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…

Taking a girl’s voice is the same as taking her power. Petals of Rain: A Mother’s Memoir by Rica Keenum is a memoir about love and loss, secrets and lies. When a young girl from a broken family meets a charming man, she attempts to build a new life. But after a whirlwind marriage and the birth of two sons, their love story rips apart at the seams. Exploring the impact of parents’ sins on the lives of children and the fates we endure for the chance to be loved, the story follows a mother navigating motherhood and womanhood – an abuse survivor emerging and learning to speak, to scream, to sing to her own wounded heart and to finally understand what it takes to be whole after breaking to pieces. Weaving the present and past together, Rica Keenum reveals her truth in hauntingly evocative scenes. Rica Keenum’s journey toward publication began in June of 2018 when Jill Swenson provided an assessment of the first draft of her memoir, and starting in September of 2018, coached her through the revision process. Rica completed a variety of meta-writing exercises, including character sketches, timelines, and the emotional weighting of scenes over the course of one year to strengthen the narrative arc and provide a satisfying story for readers. Because memoir is a fiercely competitive market in the top commercial publishing houses, Rica Keenum decided to shop around for an indie publisher. She received three offers and chose to work with Book Reality, which…

In Not Good Enough Girl, amidst the control, confusion, and chaos caused by her eight-times-married mother, Sondra Brooks’ story spans the extreme emotions of a mother-daughter relationship, touching on cyclical family dysfunction, addiction, and forgiveness. Beginning at the age of five, Sondra spends decades auditioning for the role of her authentic self. Her dazzling mother casts her as confidante and co-conspirator in her affairs and serial marriages. Sondra vacillates between fierce anger toward her mother—who does nothing to protect her from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse—and a desperate need for her love and approval. As an adult, Sondra enters into and stays in a toxic marriage for years, engaging in affairs with married men rather than divorcing. When therapy and AA eventually propel her out of the sense-deadening haze of alcohol and cigarettes, she summons the courage to tell her husband she plans to leave him. He reacts by playing on her biggest fear, telling her, “You’re going to turn out just like your mother.” Sondra attempts to establish a sober and separate identity, but tensions between her and her mother further increase when she marries someone new—a man who displaces her mother as the epicenter of her life—and her mother’s seventh marriage ends. During this time, traumatic childhood memories suddenly surface and a seismic shift occurs, freeing Sondra from her need for maternal connection. But establishing a life independent from her mother proves far more complicated than she could have imagined. Sondra R. Brooks graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy…