Abra Berens

THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT.

This meal event is being presented in person only. If possible, please register everyone in your party at one time to accommodate seating as best as possible.

Former Executive Chef and award-winning cookbook author Abra Berens will be hosting a cozy evening for food enthusiasts at one of Eau Claire's hottest new restaurants, The Good Wives. There will be a presentation by the author during the multi-course meal with a chance to mingle throughout the dining experience.

TICKETS: $65 including taxes/fees

Five-Course Dinner Menu (subject to change):

1. A Welcome Snack to be at the table when guests arrive: Housemade Root Vegetable Chips with Dip

2. Spiced Carrot Soup with Crispy Duck Shreds and Popped Sorghum
   Duck can be left off for vegetarians.

3. Salad of Endives with Shaved Pears, and Pistachios. Dressed with a Buttermilk Bleu Cheese Dressing and Pink Peppercorns

4. Chicken Thigh Confit with Parsnip Puree, Apple Fennel Salad, and Chili Crisp
   Chili crisp can be left off for spice-sensitive diners.

5. Bavarois with Grapefruit Gelee and a Lace Cookie

JOIN THE WAITLIST

Enter your name and email below if you’d like to be on the waitlist in case tickets become available for this event as the date draws near.

CLICK HERE to buy festival books locally from Dotters Books.

ABRA BERENS’S first cookbook Ruffage was nominated for a Beard Award in 2020, and spotlighted vegetables in a way attuned to their growing seasons. Its follow-up Grist focused on grains and legumes while Beren’s latest Pulp highlights the use of fruit in sweet and savory recipes. Beren’s work is predicated on introducing people to the importance of agriculture. “Food is a joyful thing, and there’s a lot of work that goes into creating that joy.”

Learn more about Abra Berens at abraberens.com.

Patti See

If you weren’t able to join us for See’s live event or are interested in watching it again, click below to watch the recording.

This event is being presented in person and virtually.

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s as the youngest of eight children, Patti See never imagined she’d stay in Chippewa Falls as an adult. Now she has a new appreciation for all that comes with country living, from ice fishing and supper clubs to pontoon rides and tavern dice. Whether sending her son off to basic training, holding her mother’s hand through late-stage Alzheimer’s, or tiptoeing over thin ice with her best friend since childhood, See notices the comedy and beauty of life’s everyday moments. Join See as she discusses writing about the place she loves best: Lake Hallie. She’ll also read and chat about some of the brief essays in Here on Lake Hallie: In Praise of Barflies, Fix-it-Guys, and Other Folks in Our Hometown, a book that establishes that, above all else, it’s friends, family, and neighbors who provide us with a sense of belonging.

This program will be a view-only opportunity for virtual attendees. There will not be an opportunity to submit questions to the author.

CLICK HERE to buy festival books locally from Dotters Books.

PATTI SEE is the author of a new essay collection, Here on Lake Hallie: In Praise of Barflies, Fix-it Guys, and Other Folks in Our Hometown. Her work has appeared in Salon Magazine, Women's Studies Quarterly, The Wisconsin Academy Review, The Southwest Review, HipMama, Inside HigherEd, Volume One, and many other magazines. She writes a monthly column, Sawdust Stories, for the Eau Claire Leader Telegram, and she was a frequent contributor to "Wisconsin Life" on Wisconsin Public Radio. Her blog, Our Long Goodbye: One Family's Experiences with Alzheimer's, has been read in over 100 countries.

Jamie Ford

If you weren’t able to join us for Ford’s live event or are interested in watching it again, click below to watch the recording.

This event is being presented virtually.

Known for his ability to weave fiction and history into compelling novels, Ford will discuss his latest book, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, and what draws him to lost history. He’ll also examine the responsibility and challenges of presenting uncomfortable truths to a modern world and why he considers himself to be in the compassion creation business.

This program will include a live question and answer session at the end of the presentation moderated by B.J. Hollars.

This virtual presentation is made possible with technology assistance from L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library.

CLICK HERE to buy festival books locally from Dotters Books.

JAMIE FORD’s debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and went on to win the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. Recently, that same novel has been optioned for a stage musical, and also for film, with George Takei serving as Executive Producer. His second book, Songs of Willow Frost, was a national bestseller. Jamie’s latest novel is The Many Daughters of Afong Moy.

His work has been translated into 35 languages. (He’s still holding out for Klingon, because that’s when you know you’ve made it).

Learn more about Jamie Ford at jamieford.com.

Alan Bergo

If you weren’t able to join us for Bergo’s live event or are interested in watching it again, click below to watch the recording.

