Local author Alan Green will be signing copies of The Apostle Called the Magdalene, a novelization of the story of Mary Magdalene, her relationship with Jesus, and her true place among his followers.

Alan was born, raised, educated—for the first and last parts—in Southern California, with a brief interval in Berkeley, where he studied at UC Berkeley and graduated from Pacific School of Religion, collecting degrees along the way.

Alan has served as a university professor, director of a philanthropic foundation, officer of a small manufacturing company, independent consultant to the US Department of the Interior, and a minister in the United Church of Christ. 

Green has co-authored two books, and published three of his own. The lastest two have been on biblical subjects, leaving him to write what the New Testament authors did not write about Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Alan has been married for almost 55 years to his partner, Katie Willmarth Green, a lifelong writer and author. They have four sons and three grandchildren that adorn the family tree.

 

        
At 31 years old, fresh off a tour promoting her first collection, Cowboys Are My Weakness, Pam Houston had “no job, no place to live except my North Face VE 24 tent.” On an impulse and a good instinct, she spent her royalties on a 120-acre ranch near Creede, Colorado. It was more than she could afford, and required more maintenance than she could manage. And y et, twenty-five years later, it’s the piece of land that’s defined the largest part of her life. Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country tells the remarkable story of “that girl who dared herself to buy a ranch, dared herself to dig in and care for it, to work hard enough to pay for it, to figure out what other people meant when they used the world ‘home.’”

In its chapters, Houston spends her days walking along the fences on her property, watching leaves on the aspens ignite into an eruption of fall colors, and caring for the animals on her ranch: the horses, sheep, chickens, Irish wolfhounds, and a pair of miniature donkeys with outsized attitudes. Houston’s audacity and generosity are on full display as she cares for an elk calf abandoned by its herd and sleeps outside to comfort her old hound. Deep Creek raises concern about the many ways we endanger the natural world’s delicate balance, and nature’s enigmatic powers to survive and to save. It’s also a chronicle of recovery.

Houston’s childhood was marked by her parents’ alcoholism and abuse—harrowing experiences, which with Houston’s deft hand are imparted in a way that’s both straightforward and deeply affecting. More shocking than her surviving multiple car wrecks at the hands of her intoxicated parents are her strength of spirit and openness of heart, qualities that illuminate every page. It’s no wonder that despite the seclusion of her ranch, Houston is never without friends, from writers like Antonya Nelson and Robert Boswell, to practical strangers who have her back in every situation.
 

Pam Houston is the author of the novels Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound, the short story collections Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, and A Little More About Me, a collection of essays. Her stories have been selected for volumes such as The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Awards, The 2013 Pushcart Prize, and The Best American Short Stories of the Century. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA Literary Award for contemporary fiction, the Evil Companions Literary Award, and multiple teaching awards. She cofounded the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers, is a professor of English at UC–Davis, and teaches in the Institute of American Indian Arts’ low-residency MFA program and at writer’s conferences around the country and the world.

Katherine “Kathy” Cramer is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work focuses on the way people in the United States make sense of politics and their place in it. She is known for her innovative approach to the study of public opinion, in which she uses methods like inviting herself into the conversations of groups of people to listen to the way they understand public affairs. She is the author most recently of The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness and the Rise of Scott Walker. Her work has appeared in many venues including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Vox.com, USA Today, and the Guardian. She has spoken with audiences around the globe to share her insights on public opinion and the need for listening in democratic life. She is a senior consultant with the nonprofit Cortico, working to create a Local Voices Network across the United States.

Renz draws on his years of experience as a firefighter to bring a hardscrabble authenticity to his novel. He packs the tale with plenty of action and a lot of heart. His firefighting sequences are detailed and thrilling, placing readers right in front of the flames. His prose is clean and, at times, poetic...—Kirkus Reviews.
 
 Gregory Renz's new novel is a triumph of poignancy, compassion, and restraint. In it, a man's regret is transformed to triumph.—Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of the bestselling novel, The Deep End of the Ocean.
 
Beneath the Flames is an action-packed debut novel with something for every reader: suspense, romance, friendship,forgiveness, family, and more.  A novel that like its protagonist,relentlessly presses on into fiery and controversial terrain where many other writers fear to tread.—Nickolas Butler, author of The Hearts of Men and Little Faith.

"Outstanding! Beneath The Flames is an intimate combination of love, race, life as a Milwaukee Firefighter from outside the city, and life as an African American family, all trying to coexist in crazy and chaotic urban and rural environments. This is a MUST READ for anyone in the fire service or anyone wanting to get into the fire service!"—Douglas A. Holton Sr., City of Milwaukee Fire Chief
 

Fire Captain Gregory Lee Renz was involved in a dramatic rescue of two little boys from their burning basement bedroom. He received a series of awards for this rescue including induction into the Wisconsin Fire and Police Hall of Fame in 2006. When he was asked to share the dramatic rescue at several awards banquets, he was moved by the emotional responses he received and was struck by the power of his storytelling. Gregory has always been an avid reader and thought maybe he could craft a compelling novel if he could learn how to get these stories on the page. How hard could that be? He would soon learn.
 

