How some of the festival participants might interpret the theme can only excite the anticipation of festival audiences.
Barry, for example, is such a force of nature -- cartoonist, painter, writer, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher, creator of Ernie Pook's Comeek and such books as Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel, The Good Times Are Killing Me and this year's What It Is -- that trying to predict how she might interpret "Changing Places" would be like trying to roll snake eyes with a pair of dodecahedron dice.
Perhaps best known as the author of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret and other novels for teens, Blume is also the author of best-selling novels for adults, including Wifey, Smart Women and Summer Sisters. The American Library Association has bestowed upon her its Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the National Book Foundation its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. The most recent addition to her oeuvre, Going, Going, Gone! with the Pain & the Great One, was published last month and is the third in a four-volume collaboration with New Yorker cartoonist James Stevenson.
The host and executive producer of the award-winning independent syndicated radio news program Democracy Now!, Goodman and two of the show's producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, were in the headlines early this week when they were arrested while covering demonstrations outside the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. All three were later released, though Goodman is facing obstruction charges, and felony riot charges were pending against her colleagues. Goodman is also a syndicated social-justice columnist for King Features and co-author with her brother David of best-sellers including The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media That Love Them and this year's Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times.
Orr's sense of "Changing Places" will likely touch on the environment: The author of five books -- including Ecological Literacy and The Nature of Design, he is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College in Ohio.
Author of the best-selling memoirs Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time and Truck: A Love Story, Perry is a master of the humorist's craft -- skilled at composing a passage that builds to a laugh-out-loud moment, but restraining himself from ruining it with too much topspin. The resulting narratives leave ample room for poignant insights into the human condition, as well as comic relief.
The titles of two of Robinson's three novels suggest that her perspective on "Changing Places" may prove to be domestic. Housekeeping, her 1980 debut novel, won a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Her 2004 novel, Gilead, added both a fiction Pulitzer and a National Book Critics Circle Award to her trophy case. Home, her third novel, is to be published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
This year's Wisconsin Book Festival begins on Wednesday, October 15 and runs through Sunday, October 19.