, please join us on May 23 in Centennial Hall, room 1704, on the UW Eau Claire campus for the Poetry and the Natural World virtual watch party.

“Dinner is Served”: An Interview with Dorothy Chan on Return of the Chinese Femme

by Gwenyth Wheat

Dorothy Chan’s fifth collection, Return of the Chinese Femme revels in the decadence of food, sex, pop culture, affection and so much more. The book is one to read from beginning to end and then all over again. From appetizer to dessert, Chan’s poetic prowess redefines the literary landscape. It’s confident. It’s the appetizer, main course, and dessert. Each line leaves you craving the next. Chan is a powerhouse poet who continues to give this world more of what it needs—authentic, bold, hungry love.

credit: Grace Sydney Pham

To interview Dorothy, my poetry mentor and friend, was a dream come true. It was a great honor and delight to help celebrate her forthcoming book Return of the Chinese Femme and add our conversation to the creative community. With utmost joy and appreciation, thank you, Dorothy, for your writing.

 Gwenyth Wheat: I wanted to start with a discussion on the intersections of the speaker’s identity, Asian heritage, queerness, family and more that come to life on the page. Your collection explores these intersections in an intimate, abundant, and magnificent fashion. Could you share about these intersections as well as how poetry functions as a unique space to explore a speaker’s fierce and tender trajectory of selfhood?

 Dorothy Chan: Gwen, it’s such a pleasure to talk with you! I am so proud of your accomplishments so far in your MFA and professional life. Thank you for this brilliant opening question.

“I love the challenge of poetry. It’s such an adrenaline rush. The potentially small space (on the page) a poem occupies belies its true complexities. ”

— Dorothy Chan

I love the challenge of poetry. It’s such an adrenaline rush. The potentially small space (on the page) a poem occupies belies its true complexities. Poetry, and in particular, the sonnet, and even more specifically, The Triple Sonnet, contains conversational elements where my speakers use humor, seduction, storytelling, and direct narration to reveal their innermost vulnerabilities. I also believe that poetry is simply another medium of receiving information — but of course, it’s a much more lyric and musical medium — one that allows my speakers to bask in the glory of who they are. I 100% believe in my speaker, the queer Asian femme, being unapologetic at all times. Thank you for describing my speaker as both fierce and tender. I believe poetry helps me strike this unique balance, and from here, we get the volta — the turn in thought and feeling. The volta, serving as internal reveal, also aids in achieving this intimacy.

 GW: Your galley copies of the collection debuted at AWP 2024 and I was lucky enough to read one! I was really struck by the blurb by Norman Dubie who wrote “There is a sometimes rowdy elegance in these poems that is like a brilliant mind whispering again to itself. The voice instructs us to love life even when it has most betrayed us. The reader is consoled in all of it. What a great book.” Would you like to speak to the role of poetry to teach love in ways that are “rowdy” and “brilliant” and dismantle social constructs and expectations?

DC: A lesson that I love to teach students, which is also a lesson that Norman Dubie, my late great Poetry Father taught me, is that poetry can be humorous. Poetry can be SO laugh out loud funny and irreverent and witty. Within this wit and humor lies great Truth (with a purposeful capital “T” that my Poetry Mother, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon taught me).

Thank you for bringing up this blurb, Gwen. This was the last blurb Norman wrote, and I fondly remember how years ago, I promised him he would write a blurb for each one of my books. It was a lifelong contract.

I think we often have this wrong idea that humorous entertainment should somehow be taken “less seriously.” It’s a highly misinformed mindset because often humor shows Truth. I also care most about community—that’s what my organization Honey Literary is all about—humor is also a way to nurture our communities. There’s also something many people find scary as hell about a fierce queer femme of color who also happens to be funny as hell.

GW: I also think we need to take a minute for the book’s stunning front and back cover. I love the gold lettering, the continuance of your stamp of adding a twist to Star Wars titles, the Las Vegas tea cup, the red! Do you want to talk about the cover photo and art? What was the process like in selecting the art for your book?

 DC: When I saw Grace Sydney Pham’s (@gracesydneypham) photo, I cried. Her work is so special. I’d like to spotlight her artist’s statement (from the September LitHub cover reveal):

 “The still life photograph “Your Inheritance” was composed of various thrifted odds and ends: a Las Vegas cup and saucer, bingo balls from a bingo set, and a polyester satin fabric,” added Pham. “I enjoy frequenting thrift stores and estate sales, finding value in cast off, unwanted things, and assembling these various cast-offs in odd, nuanced arrangements. With this still life, I wanted to poke fun at the tension between saving money and prized possessions for one’s descendants versus gambling it away in the later stages of life. There’s an additional, personal meaning to this photograph and my photography practice for me; both of my parents are hoarders, and I’ve inherited this hoarding behavior, which I’ve tried to justify or redeem by taking still life photographs.”

 GW: The book’s table of contents is organized and designed as an evening menu. I love how the themes of food stretch beyond the poems and into the framing of the collection through a menu-style table of contents. How did you decide on organizing your poems into its five tasting menu sections?

DC: I’m drawn to organizing poetry collections in odd-numbered sections. I find a regal quality in this move. Traditionally, I go for a “triptych,” or three-part structure. Triple Sonnet. The Powerpuff Girls. Sugar, spice, and everything umami. The rule of three applies to everything in life. I was an art history minor in college, so this poetic organizational move is a nod to my studies and passions.

credit: Joshua David Watson

This time around, though, because this book is extra special, I increased my structure to a five-parter. It was like playing a personality test game with all my favorite forms. Triple Sonnets, for instance, are definitely “Classic Amuse-Bouches with a Twist.” In contemporary sonnet creation, we’re playing, bending, and messing with the rules, but one tenet always holds true: the volta was invented because of the sonnet form. And with endless voltas or emotional turns, as the reader, our appetites are constantly whet.

GW: I love the opportunity to think about different poetic processes and how collections come into fruition. I believe the act of creating presents writers with personal or craft-centered voltas. Surprise can become a natural progression with a project as more themes start to develop. Did you have any moments while working on iterations of these poems or organizing them that surprised you within your own work?

DC: Absolutely. In organizing this collection, I surprised myself by including poems of all forms in each section. For instance, Section II is named, “The Triple Sonnets: Classic Amuse-Bouches with a Twist.” Some of my favorite Triples, including “Triple Sonnet for Black Hair” and “Triple Sonnet for Celebrities with Three Names” are included here. But I also decided to include two iterations of “Designer,” prose poems because they have an “amuse-bouche” tease quality.

GW: The collection takes the reader on a journey through multiple forms. We get your exquisite signature form, the triple sonnet as well as odes, “Designer” poems, and recipe poems. How do you practice experimentation and exploration with poetic form and craft? Similarly, do you feel like this practice further demonstrates a commitment to “joy and resilience” as mentioned in your book description?

DC: I adore this question! To each their own, but I’m not one of those poets who has a “strict” plan coming into a poem. Of course, in creating, each poem has a starting point—a hook that seduces. Or think about how runway works. Or to (quote from what I remember) Michael Kors on Project Runway: “She turned the corner and I gasped.”

 Every good runway show has a volta—or multiple voltas. Glamazons strut their stuff on runways, sporting (hopefully not just) florals for spring and (more more more) plaids and leathers for fall. But a strong runway show is also eclectic. We can’t simply watch the same design or iterations of the same design walk down. Poetry collections function in a similar fashion—of course, a book needs its unification through form and content. But we also need to leave room for enough surprise.