In 2008 Captain Renz retired, exchanging his turnout gear for a writing desk to pursue his passion, storytelling. After numerous creative writing courses through the University of Wisconsin and countless workshops, conferences, and revisions, he finally typed the end to Beneath the Flames which was inspired by two adorable little girls, around eight and five years of age, who lived across from an inner-city firehouse he was stationed at for three years. Those two girls stayed in his thoughts over the years, demanding he tell their story. They are two of the main characters in the novel. He hopes he did them justice.
 

After serving the citizens of Milwaukee for twenty-eight years as a firefighter, Gregory Lee Renz retired to Lake Mills, Wisconsin with his wife, Paula.

In Irish Celtic lore, “thin places” are those locales where the veil between this world and the otherworld is porous, where there is mystery in the landscape. The earth takes on the hue of the sacred among peoples whose connection to place has remained unbroken through the ages. What happens, then, when a Celtic view of nature is brought home to a North American landscape in which many inhabitants’ ancestral connections to place are surface-thin?

In a quest to find a deeper spiritual landscape in his own home, Kevin Koch applies eight principles of a Celtic spiritual view of nature to places in Ireland and to the American Midwest’s rugged Driftless Area, an unglaciated region of river bluffs, rock outcrops, and steeply wooded hills.

The Thin Places brings onsite mountaineering guides, spiritual leaders, geologists, and archaeologists alongside scholars in the fields of Celtic studies, religion, and conservation. But the text never strays far from story, from a trek through the Wicklow Mountains and the bogs of Western Ireland or among ancient Native American burial mounds and abandoned nineteenth-century lead mines in the bluffs above the Mississippi River. 

Kevin Koch teaches in the English: Creative Writing program at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, where he offers courses such as Nature Writing, Writing the Midwest Landscape, and The Nature of Nature in Ireland.  His previous books include The Driftless Land: Spirit of Place in the Upper Mississippi Valley and Skiing At Midnight: A Nature Journal from Dubuque County, Iowa.  He also writes a nature column for The [Dubuque] Telegraph Herald.

Legendary actress and two-time Academy Award winner Olivia de Havilland is best known for her role as Melanie Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). She often inhabited characters who were delicate, elegant, and refined. At the same time, she was a survivor with a fierce desire to direct her own destiny on and off the screen. She fought and won a lawsuit against Warner Bros. over a contract dispute that changed the studio contract system forever. She is also noted for her long feud with her fellow actress and sister Joan Fontaine―a feud that lasted from 1975 until Fontaine's death in 2013.

Victoria Amador utilizes extensive interviews and forty years of personal correspondence with de Havilland to present an in-depth look at the life and career of this celebrated actress. Amador begins with de Havilland's early life―she was born in Japan in 1916 to affluent British parents who had aspirations of success and fortune in faraway countries―and her theatrical ambitions at a young age. The book then follows her career as she skyrocketed to star status, becoming one of the most well-known starlets in Tinseltown. Readers are given an inside look at her love affairs with iconic cinema figures such as James Stewart and John Huston, and her onscreen partnership with Errol Flynn, with whom she starred in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Dodge City (1939). After she moved to Europe in the mid-1950s, de Havilland became the first woman to serve as the president of the Cannes Film Festival in 1965, and remained active but selective in film and television until 1988.

Olivia de Havilland: Lady Triumphant is a tribute to one of Hollywood's greatest legends, who has evolved from a gentle heroine to a strong-willed, respected, and admired artist.

Victoria Amador has taught at a number of universities in the US, UK, the Middle East, and Europe. She is the author of The Gothic Portal, and a number of articles on Hollywood cinema, fashion, and the gothic. She resides between Minneapolis, MN and Burntisland, Scotland.

“There is more life packed on each page of Ordinary Girls than some lives hold in a lifetime.” —Julia Alvarez 

In this searing memoir, Jaquira Díaz writes fiercely and eloquently of her challenging girlhood and triumphant coming of age.

While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Díaz found herself caught between extremes. As her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was supported by the love of her friends. As she longed for a family and home, her life was upended by violence. As she celebrated her Puerto Rican culture, she couldn’t find support for her burgeoning sexual identity. From her own struggles with depression and sexual assault to Puerto Rico’s history of colonialism, every page of Ordinary Girls vibrates with music and lyricism. Díaz writes with raw and refreshing honesty, triumphantly mapping a way out of despair toward love and hope, to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.

Reminiscent of Tara Westover’s Educated, Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club, and Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, Jaquira Díaz’s memoir provides a vivid portrait of a life lived in (and beyond) the borders of Puerto Rico and its complicated history—and reads as electrically as a novel.

Jaquira Díaz was born in Puerto Rico. Her work has been published in Rolling Stone, the Guardian, Longreads, the Fader, and T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and included in The Best American Essays 2016. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Kenyon Review, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She lives in Miami Beach with her partner, the writer Lars Horn.