Janice Kehler

media release: PLEASE NOTE: While this is a free event, RSVPs are encouraged. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served.

A childhood habit of toe-walking can strike fear inside the hearts of parents. For Janice Kehler, hoisting herself onto the balls of her feet to discover her world was pure joy that morphed into an adolescence spent chasing an Olympic dream. A dream fashioned by the Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin in the early twentieth century and shaped by the sports-media complex over the next one hundred years. A dream that was on a collision course with the deep historical roots of the best-you-can-be and win-at-all-cost attitudes.

Ode to Olympic Dreams is a collection of personal essays and historical conundrums that manifest her stubbornness and naivety to fit into the world of Olympic sport. She became a student-athlete branded as an Olympic hopeful whose "student-ness' intersected with scientific discovery. Meanwhile, terrorism, doping scandals, and the exploitation of athletes turned the world of sport upside down.

Out of this chaos, she discovered another set of stories. Using the lens of hindsight, a human holistic sense of movement emerged, linked to the mysterious habits of toe-walking and breathlessness, to tell the never-ending, hopeful story of Coubertin's Olympism.

Janice P. Kehler has over 30 years of health care experience working in both Canada and the US. She has co-authored scientific articles, edited professional newsletters and published essays in a variety of media outlets. Ode to Olympic Dreams is a book of personal essays weaving her story as an olympic hopeful with the history of athleticism and exercise science.

Paralympian Patty Cisneros Prevo (she/her/ella) is a proud disabled Latina, diversity, equity, and inclusion professional, and picture book writer. In 2019, Patty received the Lee & Low Books New Voices Award Honor for Tenacious: Fifteen Adventures Alongside Disabled Athletes. Patty herself is a five-time National Wheelchair Basketball Association Championships winner, a three-time Paralympian, and a two-time Paralympic gold medalist. In 2021, she was appointed to the Congressional Commission on the State of the U.S. Olympics & Paralympics. Patty currently lives in Wisconsin and works in as a Program Manager for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for UW Health.