“Joy is wearing a leather jacket you love but also surprising yourself with a pink rhinestone choker. Or the other way around. We don’t need to stick to one definition of anything—that’s a metaphor of joy and resilience as well. ”

— Dorothy Chan

 I used to follow a strict regimen where I had to write a series of Triple Sonnets or I had to write a bunch of odes. As much as I love the discipline of form, only writing in certain forms can become stifling (no matter how much you love them). So that’s what I started riffing on the word “Designer” and its many implications and meanings. Joy is wearing a leather jacket you love but also surprising yourself with a pink rhinestone choker. Or the other way around. We don’t need to stick to one definition of anything—that’s a metaphor of joy and resilience as well.

GW: One of my favorite moments in the collection comes from the poem titled, “She Asks Me What I Want in a Life Partner” that reads “I’ll be your little art monster, the cyclops awakening // during the midnight romp, and you know it’s time / to take over the world with our wits and wiles— // always femme, my dear, and wild wild wild wild.” What a wonder these lines create with the confidence and endearment of the speaker, the accumulation of ‘wild’ through the absence of commas and the alliteration building to it. It is a moment of many moments, which is why I love it so much! How do you see lines such as this one calling to other turns in the collection that call to a seizing of the world through the unabashed?

“One of the ways we can seize the world through the unabashed is by being always direct and honest. This way, we’re closer to our own Truths.”

— Dorothy Chan

DC: I’m so happy you love this poem, Gwen!!! This means a lot. One of the ways we can seize the world through the unabashed is by being always direct and honest. This way, we’re closer to our own Truths. A pessimist might read this poem and think, Wow, it’s sad because the speaker knows this relationship won’t work out. But a realist might read this poem and reflect on how the speaker’s honesty: “I want someone to take over the world with, which / sounds like the theme to Pinky and the Brain” gets the speaker closer to their Truth of wildness, romp, and success.

GW: I was also really drawn to the use of pop culture references throughout the collection. We get poems with Veronica Lodge, Dennis Rodman, a “Triple Sonnet and Three Cheers for the Asian Bachelorette,” Batman villains and more. Do you want to talk about the joys and discoveries of using pop culture in poetry?

DC: I will never understand why some people are so vehemently against pop culture references in poetry. A poem is a lyric medium of receiving information. I’ve also heard the argument “it [the reference] takes me out of the poem,” but I argue that looking things up, along with reflecting on a bigger world are integral experiences within reading and analysis.

Popular culture in poetry brings me so much joy, especially from the lens of being a child of immigrants from Hong Kong. I’ll never forget how someone once criticized a Betty and Veronica poem I wrote years ago, questioning its relevance. But then a few years later, Riverdale premiered and it’s this bizarre and fabulous pop culture touchstone. Poetry is about complexities and nuances of emotion. That’s why as a kid, Batman the Animated Series was my favorite show. No superhero lore beats Batman’s gallery of rogues. I loved how the animated series was film noir-esque as well as heartbreaking. The amount of backstory given to say, Mr. Freeze or Poison Ivy made me reflect about intensity as a kid. And so many of the Batman villains are either queer or queer-coded. It’s a win-win.

GW: This is now your fifth collection out in the world which is so incredible! What was a special moment (whether in publishing, drafting, the possibilities are endless) that you experienced while creating this book?

DC: I think my favorite moments are here to come! I am excited for my May book tour: Minneapolis, San Francisco, Phoenix, New York, and Dallas.

GW: Thank you again for your time with this interview. Is there anything that I missed about your forthcoming book that you would like to add? Do you have any notes about your experience publishing with Deep Vellum?

DC: Thank YOU, Gwen!! I’ll simply add that I’m grateful for the wonderful people at Deep Vellum, my readership, and my mentors.

Click here for more information about Dorothy’s writing.

Click here for more information about Dorothy’s book launch, alongside poet Douglas Kearney, at Milkweed in Minneapolis on May 1 at 6 PM.

Dorothy Chan (she/they) is the author of five poetry collections, including Return of the Chinese Femme (Deep Vellum, April 2024) and Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Editions, 2019), a finalist for the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry. They are an Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and Co-Founder and Editor in Chief of Honey Literary Inc., a 501(c)(3) BIPOC literary arts organization. Chan was a 2022 recipient of the University of Wisconsin System’s Dr. P.B. Poorman Award for Outstanding Achievement on Behalf of LGBTQ+ People. This summer they will be a Visitor at Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Visit their website at dorothypoetry.com.

Gwenyth Wheat is a MFA/MA candidate at McNeese State University. She is the Assistant Poetry Editor for the McNeese Review and a writing tutor for MSU. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Great Lakes Review, The Poet’s Touchstone, ZAUM, NOTA, LIGHT Magazine and elsewhere. Originally from the northwoods of Wisconsin, she currently resides in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Unpublished Beauties: Celebrating Rough Drafts at The Rough Draft Reading Series

Luke Gentile

Join us on May 1 to share your “unpublished beauties” at the inaugural Rough Draft Reading Series kickoff event, which will be held from 7 pm to 8:30 pm at 2 Roots Art & Wine Gallery, 216 South Barstow Street, Eau Claire, WI, 54701. No advance registration is required to read or attend. Just show up and we’ll share until our time runs out

The Rough Draft Reading Series was created by Katie Venit, a professional freelance writer and instructional designer at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire . 

Katie Venit agreed to answer the following questions in advance of the event.

Luke Gentile: What is the purpose of this event? And how does the event's name connect to that purpose?

Katie Venit: Getting the writing community together is always a reason for a get-together. But the specific purpose of this event is to give folks a chance to share with each other our works in progress--those unpublished beauties that haven't found a home in print yet. The popular retreats that the CVWG runs have always included an opportunity for folks to share informally something, either something they wrote on the retreat or that they came with. It's always a highlight of the event. And so we thought it would be fun to do that outside the retreats. Plus, I love hearing about what my friends are working on. We have such a variety of writers here in the Chippewa Valley.

LG: Is there a sign-up process for those who wish to participate?

KV: It'll be open-mic style, so people can sign up there on a sheet of paper. But all are welcome to attend even if they're not reading. Come and hang out and enjoy a beverage! 

 LG: Do you have any advice to decrease anxiety for participants?

KV: I've done a few readings, and I shake like a leaf before, during, and after each one. In fact, I'm halfway hoping so many people come that I won't need to read from my own WIP.  :)  It helps me to remember that everyone there has nothing but goodwill for readers. We're all there to have a good time, enjoy each other's company, and nerd out about writing. Absolutely no one is there to judge. 

LG: Could a participant share multiple pieces (if time allows)? And if so, could they share all their pieces at same time or do they have to sign up for a separate time slot?

KV: We're asking folks to limit their selection to no more than 5 minutes. If there's still time after everyone goes, sure, folks can read again. They can just put their name on the list again. 

LG: Should participants be prepared to share content warnings prior to reading their piece(s)?

KV: That's a good idea. I'd prefer if the readings were kept at a PG-13 level or below, anyway, but that's not a rule. It's a best practice for readings (unless you know in advance that the event welcomes strong content) to avoid topics that are likely to traumatize the audience.   

LG: Will this be a continual event, i.e., monthly, quarterly, annually?

KV: If it goes well, sure, we'll have it again! BJ and I talked about possibly having it twice a year. But we'll see how this one goes first.  
LG: Are there any fees required, i.e., entry fee, minimum purchase, etc.?

KV: Nope! No fees, although I have to say that 2 Roots offers some delicious beverages for purchase.  

LG: Is there additional information that should be shared?
KV: After the event, folks are welcome to stay longer and hang out! I turn into a pumpkin around 9 pm, but the wine bar is open until 11 pm.

The International Poetry Reading is Back!

Join UWEC faculty, staff, students, and community members for the 18th annual International Poetry Reading taking place in the Ojibwe Ballroom, located in UW Eau Claire Davies Student Center, on Wednesday, April 10th at 6 pm.

