If you had to give someone a ONE-sentence reason they should come to your festival event, what would it be?
To learn about the nexus between owls, weirdos, and conservation

What do you hope attendees take away from your presentation?
That wildlife know no political borders. Endangered species and the habitats they rely on are global resources to be communally celebrated and protected.

What book would you most want to read again for the first time?
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. This was the first of his books that I read and was wholly unprepared for the beautiful way he could write about terrible things. I often read it only a page or two at time to re-read passages and savor the experience. I’d never had such an careful and intimate experience with a book before.

What are you reading right now?
Crossings, by Ben Goldfarb, about the (largely negative) impact that roads have on how animals (including people) interact with each other and the landscape, and what we can do to restore some of these broken connections.

Find Slaght on Social Media
Facebook: Jonathan Slaght
Instagram: JonathanSlaght
Bluesky: @jonathanslaght.bsky.social

If you had to give someone a ONE-sentence reason they should come to your festival event, what would it be?
One day after my novel came out last year, I had the privilege of presenting (with the generous Nickolas Butler as a conversation partner) at the newly renovated L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library—I can't tell you how special it feels to be coming back to present in the very room where I worked out the beginnings of my nerves and did my first public reading for this book in front of a warm, engaged, highly literary community.

What do you hope attendees take away from your presentation?
How personal I believe so many novels are, and the role we readers have in shaping and shepherding the stories we all share.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Novel writing doesn't require the wild supernatural imagination you think it does, but rather an openness to the real world and empathy for everyone you encounter, especially yourself.

What are you reading right now?
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell, plus my fellow CVBF presenters books—some of which are already personal favorites.

Do you have a favorite quote about reading and/or writing?
I keep a paraphrased version of Hemingway's iceberg therapy next to my writing desk: "Know the iceberg, write the tip."

Find Ginsberg on Social Media
Facebook: @MaggieGinsberg
Instagram: @maggie.ginsberg

If you had to give someone a ONE-sentence reason they should come to your festival event, what would it be? Learn how Wisconsin's many varied landscapes and waterways came to be what they are and how to explore to see the evidence for yourself.

What do you hope attendees take away from your presentation? An appreciation for how fascinating our state's waterways and landscapes and their ancient histories are.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be? Pursue whatever it is that fascinates you and never stop exploring it.

What book would you most want to read again for the first time? To Kill a Mockingbird

What are you reading right now?
The Last Ranger

Do you have a favorite quote about reading and/or writing?
An old English professor told me: If you want to write 'em, you gotta read 'em.

If you had to give someone a ONE-sentence reason they should come to your festival event, what would it be?
Come to learn what the trees can teach us about being a better person.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
It’s okay to be right where you’re at.

What do you hope readers learn from your book(s)?
There is more help available to us than we know.

Do you have a favorite quote about reading and/or writing?
My favorite quote about writing is by the poet William Stafford, and I’m paraphrasing here, but I’ve found it to be immensely helpful and so true: a writer isn’t so much someone who has something to stay as she is someone who has found a process that brings about new things—ideas, thoughts, poems—that she would never have found had she not set about the process.

Find Dunbar on Social Media
Facebook
Instagram

If you had to give someone a ONE-sentence reason they should come to your festival event, what would it be?
There will be octopus jokes.

What do you hope attendees take away from your presentation?
As much as I hope I’ve perfected the art of the octopus pun, I also hope to inspire folks to put an ear out for the unusual voices and perspectives that are all around us. Whether you’re an experienced writer, an aspiring writer, or just a fan of books, I always think it’s fun to flip the script and envision how non-human characters might view us.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Take the leap. I spent so many years writing and re-writing the first three chapters of my book. I had a great premise and characters I loved, but for some reason, I was afraid to move into the meat of the plot. Probably because I didn’t know what the plot was going to be. And that’s okay! I would tell myself to just write and we will figure the rest out as we go.

What do you hope readers learn from your book(s)?
This is always a difficult question because I think the most important thing anyone can learn from reading fiction of any sort is empathy. Reading fiction works your empathy muscle. But specific to REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES, I think many readers will learn some fun facts about octopuses, and in turn, might feel conflicted about the notion of eating them, or even keeping them in captivity.

What book would you most want to read again for the first time?
THE WESTING GAME by Ellen Raskin. I know this book has become something of a cliché in my generation, but holy wow do I still remember the first time I read it, the exhilaration of all the pieces of the mystery coming together before my eyes. It's a masterpiece.

What are you reading right now?
THE FOLLOWERS by Bradeigh Godfrey. I just finished a couple of pretty heavy books, and needed a page-turning thriller. It’s fantastic so far!

Do you have a favorite quote about reading and/or writing?
Because I sometimes struggle with plotting and story structure, I find myself often revisiting A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN, the wonderful craft book by George Saunders. He says, “In the first pulse of a story, the writer is like a juggler, throwing bowling pins into the air. The rest of the story is the catching of those pins. At any point in the story, certain pins are up there and we can feel them.”

When I’m drafting, I am always asking myself what pins I’ve got in the air!

Find Van Pelt on Social Media
Twitter: @shelbyvanpelt
Instagram: @shelbyvanpeltwrites

If you had to give someone a ONE-sentence reason they should come to your festival event, what would it be?
Come for the conversation on writing real lives, stay for the tornadoes! (Not real ones, hopefully, just stories about them—but you never know in Wisconsin.)

What do you hope readers learn from your book(s)?
I hope all Midwesterners, and especially queer Midwesterns, see themselves in Tomboyland, and that aspiring writers might read it and feel more empowered to tell their stories too.

What are you reading right now?
Athena Dixon's new essay collection, The Loneliness Files, and Stephen King's Misery (such a classic, and, at its heart, a book about writing). I love to read essays and memoirs, but I'm also primarily teaching essays and memoirs right now, so I often need a break. I love novels, and I especially love horror, literary thrillers, and all things supernatural and spooky.