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The Optimist at Midnight

  • Auditorium, Heyde Center for the Arts 3 South High St. Chippewa Falls, WI 54729 (map)

Leif Enger

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This event is co-sponsored by Friends of the Chippewa Falls Public Library and the Heyde Center for the Arts

Storytelling is by nature a hopeful endeavor, and never more so than in times of division and anxiety. Using texts from novelists, poets, and screenwriters, Enger will discuss the Midwestern imagination, the magic of kite-flying, and the power of stories to inspire change.

>> Our book sales committee will have copies of Virgil Wander available for purchase at this event. Please join us for an autographing session following the presentation.


LEIF ENGER was raised in Osakis, Minnesota, and worked as a reporter and producer for Minnesota Public Radio before writing his best-selling debut novel,  Peace Like a River, which won the Independent Publisher Book Award and was one of Los Angeles Times’s and Time Magazine’s Best Books of the Year. His second novel, So Brave, Young, and Handsome, was also a national best seller and a Midwest Booksellers’ Choice Award Honor Book for Fiction. His newest novel, Virgil Wander, was published in 2018. He and his wife Robin live in Minnesota.