The International Poetry Reading was created 18 years ago by UWEC professors Dr. Audrey Fessler and Dr. Jeff Vahlbusch as a collaboration between the English and Languages departments. After running the event for 10 years, they moved on to different colleges, but the event did not leave with them.

For the past 8 years, UW Eau Claire faculty and staff have been running the event, most notably Dr. Kaishan Kong (UW-Eau Claire Professor of Languages), Josh Bauer (Digital Accessibility Coordinator), and Megan Lim (current student at UW-Eau Claire and event coordinator). 

When asked about the impetus of the event, Josh Bauer answered that the event’s founders, Drs. Jeff Vahlbusch and Audrey Fessler “wanted to have an appreciation of culture and poetry, through the reading of poems in languages other than English…”

The goal for each year is to host multiple languages and dialects under one roof to share the beauty and diversity of languages in a poetry-centered event. Over the years, the International Poetry Reading has regularly hosted 25-30 different readers representing 25-30 unique languages/dialects. Some examples are Greek, Latin, French, German, Chinese, Korean, Morse Code, Tech Code, and many others. This year, the International Poetry Reading will host an all-time high of 30-35 languages/dialects. 

“Without this event,” Dr. Kaishan Kong shares, “I could probably name only 10 other languages in the world…” Yet because of the event, Dr. Kong and all those who attend are treated to a world’s worth of language right in their own backyards.

This event and its goal of sharing culture is made possible by the participation of students, staff, and community members. Over the years, the participation of students and community members has been evenly split, but, excitingly, this year, the participation of foreign exchange students has grown. 

Megan Lim went on to describe how “people will think like, ‘Oh, it’s only college students who probably do this, or like only teenagers, because it's like a university event.’ But we actually had a lot more community members who were like, ‘No, I want to do it. I want to be a part of this. And it was really cool…”

Everyone is welcome to participate—faculty, staff, community members, and even families. The coordinators recalled a time when a mother, who is an immigrant, took her five-year-old daughter on stage, and the daughter read a poem in their first language. 

It’s moments like this, that bring all cultures, languages, and ages together under one roof to share with one another. Don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity and join us on Wednesday April 10th, at 6 pm in the Ojibwe Ballroom and learn, acknowledge, and appreciate the multiple languages and cultures within the Eau Claire community.

 If you’re unable to join in person, click here to join virtually. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the creation of the International Poetry Reading, click this link to read a 2016 Guild interview with Dr. Fessler and Dr. Vahlbusch.

Enjoy a Slice of Pie as you Jive: A Poetry and Pi(e) Sneak Preview

Luke Gentile

On March 14 (or 3.14, if you will) celebrate national Pi Day with poetry and pie. Join Wisconsin poet laureate Nicholas Gulig, former Wisconsin poet laureate Max Garland, and poet and CVWG board member Elan Mccallum in the Riverview Room at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library at 6:30 PM for an evening of poetry and fellowship.

“The caliber of poetry we’ll be featuring is truly some of the best in the state.””

— CVWG director B.J. Hollars

"The caliber of poetry we'll be featuring is truly some of the best in the state,” remarked Chippewa Valley Writers Guild director, B.J. Hollars.  “We are so fortunate to host the current state poet laureate, a former poet laureate, and a rising star."

Poetry and Pi(e) is a way for writers across the state to gather to celebrate their love for poetry, and, to a lesser extent, pie.  Annually, this event is held in various parts of the state.  This is the first time it returns to Eau Claire since 2019.

"We're thrilled to bring Poetry & Pi(e) back to the Chippewa Valley,” Hollars added, “and are especially proud to partner with the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters and L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library on this venture. Shoutout to the Friends of the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library for the pie!"

credit: WASAL

Poetry and Pi(e) is part of a series of literary events occurring throughout the spring. The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters is calling the series Bloom: A Season of Poetry, and it will culminate with a reading from the U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón on May 23. 

Join us on March 14th, 6:30 pm-7:30 pm, to eat a slice of pie and listen to incredible readings by these talented poets.   Register for free here.  

Anyone Can Become a Caretaker, All They Need is a Little Help.

Luke Gentile

For two and a half years, Jim Alf wrote a monthly essay regarding his experience becoming a caretaker for his wife. He did this at the request of his friend, Lisa Wells, who works as a Dementia Care Specialist for the Aging and Disability Resource Center (ADRC) of Eau Claire County and published the essays in the ADRC newsletter. After retiring from the column, Mr. Alf compiled all 26 of his essays into a single book, The Caretaker’s Corner, which was published by his friend Dennis Miller. The book is currently available at The Local Store. I had the privilege to meet with Mr. Alf to talk about his newest book.

The essays in The Caretaker’s Corner are diverse in message and execution. Mr. Alf covers a wide variety of topics in his essays, from little-known information on caretaking strategies to obtaining legal and medical advice. He conveys his messages by writing about his personal experiences and the experiences of others in similar positions and relaying advice he has learned from professionals along the way.

Mr. Alf is not alone in his caretaking. One in nine people ages 65 and older live with Alzheimer's. In 2020, Mr. Alf became unable to take full care of his wife, so, he admitted her into a memory care facility. He struggled with this decision, but was determined to make the right choice for his wife to ensure she got the care she needed.Through the newsletter essays, Mr. Alf passed his experiences long to others who were caregiving.

““What I want people to take away is not only the basic functions of caretaking but to recognize it early on. And to learn when the person they are caring for should go to a facility.” ”

— Jim Alf

“What I want people to take away is not only the basic functions of caretaking but to recognize it early on,” Mr. Alf explains. “And to learn when the person they are caring for should go to a facility.”

Each essay offers a variety of lessons and strategies; however, there were two lessons Mr. Alf highlighted during our conversation. One of which is already in the book, and the other will be added in the second edition of The Caretaker’s Corner which will be released within a week or so. The first lesson is to ensure you don’t do this alone and the second is to have a crisis plan, which is someone you can rely on to perform the task of caretaking when you cannot. The two go hand and hand with each. Throughout Mr. Alf's time as a caretaker, he had a whole group of people whom he could ask for help, including neighbors, family, friends, and caretakers from organizations such as Visiting Angels.

“New caretakers seldom think about that,” Mr. Alf explains. “I wrote one essay, where I tell what happened when I had to be hospitalized and family and friends and everybody else, all of a sudden, had to become caretakers for my wife and had to find a place for her to go for a week. So that crisis plan is extremely important and will be found in the next copy.”

The Caretaker’s Corner is a rich and advice-filled book that will help any new caretaker on their journey. These essays cement Mr. Alf’s message that anyone can become a caretaker, and all they need is a little help from friends, family, and The Caretakers Corner.

Steeped in Realism, with a Supernatural Twist: An Interview with Fortune Falls Author James L. Peters

Luke Gentile

James L. Peters is a Chippewa Valley resident who, throughout his life, kept himself busy by doing a multitude of creative endeavors. He was in a band that performed all over Wisconsin; he designs board games and he has written three novels: Shrugging, Turntable, and his newest novel, Fortune Falls.

Fortune Falls begins with a man driving home after having the best day of his life. He is detoured down a dark road  and to a slot machine that gives him a dark, foreboding message. Soon after, his life will  change forever…

I recently had the chance to sit down with Mr. Peters and learn more about his newest novel, writing style, inspirations, and future plans.

Luke Gentile: The last two novels you’ve written were loosely related to personal experiences. Could the same be said for Fortune Falls?

