Scroll down for author bios and featured books!
Patricia Skalka
Patricia Skalka never intended to write a mystery series, but Death Stalks Door County, the first Dave Cubiak mystery, spawned a second book and then more followed. Currently, Patricia is working on book six. Each story in the series stands alone but taken together they trace the protagonist Dave Cubiak’s journey from a grief-ridden, troubled hero to a dedicated sheriff who slowly reconciles his past and reconnects with the world.
Death Rides the Ferry, book five in the series, won the Midwest Book Award for Thriller-Mystery from the Midwest Independent Publishing Association. Death in Cold Water, her third volume, received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers.
Before turning to fiction, Patricia was a Staff Writer for Reader’s Digest and a free lance contributor to other national print and online publications. She is a member of The Authors Guild of America, Mystery Writers of America., Sisters in Crime, Wisconsin Writers Association, and the Society of Midland Authors.
She divides her time between Milwaukee and Door County.
Featured book: Death By the Bay
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Joy Ann Ribar
Joy is a Wisconsin native and presently, a Writing Instructor at Madison College, but like a cat, she's lived many other lives! Similar to her main character, Frankie Champagne, Joy is passionate about bakery, wines, nature and Wisconsin culture.
Featured book: Deep Dark Secrets: Deep Lakes Mystery Book 1
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Jeff Nania
Jeff Nania writes for Wisconsin Outdoor News and other publications. In his Northern Lakes Mysteries, he draws upon careers in law enforcement, conservation, and his passion for our natural resources. Whether he’s cutting wood, sitting in a wetland, fishing muskies, or snorkeling Spider Lake for treasure, Jeff spends as much time as possible outdoors.
Featured book: Deep Dark Secrets: Figure Eight: A Northern Lakes Mystery
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Diane Anthony
Diane Anthony lives near Scandinavia, WI with her husband and three boys. She has two YA books published: SUPERNOVA and THE RARE. Her third book, THE REMNANT will be published by the end of 2020. When she's not reading or writing, she loves to be in the woods hiking.
Featured book: THE RARE
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Rose E. Bingham
Rose Bingham is a retired registered nurse. She graduated from St. Francis School of Nursing in LaCrosse, WI in 1958, and received her BSN from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1996. She has won numerous awards for her poetry and was a Book Excellence Award Finalist and a NYC Big Books Distinguished Favorite for her memoir, Buy The Little Ones a Dolly. She is the proud mother of six, grandmother of seventeen, and great-grandmother of fourteen. Rose resides in Reedsburg, WI with her husband, Mike and spoiled dog, Rylee.
Featured book: Buy The Little Ones A Dolly: A Memoir
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Ken M. Blomberg
Ken M. Blomberg is a freelance writer and longtime resident of rural Junction City in north central Wisconsin. Author of three books, Up the Creek, Wisconsin Bird Hunting Tales and now Letters from Art, his freelance articles have been published in Field & Stream, Pointing Dog Journal, Fur, Fish & Game, Wing & Shot and the Ruffed Grouse Society (RGS) magazine - as well as state publications like Wisconsin Sportsman, Badger Sportsman, and Woods and Waters. He is a 1976 graduate of UWSP in Resource Management and past Executive Director of the Wisconsin Rural Water Association. Ken, now retired, writes a weekly outdoor column and owns a gun dog kennel in the heart of ruffed grouse and woodcock country.
Featured book: Up the Creek
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Faith Blum
Faith Blum is a small-town Wisconsin girl. She has independently published over 25 books in over five years. Most of her books are Christian Historical Fiction with an emphasis on Westerns.
Faith currently resides in Central Wisconsin with her husband and their cat, Smokey. When not writing, you can find her cooking food from scratch due to food allergies, doing dishes, knitting, crocheting, sewing, reading, or spending time with her husband.
Featured book: The Haven of Rest
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Chaplain Kathy Collins
Chaplain Kathy Collins, ASC was born in Milwaukee and raised along the Wisconsin shoreline of Lake Michigan in Port Washington.
Kathy is an avid reader, loves to golf, listen to symphony music and traditional Irish music, and enjoys traveling in and out of the country meeting new people.
Her life experiences of working in the business world, being a volunteer hospice caregiver, and surviving her fight with cancer, give Kathy the tools to fulfill her spiritual journey of transformation to becoming a hospital chaplain. Her book The Mystic Chaplain – My Story is also available as an MP3 recording.
Kathy continues her mystical journey through the heart by continuing to write, speak, and fulfill her chaplain duties. She now resides in Sun Prairie, WI.
