BIO:

Erin has spent the last 29 years in middle school. Yes, by choice. She is a cross categorical teacher specializing in reading, writing, math & social thinking, and an experienced mother of two daughters. She has a master’s degree and is twice National Board certified. Writing has been a lifelong project.

Between the Lines (book one of a three-book series) and Seeing Eye to Eye (book two in the series) were created out of a need observed in classrooms every day. Erin was born, raised, and continues to teach in Wisconsin. She loves coffee, card games, and traveling with her family.

LINKS:

Website - erinminchk.com

Instagram - @erinminchk

BIO:

Today we are interviewing Maggie Ginsberg. Maggie Ginsberg is the author of the novel Still True, published by the University of Wisconsin Press and winner of the Wisconsin Library Association’s 2023 Literary Award for Fiction. Still True was the honorable mention selection for the 2022 Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award, and is the 2026 inaugural pick for the new Wisconsin Libraries’ statewide Wisconsin Reads digital book club.

Maggie is also a nonfiction writer who published hundreds of articles throughout her career, earning numerous honors from the City Regional Magazine Association, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Milwaukee Press Club, and others. She is the former managing editor at Madison Magazine, and now works full-time as an arts writer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

LINKS:

maggieginsberg.com

BIO:

Sloan Sullivan is a Wisconsin author whose picture book The Blueberries of Life was inspired by real Sunday mornings with her granddaughter Brooklyn and Grandpa Tom and the joy of blueberry pancakes shared around the table. Through her “Blueberry Adventures” series, Sloan celebrates family, gratitude, and the simple traditions that make life sweet. She loves connecting with readers at schools, libraries, and community events across Wisconsin and beyond. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her enjoying Lake Geneva sunsets, supporting local shops, or dreaming up new blueberry adventures.

SYNOPSIS:

The Blueberries of Life is a heartwarming picture book that celebrates family, love, and the sweet traditions that shape us. When young Brooklyn spends a morning making blueberry pancakes with her Grandpa Tom, she discovers that the “blueberries of life” aren’t just in the bowl — they’re the people and moments that make life meaningful. Blending gentle wisdom with nostalgic charm, this story invites readers to slow down, savor connection, and remember that life’s richest blessings are found around the table. A tender reminder for readers of all ages to celebrate love, gratitude, and togetherness.

LINKS:

https://www.blueberriesoflife.com/

@theblueberriesoflife

BIO:

Julianne Lepp has a background in finance, game design, and massage therapy. She lives with rheumatoid arthritis and supports those living with chronic illness in many capacities. She has served as the parish minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, since 2010 and trained with Meadville Lombard Theological School to become a spiritual director.

SYNOPSIS:

Living with chronic illness has many challenges, and the journey is not just a physical one. Tend to Your Spirit is a companion for this emotional and spiritual journey, offering tools to help readers practice self-compassion and self-care. With candor and vulnerability, spiritual leaders Julianne Lepp and Florence Caplow, themselves living with long-term illness, offer insights and practices that can benefit anyone facing the emotional impact of a new or ongoing condition.

Tend to Your Spirit is intended for people at any stage of their journey with chronic illness or chronic pain, to help you live a full, spiritually connected life—a life informed and shaped, but not defeated, by your illness.

LINKS:

https://www.juliannelepp.com/

BIO:

TK Sheffield, MA, writes stories to laugh and escape, including Nellie’s Island, a children’s horse story set in Mackinac Island available at Island Books. Sheffield’s funny cozy mysteries are The Devil Wears Prada meets a Wisconsin supper club, and they’ve earned an IBPA Humor medal, a Claymore, and an IPPY. She also has a new magical romance series releasing in DECEMBER, THE VALENTINE LINES. She’s on the Wisconsin Writers Association’s board, host of the Wispresso Café, an author talk show, and a member of Blackbird Writers, SISTERS IN CRIME, and SCBWI.

SYNOPSIS:

The Valentine Lines reimagines Cupid—aka Bart McGee—as an underdog ditching the corporate grind of Mt. Olympus, Inc., for small-town life in quaint Mineral Point, Wisconsin. When Bart launches a matchmaking business and falls in love with a local baker, chaos ensues as his meddling Olympus relatives crash the scene. It’s packed with snappy banter, slapstick escapades, mythological mishaps, and thoughtful explorations of love, trust, and self-discovery. It’s "Kate & Leopold" meets "The Holiday,” a modern “Bell, Book, and Candle.” A light, literary escape for readers craving whimsy with emotional resonance. No sex, politics, foul language. Manuscript winner/finalist in CIBA (humor) and Southwest Writers.

LINKS:

https://tksheffieldwriter.com/

BIO:

Steve is the winner of the Rick Bass Montana Prize for Fiction, the Zona Gale Award for Short Fiction, The Great Midwest Writing Contest, the Jade Ring Award, the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters Fiction Contest, and the Midwestern Gothic Summer Flash Contest. His fiction has appeared in New Ohio Review, MQR, Whitefish Review, and others.

SYNOPSIS:

Award-winning writer Steve Fox returns with These Are My People, where some houses are dark, some are bright and smell of busy kitchens, and some have rooms beyond a looking glass. People crash trucks and make snow angels and spill coffee and buy pottery and self-starve and roam basements and day-drink at nursing homes and can smell broken love through brick walls and make apple pies for new neighbors. Whirling and wondrous, these stories show Fox at the peak of his powers.

LINKS:

https://stevefoxwrites.com/

BIO:

Pernille Ipsen was professor of gender and women’s studies and history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for fifteen years and is now a full-time writer. The Danish-language version of this book, Et åbent øjeblik (An open moment), was published in 2020 and was awarded the Montana Prize for literature, one of Denmark’s top literary prizes. She divides her time between Madison and Copenhagen, Denmark.

SYNOPSIS:

On New Year’s Eve in Copenhagen in 1972, seven women had a child together: one gave birth and six others attended. They had met a year earlier at a feminist women’s camp on a small island and now, with about twenty other women’s liberationists, they occupied three dilapidated apartment buildings in the center of Copenhagen. One became the country’s first Women’s House, the nerve center of the Women’s Movement in Denmark, and the other two were women-only communal living spaces that were Pernille Ipsen’s first home. In this intimate portrait of life during the exhilarating early days of women’s liberation in Scandinavia and dramatic social change around the globe, she tells the stories of these seven women, her seven mothers.

LINKS:

pernilleipsen.com

BIO:

Harvey Araton is a longtime sports journalist, a former New York Times columnist and author of 10 books, including Driving Mr. Yogi, a New York Times best-seller, and When The Garden Was Eden, the same title of an ESPN 30for30 documentary, which he co-produced. Araton was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017 for his work in media.

SYNOPSIS:

The Goal of the Game is a middle-grade readers novel that explores the pleasures and pressures of youth sports at a time when for-profit business has developed a major impact on the games children play. The story follows Zane Hamill, known as Z, from early days of rec league soccer to elite club competition and finally to a declaration of the terms by which he is willing to play.

LINKS:

https://www.harveyaraton.com/