James Peters: I will say that Fortune Falls is the least relevant to my personal life... That being said, there are definitely elements that are relevant. But this was the furthest extreme I have ever gone. In my other two novels, the main characters are very strong elements of me. Jason is not me. Jason is kind of a jerk for a while. He had some things to deal with, but some of the things that he is facing are things that I, as a human being and as an individual, also face. Regrets in life and that idea of mortality. His milquetoast catholic background is certainly an element of my life as well, and something that he brings up several times and reflects back on. I feel in some ways, Jason is the me if I had not continued to pursue the bohemian lifestyle–music, writing, board games, whatnot– and focused solely on my career instead. In some ways, I see that as what could’ve been.

LG: Did you start off with Jason’s character as a version of  you or did you start writing him, and it took off in that direction?

JP: It’s kind of interesting. I actually started this novel a little over thirteen years ago knowing that I was approaching my forties and wanting to deal with that, and so the basic idea of confronting mortality and the overt symbolism was all there. But … after a couple of chapters, I just didn’t see where it could go. So I just let it sit. After publishing my first two novels and deciding what I was going to work on next, I went back to a lot of my ideas …, then, I looked back at Fortune Falls and immediately reflected on the relatively unique past couple of years we’ve had. 2020, 2021, and it was like, “oh my God, this is what this novel has been waiting for,” and that just took it over right there and I knew exactly where it was going. That being said, … I do not plot out my novels. I’m not plot-driven, I’m character-driven. My characters tell me where the novel is going. I may have sketchy ideas and intentions, but typically I want a theme, and I want a character who is going to have to face something that is … critically important for him to deal with. That’s the impetus for anything that I write, and then a plot develops around that. In this case, I knew the character, I knew the basic theme, … it was almost like an ivy. An ivy can grow on its own but it needs that wall to grab onto and the tendrils to grasp. I didn’t have the “wall” yet. The ivy was growing, but it didn’t have anything to attach to. When those events happen, in these past few years, it was like, “ah there’s the wall, there’s where my ivy is going to grow.” 

 LG: Is Fortune Falls, the town in the novel, based on a town that you’ve been to and or lived in?

JP: In my previous two works, they are heavily based on location. This is more generally representative of … your typical small northern Wisconsin town. Upper-middle-class suburb… I wanted to take a deeper dive into all the major holidays that western civilization experiences but not through an idealized look. Instead, through trauma and through some levels of threat and instability and whatnot. That was another driving force of this. … I knew I wanted to touch on all these holidays and see how they go when life isn’t exactly going perfectly.

LG: Really give it that real-life aspect. 

JP: I had a large number of advanced readers read this and some of them said “As much as they enjoyed it, they almost had a little bit of PTSD reading through it and remembering in depth some of the things they had recently gone through.” Definitely very steeped in realism.

LG: Is the extensive use of imagery a strategy you utilize with all of your novels?

“Symbolism is not there to go ‘Oh, I hid something and now you have to find it,’ symbolism is the framework that an author really has to build upon and add flesh to a story. ”

— James L. Peters

JP: It’s incredibly important to me that, as much as possible, every sentence and every word chosen reinforces a theme, a symbol, an analogy, and yet doesn’t weigh down the novel at all. I’ve been to several book clubs with my previous books, and honestly--nothing against the readers--a lot of people didn’t pick up on the symbolism and the themes and that's fine. Symbolism is not there to go “Oh, I hid something and now you have to find it”, symbolism is the framework that an author really has to build upon and add flesh to a story. I don’t see your skeleton right now, I don’t know what your skeleton looks like but it has been the basis of the framework of who you are, how you move, how you look, how you act. That to me, is what symbolism and analogy are in a novel, they’re hidden but yet they supply the larger framework of any piece of literature. And so typically, when I choose a word, I’m choosing a word because it is somehow referencing a seed I planted early on that I want to develop. A lot of the time when you do that, it’s amazing how much your subconscious takes over and you don’t even realize everything that has come out of there until you write it and you go “Oh wow, okay, I didn’t see that coming until that came down on the page.” And for me, that's part of the joy of writing,–you’re kind of closing your eyes, holding your nose and diving down into the depths of your own subconscious and saying, “Okay let's see what happens. Let’s see what I find out about myself.”

 LG: Could taking a deep dive into yourself be an analogy of the theme/plot of the book?

 JP: Definitely. The character sinks deep before he starts to pull himself up to the surface again. What I will say, I was really concerned when I finished this. I thought, “This is going to be too hard for people.” Because this character is a hard character to deal with, … I had forty-five advanced readers on this and I was really surprised with not only how accepting people were with the character, despite acknowledging the flaws and the difficulty. but also how many people also read this even though this isn’t the kind of story they normally read and were still highly engaged.

LG: Are any characters in Fortune Falls based on people in your life or history?

JP: There’s always inspiration to some degree on actual people, but in this one it’s probably the lightest that it’s ever been in my novels. You need something as a basis when you start writing a character just to get a face and to get an attitude and to get how they’re presenting themselves--the dialogue and whatnot. So certainly, I use that as a seed, but there is really not much else. They are a little bit more supportive of the plot, or I should say, to the development of the main character, rather than them being a reflection of existing people. 

LG: Are you working on anything new, and if so, what can we expect?

JP: Hopefully, it’ll be finished within the next year or two. I just started it, but it’s been an idea that has been mulling around for a long time. Actually, one of the challenges with this one will be the fact that it is kind of the most plot-driven that I’ve ever had to write. And yet I still want it to be primarily character driven. But there is a very clear plot and a very clear mystery.

James L. Peters will be making appearances for book signings and readings from Fortune Falls on Thursday, March 14, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. at The Local Store in Eau Claire, on Thursday, April 4 from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. at the Chippewa Falls Public Library, and on Saturday, April 6, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at Dragon Tale Books in Menomonie.

The Future is Creatives!

McKenna Dutton

Hello fellow readers! My name is McKenna Dutton and I am the creator of the Future Creatives group. I’m a junior at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. I’m a Marketing Major with a Creative Writing Minor and I’m passionate about providing space and time for creative students.

When I first arrived at Eau Claire I was unsure of what I wanted to do.

I was snooping around campus one day during my freshman year and I found myself stumbling on the fourth floor of Centennial. I didn't know why I was drawn there. Call it fate or random dumb luck, but I saw that giant glass building and I just thought “I wonder what’s at the top.”

I found the first elevator I could. I wandered down the maze-like hallways of the fourth floor of Centennial and I found that I was in the English Department. I couldn’t help but feel a strange fuzzy feeling of being at home. I walked down the hallways, and I eventually found the Kate Gill Library. There was a little sign that said “Open to any English Majors or Minors.” Being a fellow business major I worried about possibly being kicked out, but then I thought, “Who’s really going to manage a small library in a random building all that closely.” So I decided to venture in.

There was another student sitting in the Kate Gill Library and I couldn’t help but talk to this fellow compatriot. They said their name was Kat and I asked them about their experience with UWEC. Eventually, I told them that I would love to do something in creative writing, but I didn’t know if I could fully jump in with a major or minor.

All Kat said was “Why not?”

Why not? is exactly my question to you today.

Why not take the time to be creative? Why not make the time to finally work on the book or story of your dreams? Why not create that comic? Why not?  

When I became a Creative Writing Minor, I realized there were opportunities on campus to write. I thought “Why not?” and I applied for these opportunities. I joined the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild and now I’m at the Center of Writing Excellence, but there still wasn’t a place for me to write the way I wanted to. To work on my writing projects. A place to keep me accountable. A place where other creative students like me could get together and collaborate on our creative projects.

“So that’s why I created Future Creatives. A group that can encourage creative students to come together and collaborate.”

