Quan Barry

media release: In Auction, her first poetry collection in eight years, the poet, novelist, and playwright Quan Barry travels the globe in her signature quest into the existential nature of experience. These poems explore the inner landscapes of both the human and animal realms, revealing them to be points along the same spectrum. At the heart of the book lies an extended study of toxic storytelling as an element of warcraft, but Barry also contemplates the death of a Buddhist master, the plight of migrants both at home and abroad, the ethics of travel and consumption, and the larger question of how and why we construct a self in order to navigate the world.

Quan Barry is the Lorraine Hansberry Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of eight books of fiction and poetry, including the recent collection Auction, which the New York Times named one of the 5 best poetry books of 2023. A recipient of NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, Barry is currently the writer-in-residence at Forward Theater where her play, The Mytilenean Debate, premiered in the spring of 2022. Barry’s fourth novel, tentatively titled Zero at the Bone, is set in Antarctica and due out from Grove Press in the fall of 2025.

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.