Featured book: The Mystic Chaplain - My Story
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Kenneth Farmer
Kenneth Farmer is a retired prosecutor and public defender who writes courtroom related fiction. His works to date include Real Lawyers, a novel about a newbie public defender whose clients don’t think he is a real lawyer, and Chez Betty, a book about an American entrapped in the criminal justice system in France. Currently Kenneth is writing a memoir about his relationship with his psychotic brother.
Kenneth grew up in nearby Stevens Point, attended college there, and later law school at the University of Louisville. He is a veteran of 150 jury trials and two death penalty cases. On the lighter side he has traveled extensively in France and is relatively fluent in French, having twice attended immersion school in the Côte d’Azur. He has lectured on French justice in Madison, Waukesha, Milwaukee and in St. Paul.
Featured book: Chez Betty
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Kenneth Gass
Kenneth Gass writes and speaks about topics in paleontology, especially as they relate to important fossils found in Wisconsin. A UWM graduate, he has been studying and writing about paleontology since the 1970s. His work includes paleontology books, magazine articles, journal articles, a geologic history book, poetry books, a novella, a screen play, videos, and lectures. Through these media, he emphasizes what fossils can teach us about prehistoric life of Wisconsin and the rest of the world.
Featured book: Fossils of the Milwaukee Formation: A Diverse Middle Devonian Biota from Wisconsin, USA
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Doris Green
/Cancelled
We apologize, but Doris Green is unable to make the event and will not be in attendance.
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Hannah Katherine Klumb
Hannah has lived in Wisconsin her entire life. A Senior at Southern New Hampshire University, she is majoring in English creative writing to one day be a college professor and author. Her passions include writing, reading, ad mythology.
Featured book: The Suicide Bridge
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Michael Lorbeck
I've lived in central Wisconsin all my life. First in Stevens Point, and now in the Portage Township of Buena Vista, where I keep a flock of free range chickens and fish in nearby lakes. I'm retired.
Featured book: MISSION TO ANARCHY
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Paula O'Kray
Paula O'Kray is a retired graphic designer and wrote the popular column "Middle of the Road" for the Portage County Gazette from 2012-2017. Divorced after a 23 year marriage, in her fifties and tired of watching other people living interesting lives on television, Paula wanted something new to write about. With only a few hours experience on long motorcycle rides, Paula made the decision to ride 4,100 miles across the United States with the Women's Freedom Ride - in two weeks! Paula is a native of Stevens Point, and Kickstands UP! is her first book. Mother of two and grandmother of four, Paula enjoys hiking, motorcycling, snowshoeing, kayaking, and taking long walks with her dog. She continues to empower, encourage and inspire others online at ladylovinherlife.com and spends the rest of her time considering new and interesting adventures that will continue to pull her out of her comfort zone.
Featured book: Kickstands UP!
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Robert D. Rutta
My name is Bob Rutta and I’m a retired teacher living with my wife in Plover, Wisconsin. I have written five books during my retirement. This includes a three book series of memoirs about the nine summers I spent working at a camp, 125 miles south of the Arctic Circle in Canada.
The other two memoirs are of my time in the U. S. Army and after I returned home. I was stationed in northern Italy on a nuclear missile base during the height of the Cold War. I was an undercover, top-secret decoder for CIA, NATO, Pentagon and Army messages sent to the unit. My cover job was the units Operations Sergeant and absolutely no one could know about my secret job, including my wife. As result I had to lead a double life that required many adjustments in my day to day lifestyle. I was given training from the operations manuals of the CIA that focused on how to evade Italian operatives and Russian KGB agents. Keeping my wife safe and the codes out of enemy hands, occupied every minute of every day for my time in the army and for the next ten years after being discharged.
Featured book: Unintentional Deception
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Jody Szymanski
Enthusiast nature photographer sharing views from Wisconsin road trips; celebrating Wisconsin.
Featured book: Thru My Lens from Wisconsin
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Zach Ulrich
Zach Ulrich has been writing since elementary school. He always had a new story kindling in his imagination. During his high school years, his interest in military history helped fuel what eventually became his first novel: The Eagle’s Legacy.
Zach continued to pursue his love of history into college, attending University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, where he earned a degree as a history teacher. Just before graduation, Zach was able to bring his first work to print.
With the release of his second novel: The Warrior’s Heart, Zach continues to pursue his goal of bringing actual historical events to life through meaningful and relatable characters.
For the past several years, Zach has been teaching history at Stevens Point Christian Academy. His ultimate goal as a teacher and a writer is to show how God works His plan throughout history by using ordinary people. Heroes are only heroes by God’s grace.
Featured book: The Warrior's Heart