— McKenna Dutton, Future Creatives Founder

So that’s why I created Future Creatives. A group that can encourage creative students to come together and collaborate. While the group is starting out, I wanted to focus on working with student writers, and then once the group gets bigger, I would love to invite other student creatives. Like graphic designers, painters, fellow crafters, podcasters, origami swan makers, crocheters, and anyone who cares about creativity.

I’m not saying this is a place to teach creatives more about their craft. Future Creatives is about bringing creatives together to give themselves the space to perfect their craft and hopefully to learn from other creatives as well. A place to ask the question, “Why not?” and go for it anyway.

So come one, come all creatives big and small! Join Future Creatives! Our first meeting is on February 9th from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the Center of Writing Excellence space on the second floor of the McIntyre Library. From there, we’ll continue to meet on Fridays from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. at the McIntyre Library on the UW-EC campus.

Searching for "The Soul of the Outdoors": Q&A with David Greschner on His Debut Book

Dan Lyksett

Rice Lake writer Dave Greschner, who recently introduced his acclaimed first book, Soul of the Outdoors, will host a book talk on Thursday, Feb. 1, at 6:15 p.m. at Dotters Books, 307 S. Barstow St., Eau Claire.

Soul of the Outdoors is a new addition to The Back Home Series published by UW-Stevens Point’s Cornerstone Press and is a collection of Greschner’s updated columns from his newspaper career and newer work.

Greschner agreed to answer a few questions in advance of his reading.

 Dan Lyksett: You are writing about land and all it contains that you’ve been traversing since childhood. How does that lifetime perspective impact what you discover and reflect on?

David Greschner

David Greschner: There has come over the years a realization of how the land I grew up on and the places I have enjoyed since led to my appreciation of nature and wildlife. Discoveries of childhood—squirrel nests, pollywog eggs, a honey bee hive in winter—fuel an intense fire in me to enjoy such discoveries again, now with more knowledge of what I’m seeing and experiencing while revisiting those carefree days. I like to think of the land as a friend, a sanctuary, I can visit for peace of mind, and a place where nature and wildlife flourish if we are stewards of the land.

 DL: Some of your essays deal with the experience of performing specific tasks, like cutting firewood, but sometimes you go into nature to just “practice seeing.” Do you notice a difference between the two in what you end up putting on paper?

“There are times I go outside, to the woods or to the water, to simply ‘see,’ with no expectation of what I’m going to see or experience. It’s like, ‘Surprise me!’”

— David Greschner

DG: No, I don’t see a difference, because I never know where the next story may surface. There are times I go outside, to the woods or to the water, to simply “see,” with no expectation of what I’m going to see or experience. It’s like, “Surprise me!” But it’s really no different than when I’m cutting firewood, mending a fence, removing buckthorn, etc. I keep my eyes open, my hopes expectant. My tasks are not urgent, and so they are often pleasantly interrupted by the discovery of an orb weaver spider’s web, the den of a fox or badger, or colorful hepatica leaves beneath the snow in the dead of winter.

 DL: You refer to a diverse collection of writers and thinkers throughout the book, ranging from Emily Dickenson to Jackson Browne. If you could share a hot chocolate around a campfire with any one of them, who would it be and why?

DL: The proper answer from the names that show up in the book would be Annie Dillard. It was her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, that has influenced how I look at nature and how I write about it. However, I’m going to go with Jackson Browne for the campfire (and perhaps he would play a song or two!). Readers and reviewers refer to “lyrical poetry” in my writings. I do not work at the poetry that crops up, instead, I think it’s something that is in my subconscious from years of enjoying music and studying song verses. I think that the most influential poets of my lifetime have been songwriters, from Browne to Kristofferson, Dylan to Willie. I always hear descriptive song verses going through my mind, such as from the Beach Boys—I hear the sound of a gentle word on the wind that lifts her perfume through the air—or Al Stewart—She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a water color in the rain. These songs aren’t about nature, but the words have the flow and description all writers strive for. Browne says his songwriting has to be about the listener because the song’s details, even if about his experiences, are somewhat universal. Of his song “These Days,” he talks about the gravity the song can hold. I would hope my writing has a measure of gravity for the reader.

DL: How much of where your essays lead are thoughts that occur to you in the moment of experience as opposed to what you discover later while writing?

DG: It comes from both the moment and later when putting thoughts on paper. My writing method, even in my newspaper days, has normally been to let the story simmer a bit in my thoughts. I often take notes when I’m outdoors, but not always. What is constant is that the thoughts, sentences, and direction of the story are forming mentally in the “moment of experience.” I find that what has been etched in my mind, sometimes subconsciously, on a hike or other outdoors activity, resurfaces later proportionate to the strength of that imprint on my emotions.

 DL: You mention some traditional “outdoor writer” topics like hunting and fishing but never in the context of a harvest or a how-to. Is that intentional or just your natural bent? Does that relate to the title, “Soul of the Outdoors?”

“...at this point in my life, even while hunting, I will often choose not to pursue or kill, but simply watch. Perhaps ‘soul,’ in part, derives from how an outdoors experience plays out, including in hunting, on an emotional, somewhat spiritual, basis.  ”

— David Greschner

DG: It is rather intentional as I respect the readers who are not hunters and may have strong feelings regarding that. But I don’t hide the fact that I do hunt, and believe in the biology of hunting while at the same time having a reverence for all wildlife. I feel no need to go into the details of the outcome of the hunt. Instead, I prefer to describe what I and other hunters experience in nature when we spend hour after quiet hour in the woodlands and fields. Further, at this point in my life, even while hunting, I will often choose not to pursue or kill, but simply watch. Perhaps “soul,” in part, derives from how an outdoors experience plays out, including in hunting, on an emotional, somewhat spiritual, basis.     

DL: You shy away from anthropomorphizing the critters you encounter, but you don’t shy away from trying to consider what they may be perceiving at the time. Is it difficult to balance those two approaches?

 DG: Yes, I do shy away from assigning human traits and intentions to animals, mostly for the animal’s sake because I don’t want to burden them with something that may seem to subtract from their innocence and natural instincts. When I walked up on a deer in the wild this summer, it appeared calm and showed little fear of me. I didn’t take this as a human trait of the deer being a friendly animal wanting to meet me. I think that the deer somehow knew I meant no harm, and that we just happened to be sharing the same trail. I didn’t try to determine what human trait the deer was displaying because it was a wild animal, no matter what. Instead I wondered how the deer perceived me.

DL: The book’s illustrations look like exquisite woodcuts but are derived from your own photographs. What was the process and where did the idea come from?

DG: I did not want the books to have photos, per se, but instead black and white graphics of a line art nature. I enjoy photography, and have always veered to the power of black and white photos, going back to my darkroom days. For the book, I found photos—most of them color photos—that connected with the writings, many of them actually taken when I was experiencing what I wrote about. I selected the photos that would lend themselves to black and white—those that had plenty of blank spots and were not “busy”—and removed the color. At that point I added contrast and posterization to get the black and white graphic I wanted. All photos in the book are mine, except for the “author photos,” which my wife, Cathy, took, and the photo leading off the first chapter, of me sitting by a snowman with a country school in the background. Incredibly, that photo was taken by my mother, with a box camera in 1957.

DL: What do you hope readers take away from your book?

DG: I’d like to think that readers will think about how our interaction with nature and our experiences outdoors have a positive effect on our daily emotions and well-being; nature can awe and calm at the same. Several readers have said the book has inspired them to make a conscious effort to become more involved with the outdoors, as in hiking or simply something like birdwatching. For those who have physical limitations, I hope the book provides a vehicle to tag along with me on the experiences I have and describe—I hear this “tag along” comment often. My hope is that some of the book’s essays reveals and ponders nature’s wonders and mysteries, while providing a variety of stories, including about rural life, that is entertaining and resonates with many readers’ own experiences.

