Mai Neng Moua

Tickets can be purchased online by clicking below. After September 22, tickets can also be purchased in person at Pablo Center at the Confluence box office.

>> Our book sales committee will have copies of The Bride Price: A Hmong Wedding Story available for purchase at this event. Please join us for an autographing session following the presentation.
 

MAI NENG MOUA is a writer spinning tales of what it means to be Hmong in America. Her memoir, The Bride Price: A Hmong Wedding Story, was published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press in March 2017. She is the founder of Paj Ntaub Voice Hmoob literary journal and editor of the first Hmong American anthology, Bamboo Among the Oaks: Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans. Her artistic awards include the Bush Artists Fellowship, the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, the Jerome Travel Grant, the Loft Literary Center's Mentor Series, and Kundiman’s Creative Nonfiction Intensive. Mai Neng has taught creative writing to youth through the Jane Addams School for Democracy, COMPAS, and Success Beyond the Classroom. She graduated from St. Olaf College in Northfield and attended the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs in Minneapolis. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two girls.

www.mainengmoua.com

>>PULITZER PRIZE-WINNER<< Caroline Fraser

This is the 2nd Annual John, Elizabeth and Alison Morris Memorial Event, sponsored by Greg Morris and the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire Foundation.

Behind Wilder’s beloved epic of pioneer life lies a complicated story of homesteading hardships and economic and environmental disaster.  Fraser will talk about the history behind the life—from the Plains Indian Wars and the settlement of the prairies to the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression—and how Wilder ultimately transformed pure struggle into an uplifting saga.

Tickets for this event, held at the new Pablo Center at the Confluence, are $10.

Tickets can be purchased online by clicking below. After September 22, tickets can also be purchased in person at Pablo Center at the Confluence box office.

>> Our book sales committee will have copies of Prairie Fires, The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder available for purchase at this event. Please join us for an autographing session following the presentation.
 

CAROLINE FRASER is the editor of the Library of America edition of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books and the author of Rewilding the World and God’s Perfect Child.  Her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, and the London Review of Books, among other publications. Her new biography, Prairie Fires, The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, was the 2018 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Biography.  It was also named one of the New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2017 and was nominated for both a National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography and a Plutarch Award by the Biographers International Organization.

www.carolinefraser.net | www.prairiefiresbook.com

Tessa Fontaine

Fontaine’s book debut is a memoir of five months in 2013 when she faced her largest fears. She joined “World of Wonders” as a fire-eating, snake-charming, escape-artist magician — with no prior snake or flame-eating experience! Why would a 28 year old join a traveling show? Two years earlier, Fontaine’s mother had a massive stroke leaving her unable to walk or talk. Tessa dealt with this trauma by looking fear in the face and joining the show, as a way of schooling herself in the character strength of bravery. If her mother could face her new life in a wheelchair, Tessa could face snakes and fire.

Much of the conventional wisdom around writing nonfiction concerns a careful adherence to predetermined rules, such as writing truthfully and ethically. In this talk the author will speak about nonfiction’s wild sister, and when she demands we throw caution to the wind.

• 5:30 p.m. Cash bar (ticket required)

• 6:30 p.m. Dinner (ticket required)

• 8:00 p.m. Program (free event)

MEAL TICKETS:
$32.00 plus fees and tax
**The deadline to register for meal tickets is Friday, October 10.**

DINNER OPTIONS TO CHOSE FROM:

1. Oven roasted chicken breast with garlic cream sauce and buttermilk mashed potatoes. Served with a fresh seasonal vegetable.

2. Wild mushroom ravioli topped with fresh sauteed zucchini and roasted red peppers with a light garlic cream sauce. Served with a fresh seasonal vegetable.

3. North Atlantic Salmon fillet seasoned and baked with white wine and butter, topped with a lemon and lime citrus cream sauce. Served with a wild rice pilaf and a fresh seasonal vegetable.

Tickets can be purchased online by clicking below. After September 22, tickets can also be purchased in person at Pablo Center at the Confluence box office.

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

TESSA FONTAINE is the author of The Electric Woman, a memoir about performing in America’s last traveling sideshow. Other writing has appeared in PANK, Seneca Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Alabama and is working on a PhD in creative writing at the University of Utah. She has taught in prisons for five years, and founded a Writers in the Schools program in Salt Lake City. She currently lives in South Carolina.

www.tessafontaine.com

Kevin Young

This event is co-sponsored with the UW-Eau Claire Forum Series.

Building on his award-winning nonfiction book, Bunk, Kevin Young outlines the history of the hoax and the hoaxing of history that led us to this particular moment of “fake news” and “truthiness.” Young traces an American inheritance of fakery from P. T. Barnum to present-day impostors, like Rachel Dolezal, who reaffirm the hoax as rife with race and unreason, threatening our art, politics, and daily lives.

TICKET PRICES
$8.00 – General Public
$6.00 – UW System Faculty/Staff and Seniors Ages 62 & Over
$4.00 – UW System Student and Youth Ages 17 & Under

*Tickets can be purchased in person at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire W.R. Davies Student Center Service Center as well as online by clicking below.

KEVIN YOUNG is the Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Poetry Editor of the New Yorker. He is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose, several of which have won awards or have been finalists for the National Book Award. His nonfiction book Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News (Nov 2017, Graywolf Press) has garnered numerous accolades, including a “Best Book of 2017” by NPR, the Los Angeles Times, and Dallas Morning News. 

www.kevinyoungpoetry.com