A new book festival brings Sherman Alexie and Margaret Atwood to the Packer’s Title Town the end of this month. Untitled Town Book and Author Festival is the first event of its kind for the greater Green Bay area and plans to unite readers, writers, podcasters, storytellers, publishers, books, and Packer fans.
Alexie and Atwood are not the only big name authors who are featured during this three day extravaganza of book love. Nickolas Butler (Hearts of Men), Dan Chaon (author of Ill Will), Kate Harding (Asking 
for 
It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture—and What We Can Do About It), A. S. King (Still Life with Tornado), Lorna Landvik (Once in a Blue Moon Lodge), Benjamin Percy (Thrill Me), Michael Perry (Roughneck Grace), Larry Watson (As Good As Gone), and Wisconsin Poet Laureate Karla Huston will be there. And for diehard Packer fans, Jeff Pearlman, author of Gunslinger: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre, will also be there. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. A complete list of more than 100 presenters and a schedule can be found at the Untitled Town website.
On Friday night at 7:30 pm end the first day of the festival at the Backstage of the Meyer Theatre with Storycatchers Live! Members of the community will share (mostly) true stories on the theme of “Road Trips.”
Saturday morning local authors will read at an Open Mic session in the Titletown Tap Room Building. If you’re interested in sharing your work-in-progress, click on the link to sign-up. If you are a high school student, there’s a reading invitational “Speak Your Truth” at 1:30 pm to showcase our local talents. Register here.
Don’t 
miss Larry Scheckel, AKA Mr. Science, at 2:30 pm in the Old Fort Square (Broadway Center) for an exciting demonstration of cool science stuff. He’ll be happy to sign your copy of Ask a Science Teacher: 250 Answers to Questions You’ve Always Had About How Everyday Stuff Works. And look for his new book, I Always Wondered About That, coming out this fall from Tumblehome Learning.
On Sunday morning at 10:30 am at the Brown County Library in the Think Tank on the second floor, I will be offering a workshop, “Memoir is More than Memories: Writing and Selling a Memoir.” And at 12:30 across the river in the Kavarna Coffeehouse (lower level), don’t miss David McGlynn. Author of A Door in the Ocean, McGlynn teaches at Lawrence University and has a new memoir, In the Deep End of Fatherhood, to be released for Father’s Day 2018. If you are interested in memoir, there are a variety of program offerings during the festival weekend.
If you are interested in hearing Margaret Atwood or Sherman Alexie, please note all the free tickets have been claimed. You can join a wait list for general seating or consider purchasing a $50 ticket for VIP seating and priority in the signing line. If you want to see both of them, tickets are $80.
Events during the festival are free and open to the public. A debt of gratitude to the organizers of this festival—Alex Galt, Wendy Wimmer, Brian Simons, Rebecca Meacham, Amy Mazzariello, Maria Konkel, and Matt Bero. Come celebrate in Green Bay this weekend!
Writing and Listening — an Interview with Brooke Randel
As a young girl Brooke Randel knew little about the Holocaust—just that it was a catastrophe in which millions were murdered, and that her grandma Golda Indig barely escaped that fate. But her Bubbie never spoke about what happened, and the two spent most of their time together making pleasant memories: baking crescent roll cookies, playing gin rummy, and watching Baywatch. Until an unexpected phone call when Golda said, out of the blue: “You should write about my life. What happened in the war.” What results is a fascinating memoir—about one woman’s harrowing survival, and another’s struggle to excavate theRead more…