Gen Z Might Just Save Reading As We Know It

Laura Carew

I’ve had a book under my arm since I could walk. I still swear that my sister taught me to read, and that my mother is the reason my heart skips a beat when I walk past a bookstore. I never noticed how lonely the act of reading could be until I got to high school. English class was the least sought after, and classmates opted to watch a film adaptation rather than read the book itself. As I made my way through college, the landscape of reading changed again. People who once scoffed at my admiration for literature now host a library within their bedrooms. Other avid readers have lost their passion for cracking open a book. I look around and realize that as a nation, we’re witnessing a reading renaissance—now it’s up to us to redefine what reading truly means.

Over the last ten years, the perpetual growth of social media platforms has fundamentally changed the ways we interact with books. Within spaces like YouTube and TikTok, bookish “corners” exist on the internet for readers to congregate and find community amongst fellow readers, no matter where they may be across the planet.

While BookTube (YouTube’s corner for books) truly began in 2013 and continues to flourish today, BookTok (TikTok’s answer for literary content) has grown exponentially since the pandemic of 2020, giving us the large faction of readers on TikTok that continues to get larger, one video at a time.

Centered around creating a space for readers to share their favorite books, praise their favorite authors, or find recommendations for new books, BookTok offers a wide range of content to enjoy.

This phenomenon has even come home to the Chippewa Valley, felt especially by Margaret Leonard, co-founder and owner of Dotters Books.

“I think that people have genuinely found community on social media. I’m so mystified by it, but I think it’s really genuine for some people to go online and talk about books that way. I want to believe that this is the hopeful way forward.”

— Margaret Leonard

“I think that people have genuinely found community on social media,” she says. “I’m so mystified by it, but I think it’s really genuine for some people to go online and talk about books that way. I want to believe that this is the hopeful way forward.”

The rise of literary social media began in the COVID-19 era. As libraries and bookstores shuttered their doors, millions of people found ways to combat cabin fever and isolation through alternative ways to enjoy reading.

For several years following a peak of 778 million print books sold in 2008, US book sales don’t see a significant increase again until 2020, growing once more to 843 million copies sold in 2021, per this Words Rated article. With BookTok emerging during the height of the pandemic, readership in the US grew exponentially, and has remained at staggering heights.

As the way we engage with books has changed, so, too, has the identity attached to it. In the 21st century, reading looks more different than ever.  

Leonie (who goes by The Book Leo) is a prominent BookTuber and TikTok enthusiast who took it upon herself in a video essay to discuss her experience on BookTok and how she sees this online forum as both a benefit and hindrance to readership.

In her video, she opens up a wider discussion about the intersection of a hobby that requires little to no internet use, and a platform that fundamentally lives and breathes in technology.

“Finding people who identify as readers, or who openly say that they read, is more difficult than finding people who, say, watch movies.”

— Leonie (The Book Leo)

“Finding people who identify as readers, or who openly say that they read, is more difficult than finding people who, say, watch movies,” Leonie shares. “An online community like BookTok offers this sense of belonging.”

The difficulty of finding friendships as a reader is something that many young people have faced during the 21st century with the rise of technology, where hobbies like video games and movie-watching have perhaps overtaken reading.

Not only is reading a traditionally solitary activity, but it attracts predominantly introverted individuals. When readers want to share their love for a book they’ve just read, who can they talk to, if no one in their physical environment also identifies as a reader? Where can they go?

BookTok fills this void for so many readers. With millions of videos tagged #BookTok—some from right here in Eau Claire—people can find their corner of the internet where readers of all authors and genres coexist, creating a unified front within a solitary hobby, unlike anything we’ve seen before.

While finding a sense of belonging is undoubtedly a great benefit of BookTok, we cannot ignore the potential pitfalls that involve readership entering the social media arena.  

Barry Pierce—a former BookTuber himself—wrote an article for GQ that reflected on the uses of BookTok, ultimately calling it a “shallow world,” and asking if, given the time it takes to curate their videos, “any [BookTok creators] have the time to read.”

Pierce shares a valid criticism. Many videos under the hashtag #BookTok feature beautiful bookshelves sprawling massive rooms, and colorful spines peer out for the viewer to feast their eyes upon. An alarming number of videos will also feature the creator admitting that they haven’t actually read most of the books on their shelves—some, none at all.

The romanticization of reading has existed for decades. But Pierce poses an important question to young readers: has owning books, thus sounding more “intellectual” than one’s peers, overcome the appeal of actually reading?

Has identifying as a reader turned into a lifestyle aesthetic rather than a hobby for people to enjoy? Dotter’s Margaret Leonard feels similarly.

“Books are beautiful, and they’re getting more and more beautiful,” she says. “If we think that that’s not because of social media, we’re wrong. There’s definitely a certain level of aesthetic that’s necessary to [BookTok].”

“As much as we hear the age-old rule of not judging a book by its cover, we can’t help it.”

— Laura Carew

As much as we hear the age-old rule of not judging a book by its cover, we can’t help it. Book covers are the first thing that engage a potential reader, so it makes perfect sense that content creators on BookTok attach to that engagement by sharing the gorgeous covers of books they own, whether they’ve read them or not.

This effect is a direct result of United States consumerism, which includes a rise in materialism surrounding books. As a reader, I’ve got plenty of books on my shelf that I haven’t read yet. But as countless videos show on BookTok, some readers have shelves boasting hundreds of unread books. So what’s the point of having them? Is it a trophy case? A boast of wealth?

“As a bookseller,” Leonard continues, “there’s a real disconnect there. Am I selling books to people who want to take pretty pictures of them? Or am I selling books to people who want to read them and learn?”

Countless debates have occurred over the last fifteen years that denote reading as a “dying art,” but what’s getting in our way from celebrating an unmistakable uptick in book sales and readership nationwide? And who’s leading the charge? The 25-and-under demographic, better known as Gen Z.

 As a member of Gen Z myself, I have long witnessed my peers lose their passion for reading, one new technological advance at a time. It was mystifying as a kid who’d grown up on books. But now, we are witnessing the intersection of two contradicting entities—literature and the online world.

 Due to the exposure that books get through social media, BookTok has become a necessary outlet for recommending contemporary titles by diverse voices, working to subvert the white-dominant culture of the publishing world.

 “[The goal and intention of Dotters] was to highlight traditionally marginalized voices,” Leonard says. “I feel like so often people are left out of those conversations [who] shouldn’t be. As a reader, I want to hear from the people who haven’t been amplified. I want to go outside my own experience.”

 Thanks to the charming shop that brims with books of the popular and unheard-of variety, Dotters has been a space for readers to explore outside their own lived experiences since 2018, when the shop opened at its first location on Hogeboom Avenue.

 With books like these at young readers’ disposal in Eau Claire, it’s not hard to see how Gen Z is at the front of this changing readership culture. Books of all kinds are becoming more and more accessible thanks to places like Dotters and social media, inspiring young people all over the country—and right here at home—to crack open a book again.

 “Through [the lockdown in 2020] social media was our sole way to communicate with people,” Leonard reflects. “I do think that [the pandemic] created this space for people to read and spend time with books in a way that they hadn’t been able to before…we’re seeing people prioritize keeping that as part of their world now.”

 Leonard’s sentiment is proven over and over with each recent year of record-setting book sales. Through social media, reading has come upon a brand new wave of popularity, proving that it is anything but a dying art.  

It might feel counterintuitive that technology so closely aligns with the modern reader. But the world is always evolving, as is our relationship with literature. A love for reading among young people is returning in droves, so why criticize how someone chooses to enjoy an age-old hobby? Nothing can whisk readers away from their reality quite like a book. With our phones in our left hands and a book in our right, Gen Z is saving—and redefining—literature as we know it.