This event is being presented in person.

Have you ever wondered why apple seeds taste like almonds? Did you know you can cook a sunflower like an artichoke? In this visual presentation combining cooking, botany, and cultural traditions from around the world, James Beard award-winning Chef Alan Bergo explains some of the paradigm shifting culinary concepts in his book The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora that have the potential to change the way you think about why some foods taste the way they do. Illustrated by the author's own images.

CLICK HERE to buy festival books locally from Dotters Books.

CHEF ALAN BERGO is one of America's leading voices in the world of foraging and wild food. Known for his website foragerchef.com, the internet's largest resource on cooking with wild mushrooms, his work has been featured on the Today Show, The Sundance Film Festival, and The Wallstreet Journal, with essays and recipe selections published in 15 books and counting. His online series “The Wild Harvest” (now called “Field Forest Feast”) won a 2022 James Beard Award in Instructional Visual Media as well as a Taste award for best Online Food Show in 2022. His first book, The Forager Chef's Book of Flora, now in its fourth printing was published through Chelsea Green Publishing in 2021.

Learn more about Alan Bergo at foragerchef.com.

Barrett Swanson

If you weren’t able to join us for Swanson’s live event or are interested in watching it again, click below to watch the recording.

This event is being presented in person.

Swanson will explore how the political and social tumult of the last decade has affected various communities around the United States and how they’ve tried to find meaning in their lives amid the instability and confusion. Discover how the breakdown of cultural narratives and consensus reality has affected citizens not only politically but also emotionally and psychologically.

CLICK HERE to buy festival books locally from Dotters Books.

BARRETT SWANSON is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine and the author of the essay collection, Lost in Summerland. He was the 2016-2017 Halls Emerging Artist Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and was the recipient of a 2015 Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Harper's, The New Yorker, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, The New Republic, The Guardian, The Atavist, The Paris Review, and two editions of Best American Travel Writing, among other places.

Learn more about Barrett Swanson at barrettswanson.com.

Beth Dooley

SORRY, THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT.

This event is co-sponsored by Forage.

How do we become at home in the world? By cultivating a deep relationship with our food, our farmers, our family, and the land. In foraging for goodness we look to traditional foodways as well as innovative technology to create a regenerative landscape that nourishes and delights. Dooley will impart an understanding of and appreciation for the New Agricultural Land Ethic.

Attendees will have the opportunity to hear Dooley and sample her cooking.

Schedule:

• 4:00 - 4:30 p.m. arrival, meet Beth Dooley, and enjoy wine from Forage’s cash bar

• 4:30 - 6:00 p.m. Enjoy a sampling of author Beth Dooley’s locally sourced recipes carefully prepared by Forage’s Chef Michelle Thiede, and served family style. Learn about Beth’s current research focused on perennial plants, cover crops, woody agriculture, and artisan grains.

TICKETS INFORMATION:
Tickets are $20 for this combined literary/food event.

Space Limited to 75 participants.

>> Our book sales committee will have copies of In Winter’s Kitchen: Growing Roots and Breaking Bread in the Northern Heartland available for purchase at this event. Please join us for an autographing session following the presentation.

BETH DOOLEY has covered the local food scene in the Northern Heartland for thirty years: she writes for the Taste section of the Star Tribune, and appears regularly on local television and radio. She co-authored The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen with Sean Sherman, winner of the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook.  Other titles include: Savory Sweet: Preserves from a Northern Kitchen, In Winter’s Kitchen: Growing Roots and Breaking Bread in the Northern Heartland, Minnesota’s Bounty: The Farmers Market Cookbook, The Northern Heartland Kitchen, and Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland, coauthored with Lucia Watson.

bethdooleyskitchen.com

ecWIT (Eau Claire Women in Theater)

SORRY, THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT.

The ecWIT gals are back by popular demand for a reader’s theater performance of adapted excerpts from a sampling of this year’s festival authors.  Without costumes or elaborate props, the stripped-down performance is sure to add a whole new dimension to the festival’s characters and stories.

This event is FREE, but a ticket is required.

ecWIT, composed of Debbie Brown, Beverly Olson, Sue Fulkerson, Kathleen Sullivan, Ann Pearson, and Sara Bryan, presents the art form of dramatic reader’s theater, enlivening literature in a variety of genres without sets, costumes, or props. Since the group’s inception in January 2016, they have become a local favorite, having received commissions to perform from Chippewa Valley Learning in Retirement, the Waldemar Ager Association, and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, to name a few. 2019 will be the third year that ecWIT has participated in the Chippewa Valley Book Festival, providing a unique experience of adapted excerpts from the works of festival authors.

ecwit.weebly.com | Facebook

B.J. Hollars

SORRY, THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT.

