Reporter and columnist George Hesselberg will discuss his more than forty years of finding the extraordinary among the ordinary in writing about deaths.
Join two critically acclaimed, award-winning Wisconsin authors for a conversation about the writing life, their most recent novels, and the great state they call home.
Eric Schlehlein tells the heroic and bloody story of the Iron Brigade. Composed of three Wisconsin regiments, an Indiana regiment, and (later) a Michigan regiment, this unit suffered the highest percentage of casualties of any Union brigade during the Civil War while achieving unparalleled success on the battlefield.
In this presentation, directors from the Amara Rose Foundation will show a brief film and tell their poignant stories of how addiction and fentanyl poisoning have affected them personally. The presenters and representatives from Family & Children’s Center Viroqua will be available to offer information on local resources.
Join Ben Riggs and learn everything you need to know to start playing Dungeons & Dragons in just sixty minutes!
Writing about difficult experiences can help us process our anguish, pain, and grief. It can even lead to healing. But how does the resulting work transcend our personal circumstances and compel readers? Essayists Jane Schmidt and Tamara Dean will read from their pieces about illness, injury, and loss. They'll discuss techniques for depicting difficult material boldly without alienating readers. They'll offer insights on making memoir and personal essays relatable and illuminating. After questioning each other in a lively back-and-forth, they'll welcome more questions from the audience.
Take the first step toward transforming your landscape into a more environmentally friendly space for you, the pollinators, and our community. Melinda Myers presents manageable strategies to approach your landscaping from the ground up with results that will fit your lifestyle and landscape goals. She will provide an overview of environmentally friendly lawn and garden maintenance and offer tips on creating a pollinator habitat, a water-wise landscape, and an organic food garden. During this presentation, Myers also will take a look at landscape design and management as a whole, with an eye on simple steps that can make a big difference.
Jeff Nania draws upon his careers in law enforcement and natural resources to captivate readers and keep them wondering who is on the right side of the law in his award-winning Northern Lakes Mystery series. Throughout his life, Jeff has taken the path less traveled. These adventures have provided fodder for his engaging crime fiction while grounding his storytelling in the things he holds dear: family, community, and natural resources.
Larry Scheckel reminisces about growing up with eight siblings on the family farm in the hill country of southwestern Wisconsin and attending the one-room school out on Oak Grove Ridge. Traditions such as the basket social in the fall, the Christmas program, and the end-of-the-year picnic made Oak Grove School the social heart of the community. Learn the joys and challenges faced by students in a country school with twenty-eight kids and one teacher for all eight grades.
Chad Lewis will showcase his on-site investigations from the Bigfoot of the Northwoods and the lake monster of Lake Pepin to phantom chickens and hellhounds roaming rural Wisconsin. Filled with drawings, eyewitness testimony, weird photos, and bizarre sound clips, this presentation brings the investigation right to the audience.
Learn about eagle biology, ecology, natural history, and cultural connections in an engaging and entertaining presentation with a naturalist interpreter and a live eagle ambassador from the National Eagle Center.
Unfortunately, Ria Thundercloud is not able to attend the Ridges & Rivers Book Festival this year, and this event is canceled.