Finding Joy This Holiday Season: A Sneak Peek of Sound & Stories presents, “Joy To The Word”

Chaya Gritton

Have you ever wanted to attend an event that brings music and storytelling together? Well, then look no further! The Chippewa Writers Guild is hosting a fun-filled event called “Joy to the Word” at the Pablo Center, on December 14th, at 7PM.  The event features storytellers John Hildebrand, Elan Mccallum, Bonni Knight, Dalton Hessel, and is hosted by Chippewa Valley Writers Guild director, B.J. Hollars. “Joy to the Word is one of our favorite events of the year,” Hollars says.  “Few things bring people together more than music and stories in a beautiful venue during the holiday season.”

Indeed, “Joy to the Word” has become an annual tradition, a chance for regional storytellers to share their best holiday stories alongside music by the U.K.E Klub—a talented group of singers and ukulele players who’ve brought their joyful music to the event for years. December’s the perfect time to cozy up inside with this event that staves off the cold and brings with it a bit of winter cheer. Be sure to snag your tickets here!

Keep reading to learn about the amazing writers participating in the event.

John Hildebrand

John Hildebrand is the author of several books, most recently “Long Way Round: Through the Heartland By River” and “The Heart of Things: A Midwestern Almanac”. He also has articles and essays that have appeared in Harper’s magazine, Audubon, Sports Illustrated, Outside, The Best American Sports Writing- 1999, and The Missouri Review. Not only is he an established writer, but he has been awarded a Minnesota Book Award, a Banta Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, a Bush Fellowship, a Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship, and a Friends of American Libraries Award. In this event, he’ll be sharing a reading from his spectacular book The Heart of Things. Be sure to check to check it out!

Bonni Knight

            Bonni Knight’s work has been featured in Volume One, the Volume One Podcast series, Snapshots: Eau Claire Life in Pictures, Stories and Sounds, the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, as well as in appearance at The Lakely, the Lazy Monk, and the V1 Gallery. When she’s not storytelling, she’s also a speech coach and a retired French teacher. The story she will be sharing is called “No Room at The Inn”, an intriguing tale about how a blizzard brings total strangers together.  A longtime fan of the Sound & Stories series, Bonnie remarks, “From a storyteller's perspective, it's an honor to have an opportunity to share my stories with people.  From an audience member's point of view, it's so great to see the work my neighbors are doing with the craft of storytelling.”

Elan Mccallum

            If you’re a fan of David Bowie, you’ll really enjoy the story Elan Mccallum has prepared to tell at the event! She brings us into her past, illustrating a special father-daughter connection that started with a David Bowie CD at Christmas. Elan Mccallum is a Filipina-American writer whose work has been published in Barstow & Grand. She has also collaborated with E Dance Company and Dotters Books, and she has read her work in the Chippewa Valley's Sound and Stories Series, the Snapshot Series, the River Prairie Cultural Festival, and the River Prairie Festival Celebration of Art.

Dalton Hessel

Dalton Hessel is a second-grade teacher in Hayward, Wisconsin. He graduated from UWEC in the winter of 2018. You might recognize him as the iconic Buddy the Elf, who appeared on campus during finals week every year. When he’s not teaching, he loves staying busy with photography, videography, podcasting and writing. He has a company called The Northern Nerd and hosts various community events throughout the year. If you ever find yourself in the Hayward area, he’s probably walking the streets or covering an event. Some joyful news is that he and his wife welcomed their first child, Amelia, into the world this year and he's been enjoying dad life. If you want to no more about his life as Buddy the Elf, be sure to check out the event!

B.J Hollars

Finally, as part of his hosting duties, B.J Hollars will also share a story about the great Halloween blizzard of 1991! B.J. Hollars is the author of several books, including Year of Plenty and Wisconsin for Kennedy, both forthcoming this spring. He is a writer, professor, and a burgeoning documentarian. He is the director of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild and founder of the Midwest Artist Academy. 

Telling Our Region's Stories--Together

Since 2016, the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild has provided robust programming for writers and literary lovers throughout the Midwest.  We’ve hosted over 25 writers' retreats, a hundred free craft talks, a few dozen Sound & Stories events, supported the publication of 7 issues of our literary magazine Barstow & Grand, mentored over 30 college interns, wrote and co-produced a pair of radio dramas, started the Writers’ Note podcast, founded Wisconsin’s Hope Is The Thing Covid-19 writing project, published hundreds of writers on our website, and so much more.  In all, we’re proud to have provided free and low-cost programming to hundreds—if not 1000s!—of writers throughout the region.

Two weeks ago, we had the pleasure of hosting a virtual talk with Chloé Cooper Jones (a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist for memoir writing), last week we released the latest issue of Barstow & Grand (congrats to editor Eric Rasmussen and the editorial team!), in a few weeks we’ll perform our annual Joy to the Word event (featuring music from The UKE Klub!) at Pablo Center at the Confluence, and in January, we’re hosting a winter writer’s retreat featuring young adult author Nicole Kronzer at The Oxbow Hotel. 

“Your generosity ensures that writers of all economic incomes can continue to work toward telling our region’s stories.  ”

— BJ Hollars

How do we manage to offer such inclusive programming at little to no cost to members?  The answer is twofold.  First, thanks to our incredible partners, including L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, UW-Eau Claire Foundation, Pablo Center at the Confluence, The Oxbow Hotel, and Forage.  But the second reason for our success all comes down to you.  Your generosity ensures that writers of all economic incomes can continue to work toward telling our region's stories. 

Here in the Chippewa Valley, it’s easy to forget how fortunate we are when it comes to the literary arts.  We are home to the illustrious Chippewa Valley Book Festival (of which we are a sponsor), regular library programming, and of course, the Guild itself.  But even beyond our region, our literary community is well known.  At the state level, the CVWG is a proud sponsor and supporter of the Wisconsin Writers Association and the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission.  Over the past seven years, we’ve helped put the Chippewa Valley on the literary map.  And with your support, we can continue the good work ahead.

Please continue donating at the amount that’s right for you.

Be inspired, inspire others, 

B.J. Hollars  

Highlighting Literary Wonders: A Sneak Peek into Chloé Cooper Jones’s Easy Beauty

credit: Matty Davis

Chaya Gritton

Of all the books out there, memoirs impress me most. They have the ability to grab you by the shirt and pull you into their world. Chloé Cooper Jones is a writer who does just that with her debut book Easy Beauty. The first line of her book captivates you instantly,: “I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living.” I was barely a sentence deep, but I was hooked. Easy Beauty explores growing up with a disability in a world with unrealistic beauty standards and one where things that she has experienced are taboo to talk about. However, she subverts these myths in her memoir. She recounts how she’s navigated the world with a disability in the midst of toxic beauty standards. 

The book has received rave reviews, including from the author of Call Me By Your Name, André Aciman. "Easy Beauty  is bold, honest, and superbly well-written,” Aciman wrote.  “Chloé Cooper Jones is ruthless in probing our weakest and darkest areas, and does so with grace, humor, and ultimately, with something one seldom finds: kindness and humanity". It’s hard not to be mesmerized by her book.  

In support of her memoir, Cooper Jones was the recipient of two grants, the 2020 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and the 2021 Howard Foundation Grant.  Beyond these accolades, Cooper Jones has also published notable works including a piece titled "Fearing For His Life", which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for freelance reporting. In the article, she wrote about the person who recorded Eric Garner’s death, Ramsey Orta. Garner was killed by the NYPD and the Orta was the person who witnessed his friend get killed by the police and exposed the truth. Jones highlighted his story and helped spread his voice, and not letting Garner be forgotten.  Additionally, she’s also a contributing writer to the New York Times.  