This event is co-sponsored by Forage.

Enjoy the opportunity to meet and mingle with some of our festival authors with delicious food ahead of B.J. Hollars’s presentation: Things that Go Bump When You Write: On Monsters, Martians, and the Search for the Truth in the Strange.

Part memoir and part journalism, Hollars’ latest book, Midwestern Strange, offers a fascinating, funny, and quirky account of flyover folklore. By confronting monsters, Martians, and a cabinet of curiosities worth of strange phenomena in our own backyards, Hollars challenges readers to look beyond their presumptions and acknowledge that just because something is weird doesn’t mean it’s wrong. A little bit X-Files, a little bit Ghostbusters, and a whole lot Sherlock Holmes, Hollars will describe his efforts to get to the bottom of many of our most tangled tales.

SCHEDULE:

• 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Meet some of our authors, enjoy a fall buffet and a cash bar, along with water and lemonade.

• 7:00 p.m. Remarks and Introductions

• 7:15 p.m. Hollars will present “Things that Go Bump When You Write”

TICKET INFORMATION:
Tickets are $35 and will include a fall buffet prepared by Forage’s Chef Michelle Thiede and a cash bar.

Space Limited to 80 participants.

>> Our book sales committee will have copies of newly released Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians and the Weird in Flyover Country available for purchase at this event. Please join us for an autographing session following the presentation.

B.J. HOLLARS is the author of several books, including his latest, Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians and the Weird in Flyover Country. Hollars is the recipient of the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Nonfiction, the Anne B. and James B. McMillan Prize, the The Wisconsin Writers Awards’s Norbert Blei/August Derleth Nonfiction Book Award , and the Society of Midland Authors Award. He is the founder and executive director of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild and an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. He lives a simple existence with his wife, their children, and their dog.

Kim Brooks

Changing patterns in family structure, rampant consumerism, and social panics spawned by the 24-hour news cycle have transformed child-rearing from an inherently private relationship into an all-consuming, competitive sport. Building on her own harrowing experiences, Brooks will reveal how expectations of parents have changed over the course of a single generation and how these expectations—fueled by fear rather than reality—pressure mothers to report one another. She will also share a fresh perspective on parenting and parenthood that shifts the focus away from individual parents to a broader social and historical perspective, highlighting the ways children can benefit from freedom and independence.  

Tickets are required for this FREE event.

>> Our book sales committee will have copies of Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear available for purchase at this event. Please join us for an autographing session following the presentation.

KIM BROOKS is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and recipient of numerous fellowships. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, New York Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Chicago Magazine, and Salon. Brooks has spoken as a guest on CBS This Morning, PBS NewsHour, 20/20, NPR’s All Things Considered, Good Morning America, and The Brian Leher Show, as well as podcasts such as Note to Self, Mom and Dad Are Fighting, Femsplainer, and Matt Lewis and the News. Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear was designated A Best Book of 2018 by National Public Radio.

kabrooks.com

Adam Regn Arvidson

SORRY, THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT.

This event is co-sponsored by the Chippewa Valley Museum.

Adam Regn Arvidson takes a look not only at the Midwest plants and animals on the endangered species list but at which ones we value, why we value them, and what we should take into consideration moving forward. During this interactive discussion and reading about endangered plants and animals in the upper Midwest, you will learn which species are endangered, the history of their conservation and protection in this country, and what you can do to help these fellow inhabitants of our beautiful planet.

• 12:00 p.m. Lunch (ticket required) Lunch will be catered by French Press and will include vegetarian and gluten free options. Lunch will include a wrap, chips and a cookie. Coffee and apple cider will be provided.

• 12:30 p.m. Program (free event)

MEAL TICKETS:
Tickets are $15.
Limit of 50 participants for the lunch event.

>> Our book sales committee will have copies of Wild and Rare: Tracking Endangered Species in the Upper Midwest available for purchase at this event. Please join us for an autographing session following the presentation.

ADAM REGN ARVIDSON is a landscape architect and writer living in Minneapolis. His written work has been featured in magazines ranging from Landscape Architecture and Metropolis to Michigan Quarterly Review and Utne Reader. He is currently the director of strategic planning at the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. His most recent book, Wild and Rare: Tracking Endangered Species in the Upper Midwest, is a look at the landscape of the upper midwest through the lens of endangered plants and animals.

www.adamregnarvidson.com