Ann Garvin, Ph.D. is the USA Today Bestselling author and finalist for the Thomas Wolf Fiction Prize. She is the author of six funny and sad novels. She writes about people who do too much in a world that asks too much from them. She currently teaches creative writing at Drexel University in their low residency Masters of Fine Arts program and has held positions at Miami University and Southern New Hampshire in their Masters of Fine Arts Creative Writing programs.

Ann is the founder of the multiple award-winning Tall Poppy Writers, a group of traditionally published authors committed to helping readers find wonderful books. She is a sought-after speaker on writing, leadership and health and has taught extensively in NY, San Francisco, LA, Boston, and at festivals across the country and in Europe.

Cayce Osborne has been a writing tutor, a news monitor, a graphic designer, a feature writer for a women's magazine, and an associate editor for a literary magazine. She currently work in science communication and public engagement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In early 2015, she began consistently writing fiction, something she's always wanted to do. When not writing or working, Cayce spends her time being a mom, cooking, traveling, stalking the shelves at her local library, subscribing to way too many streaming services, and attempting arts and crafts of all kinds. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband Mike, two crazy boys, three parakeets, and one goofy Australian Shepherd named Confetti.

Christina Clancy was born in Denver and raised in Milwaukee. She graduated from the University of Minnesota and worked at IBM before returning to school to earn a PhD in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. After graduating, she taught English at Beloit College for a decade before turning to writing full time. 

Her novels have been featured on Good Morning America, CNN, Travel & Leisure, Buzzfeed, Pop Sugar, and Shelf Awareness. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Sun Magazine and in various literary journals. 

She lives in Madison with her very tall husband in their 1916 prairie-style house and she “snowbirds” in Palm Springs as much as she can. She has two grown children who live in Chicago and New York City, and she has a little white dog named Bunny who loves everyone. 

Jane Rotonda began work on the Wisconsin Book Festival in February 2023. Jane joined the team after eight years at the nonprofit Wisconsin Public Radio, where she worked closely with numerous author guests on WPR programming, and her love of reading inspired her to found WPR’s first-ever book club. She graduated from the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. 

A Milwaukee native, Laura Anne Bird graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in English. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, three big kids, and little dog. When she’s not reading, writing, or reviewing books, she loves to exercise and explore the outdoors. 

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Marvelous Jackson is a follow-up to her middle grade debut, Crossing the Pressure Line, which garnered awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association, the Midwest Independent Publishers Association, and the Arts + Literature Laboratory's Wisconsin Writers Awards program. 

Join Laura on Instagram @laura_at_the_library, where she celebrates all things literary. 

Lindsay Christians (she/hers) is a full-time food editor and arts writer at The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. She produces The Corner Table podcast (2016-2021/2024 'Top Chef Wisconsin') and hosts a video series called Cooking with the Cap Times.

She is the author of “Madison Chefs: Stories of Food, Farms and People” (UW Press, 2021) and "The Osteria Papavero Cookbook" (Little Creek Press, 2023) with Francesco Mangano. 

Maggie Ginsberg is a writer, editor and author in Wisconsin.

Her debut novel, Still True, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in September 2022 and won the 2023 WLA Literary Award for Fiction.

Maggie is now a senior editor at Madison Magazine, where she has worked since 2020 after freelancing for city, regional and national magazines since 2006. She has published hundreds of articles throughout her career, earning numerous honors from the City Regional Magazine Association, the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the Milwaukee Press Club.

Nickolas Butler was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. His first novel was the internationally best-selling and prize-winning Shotgun Lovesongs, which has been optioned for film development and has been translated into over ten languages. Beneath the Bonfire, a collection of short stories, followed a year later. In 2017, he published The Hearts of Men which was short-listed for two of France’s most prestigious literary prizes even before its American publishing. In 2019, his fourth book, Little Faith was published to critical acclaim. Butler published Godspeed in 2021, a literary thriller set in Jackson Hole, Wyoming that was longlisted for the Reading the West Book Award. His latest, A Forty Year Kiss is a small-town love-story set in Chippewa Falls, WI.