Bob Wake

media release: Read “Mending Ruth” at Wisconsin People & Ideas Magazine

Bob Wake is a writer and small press publisher in Cambridge, Wisconsin. He is the first-place winner of the 2024 Wisconsin People & Ideas Fiction Contest, which he also won in 2017. His short stories have appeared in Madison Magazine, The Madison Review, Rosebud Magazine, and in Wisconsin People & Ideas. He is a recipient of the Zona Gale Award for Short Fiction from the Council for Wisconsin Writers.

Since 2011 Shake Rag Alley has provided residencies to award-winning Wisconsin writers, offering time and space to create. In 2025, we’re partnering with Wisconsin People & Ideas, the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission through the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters, Arts + Literature Laboratory, and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets to offer the Winter Writers Reading Series. In 2025, we’ll be adding the Swanson Emerging Poet Fellowship with the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (stay tuned!).

Writers stay in Shake Rag Alley’s historic lodging facilities surrounded by the creative community of Mineral Point. Visiting writers participate in community outreach activities, including readings, workshops, and school visits as part of the Winter Writers Reading Series. 

We are excited to partner with Mineral Point’s independent bookstore for our 2025 reading series. Unless noted, readings will be held at Republic of Letters Books, 151 High St., Mineral Point.