One thing about book festivals. They adapt to virtual more easily than some events. It’s better to see a work of art, a brush stroke, a color, in person. Concerts and theater and ballet benefit from the immediacy. But books already exist primarily on the printed page — and while it’s nice to experience an author standing a couple yards away, it’s not as crucial. And last year’s Wisconsin Book Festival benefited from that.
“We did about 100 virtual events from April 2020 to May 2021, and they were really well attended,” says Wisconsin Book Festival director Conor Moran. “Attendance for stand-alone events was up from in-person, and also for the fall celebration, attendance was up, so we felt really good about what we were able to offer.”
Moreover, there were virtual events “that would not have come together as an in-person event. People like Salman Rushdie, who might not have made the trip to Madison, were able to do virtual events and that will be true this fall as well.”
This year’s fest is again an artful blend of virtual events and live readings. The Wisconsin Book Festival’s Fall Celebration will run Oct. 21-24, with virtual events on Oct. 21-22 and in-person events clustered on Oct. 23 at two Madison locations: the Central Library, 201 W. Mifflin St., and the Discovery Building, 330 N. Orchard St.
Most authors appearing in-person on Oct. 23 are Wisconsin or Midwest-based. “Saturday is truly a day that features great authors with Wisconsin connections, people who live here, people who have lived here,” Moran says. “That is one of the ways we were able to safely offer in-person events, [by focusing on] people who are connected with the community and able to get here without taking a long plane flight.”
Moran notes that with virtual events and fewer overlapping live events, it’s easier for more persons to take in more of the events; in the traditional configuration, with multiple sessions scheduled at the same time, it was very much a game of pick-and-choose.
The plenary event on Oct. 24, held in conjunction with the Wisconsin Science Festival, will feature popular science writer Mary Roach, discussing her latest, Fuzz, which centers on what happens when animals break the law.
More virtual events will be taking place throughout the fall, and there may be one or two more in-person events with authors who can make it here safely and without needing to fly.
This year’s festival clearly has eyes trained on both current events and diversity. The first book in the Fall Celebration is, appropriately enough, Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health by Dr. Leana Wen. Wen explains “how public health services work and what it is like to be a doctor on the front lines,” says Moran. “There are any number of pandemic books we could have started with, and I think this is a good way [to do it] without it being dark and dour.”
Moran acknowledges that planning for virtual and live events adds “a whole extra process,” but he says both formats are important to the audience. “Things are going very well coming out of last year,” says Moran. “We have a good relationship with both the audience and publishers. And we’re excited to return to in-person events here in the fall. People are excited about it, and I feel good about that.”
Heidi-Müller
Education for Democracy: Renewing the Wisconsin Idea, by Chad Alan Goldberg
Oct. 23, 10:30 a.m., Central Library room 302
In this collection, Goldberg, a professor of sociology at UW-Madison, reconsiders “The Wisconsin Idea” — the notion that the knowledge and culture of a great state university should not be hoarded there but taken out to the community. It’s a concept that strengthens democracy. Golderg has edited essays that unearth the history of the concept, underline the value of education in the humanities, and argue for greater inclusion of marginalized groups in the state.
James-Bartelt
Shoulder Season, by Christina Clancy
Oct. 23, noon, Central Library room 301
Not only is Clancy from Milwaukee, she now lives in Madison and has written a novel centered in Lake Geneva — a Wisconsin trifecta. Set in East Troy and at the fabled Playboy resort that operated in Lake Geneva from 1968-1982 (now the Grand Geneva Resort), Clancy’s second novel explores the life of Sherri, a small town girl turned Playboy Bunny. For Sherri it’s a ticket out of a predictable life — “Besides, now that she knew she was pretty enough to be a Bunny, she couldn’t unknow it. It was confirmation that despite the teasing she’d endured throughout high school, she possessed all the physical qualities people found appealing.” While there is sexism, Clancy also treats the Bunnies with dignity — she researched the book by interviewing former Playboy employees, especially “Bunny Jojo.” A look into a vanished world that many don’t realize existed in southern Wisconsin.
MariaEsquinca
Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, by Jaquira Díaz
Oct. 23, 3 p.m. Central Library room 301
Díaz, an alum of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and a former visiting assistant professor at UW-Madison’s master’s degree program in creative writing, has turned in a powerful debut memoir which also received a Whiting Award for emerging writers in 2020. Ordinary Girls begins in Puerto Rico in 1985. Díaz blends English and Spanish with ease, creating an atmosphere where prose also effortlessly becomes poetry even when describing hardships and heartache. But there is also progress: “I considered my life. I’d come all this way. I’d left my husband, my house, my job. My dogs. I’d left my whole life. I looked around the table one more time. What the fuck was ‘Technical Communication’ anyway? I put an X next to Creative Writing. And then circled it, twice, just to make sure there was no confusion. My whole life, I’d always known. But the x, the two circles, they made it feel real. ...And I would do whatever I had to do, but I would be a writer.”
Mats Rudels
Shape, by Jordan Ellenberg
Oct. 23, 3 p.m., Discovery Building, DeLuca Forum
One of the UW-Madison’s stars — from the math department no less — is a great popularizer of that generally unpopular subject. He follows his How Not to Be Wrong with Shape, a book about his field of specialization, geometry. Although his publisher categorizes it as “philosophy,” Ellenberg is not one to get bogged down in genre distinctions. He takes the reader from our crucial dependence on geometry (“Geometry is still there when the rest of our reasoning mind is stripped away”) all the way to its importance to our democracy. It may well be one of those rare books that can change how you look at the world.
Jen Siska
Fuzz, by Mary Roach
Oct. 24, 11 a.m., Crowdcast
Mary Roach occupies that very of-the-moment niche of “there’s this really weird thing you wouldn’t think would be interesting but is actually fascinating” along with writers like Malcolm Gladwell and Jordan Ellenberg. She has previously documented the “curious lives of human cadavers” in Stiff, digestion in Gulp, and sex in Bonk. Here she brings together human laws and Mother Nature, specifically what happens “when nature breaks the law.” And as usual, her research is far more serious and compelling than the levity of her titles might suggest. In Fuzz, she tackles hungry animals breaking into houses for food, birth control for problem species, trees falling (they’re dangerous!), bird vandalism, and more. Ultimately it’s a book about how species live together, when one of those species is us. The conflicts exist, writes Roach, “creating dilemmas for people and municipalities, hardships for wildlife, and material for someone else’s unusual book.
See the full schedule for the Fall Celebration, Oct. 21-24, at wisconsinbookfestival.org.