If you want to learn more about writing a memoir from Jones and get more insight into her memoir Easy Beauty, be sure to check out our virtual event Thursday, November 9th, at 6 pm. You can register on the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild website here. 

Writer Spotlight: Christy Wopat

credit: Christa Bruhn

Chaya Gritton

For the past 75 years, the Wisconsin Writers Association (WWA) has diligently supported writers and authors throughout the state. And this year, it’s honoring one of its own.  Christy Wopat—WWA’s event committee chair, an elementary school teacher, as well as the author of the award-winning book Almost a Mother: Love, Loss, and Finding Your People When Your Baby Dies, among others—was recently awarded the prestigious Fidelia Van Antwerp Award for Outstanding Service.  Over the past 75 years, this award has only been awarded a handful of times—making it all the more special for Christy.  

Following the conclusion of the WWA’s Fall Conference, where Christy received the award, I was able to have a chat with her over the phone to learn more about the work she does for the state’s writing community.  

Chaya Gritton: Can you describe what the Fidelia Van Antwerp Award for Outstanding Service is?  

Christy Wopat: Well, I didn’t even know it existed until a few weeks ago. But basically, Fidelia Van Antwerp was the very first president of the WWA. The WWA just celebrated their seventy-fifth anniversary this year and for the past three years, I’ve been the chair of the events committee for WWA. Barry [Wightman], the current president of WWA, put me in charge of planning this giant conference to celebrate the anniversary. In addition, I started during COVID, and I got our events switched to online, where we did Zoom events and conferences. The board really wanted to recognize me for all the work I did the last three really strange years, plus this conference. 

CG: It sounds like you did a lot of event planning.  Can you go into a little more detail on the type of events that you would normally help plan?  

CW: In June of 2020, so right in the thick of the pandemic, I was home. I couldn’t do anything or go anywhere. I went to an open mic on Zoom for WWA, and they said, ‘Hey if anybody wants to volunteer, reach out’. I did and Barry Wightman, the president, called me and said, ‘How do you want to help?’ I said, ‘Well I can tell you the things I’m good at. I’m a teacher and I can run a committee.’ He said they really need an events committee because they only put one event on a year, and they wanted more... Ever since then, practically every single month, we’ve had some sort of Zoom event for our members that’s free of charge. It’s usually on the craft of writing, but sometimes it’s an open mic and sometimes it’s just a social. We’ve even had some events on the business of writing. It’s exciting because we’ve seen our membership grow a lot because of those events, and now we’re doing critique groups and a lot of other new things that will help grow membership even more.   

CG: Can you tell me a little about yourself outside of volunteering at WWA?  

CW: Sure, I’m an elementary school teacher and I teach fourth grade. I have a husband and two kids, and I live in Holmen Wisconsin. I’m a writer, I like to blog, and I have three books out. Like most writers I love to read, I love to write, and I love to buy books even though I have way more at my house than I could ever read... One of the things that I love about my whole hobby of writing is the community. That’s why I love WWA. There are groups out there that really want writers to feel like they belong and that they are not at all exclusive. They are just so welcoming. Chippewa Valley Writers Guild is like that, WWA is like that. Even when I was just first starting to write, I still felt like I was a part of it and accepted.  

CG: What are your goals for the future with writing and the WWA?  

CW: With writing I am trying to break into the children’s literature world, but my book has been on submission for a while now and hasn’t sold. My goal is to finally get something that sells. My other books are through an indie publisher, and that was a great experience. But with children’s literature, it’s tougher to get books into people’s hands because kids can’t buy them themselves...  For WWA I tried to retire from the events committee, but I have a feeling that I’m being sucked right back in. Last weekend after the conference I just felt this huge sense of accomplishment thinking about all the writers that attended.   

For more on Christy and her work, check out her website.    

750 Words: How My Daily Writing Goal Led Me To My Novel

Grace Wojkiewicz-Wielgus

I remember hearing that writing is a like muscle. I always took that to mean that, like strengthening your body, you need to keep working on your writing for it to improve. The more I thought about it, the more questions I had. Maybe the more you write, the easier it gets? If I don’t use it, will I lose it? Will there come a time where my writing will come to a stop? Do I have a timeline? For years, I worried. Even with that fear haunting my thoughts around writing, the motivation that I’d hoped to stumble upon had so often left me wanting, adding to the cyclical fear that I was going to lose something I wasn’t sure I’d ever had in the first place.

 After graduating from UW-Eau Claire, I told myself now was the time to continue the novel I had swirling around my brain. Shortly after I started working my first full-time job, and I felt like I couldn’t spare the time. A few months later I was lucky to unplug and disconnect at the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild’s The Priory Writers Retreat, where, surrounded by so many friendly faces, I found time to continue what I had started. I had set a goal to write for ten minutes a day. Unfortunately, that only lasted a few weeks. I stopped writing again.

 A few months later, my boyfriend and I made the decision to move from Eau Claire to Illinois, to help him pursue a different career. I quit my job and gave myself time to figure out what my next steps should be. After taking some time to visit our families back in Wisconsin and then beginning to apply for jobs but having no luck, it felt like nothing was sticking. My boyfriend, and only friend in this new town, was working twelve-hour days, so I was often home alone, cycling between job applications, Netflix, and reading. I felt isolated and lost.

 Finally, I hit my breaking point. I wish I could remember what specifically motivated me that day, but I only remember the emotions behind it. If I couldn’t prioritize my writing at that point, when was I going to be able to? I started to do research into different writing methods that had worked for others and stumbled across the website 750Words. It was a place to log in and write 750 words daily, which they claim equals out to about three pages. I remember thinking, there’s no way I can write that much every single day? As someone who wasn’t writing, how was I supposed to commit to that? I researched more but couldn’t find anything that resonated with me like that did. I signed up and wrote my first entry.

“I started off journaling. I wrote about finding the website, how I was feeling, everything. It took some time, but the 750 words came. I was surprised at how much I wanted to keep going.”

— Grace Wojkiewicz-Wielgus

 I started off journaling. I wrote about finding the website, how I was feeling, everything. It took some time, but the 750 words came. I was surprised at how much I wanted to keep going. There was less pressure because once midnight hit, the page was locked, so I couldn’t go in and change what I had written. I wish I could say that I immediately picked up the habit, but I had a few misses in the first few weeks. My streak would go away, and I would feel defeated at starting over. Still, I was determined to make a new habit that was purely for what I love. I tried again, over and over. Sure, I may have needed to switch the time zone to Hawaiian time to work with my night owl tendencies of writing past midnight, and some days I just recited what I did during the day like a list, but I kept going. I ranted about my life, I mentioned politics, I cursed, I planned lofty goals that haven’t happened and probably never will. On especially hard days, I prefaced my entry by saying I was going to write without stopping and anything that came out was staying.

 But I kept going.

 A few weeks ago, I hit a full year of daily writing. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s something I’ve heard many times before but have struggled to take to heart. A lot of days, after writing my 750 words, I’ve felt inspired to write more. I truly believe that it has gotten easier to convince myself to carve out time. The thing I don’t hear talked about often enough is that it isn’t always that easy. There are times I itch to start writing because I have so much to say, but there are also entries where I’m falling asleep at my keyboard, chicken-pecking away just to get to the count. Since picking up the habit, I’ve also pushed myself to also use NaNoWriMo to write the novel I’ve always wanted, as well as other pieces. I don’t think any of that could’ve been possible if I didn’t prove to myself that I can take that time each day.

It doesn’t always feel easy, but it feels easier most days. And that’s enough to keep me going.