Midwest Writers Room

Luella and Ken
  • 5.0 (12)
  • BOOKS

Podcast from the Wisconsin Writers Association. We discuss all things writerly, with an emphasis on the unique flavor of works that originate in the Midwest.

  1. 4D AGO

    Chapter Break with Julianne Lepp

    BIO: Julianne Lepp has a background in finance, game design, and massage therapy. She lives with rheumatoid arthritis and supports those living with chronic illness in many capacities. She has served as the parish minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, since 2010 and trained with Meadville Lombard Theological School to become a spiritual director. SYNOPSIS: Living with chronic illness has many challenges, and the journey is not just a physical one. Tend to Your Spirit is a companion for this emotional and spiritual journey, offering tools to help readers practice self-compassion and self-care. With candor and vulnerability, spiritual leaders Julianne Lepp and Florence Caplow, themselves living with long-term illness, offer insights and practices that can benefit anyone facing the emotional impact of a new or ongoing condition. Tend to Your Spirit is intended for people at any stage of their journey with chronic illness or chronic pain, to help you live a full, spiritually connected life—a life informed and shaped, but not defeated, by your illness. LINKS: https://www.juliannelepp.com/

    24 min

  2. DEC 8

    Chapter Break with TK Sheffield

    BIO: TK Sheffield, MA, writes stories to laugh and escape, including Nellie’s Island, a children’s horse story set in Mackinac Island available at Island Books. Sheffield’s funny cozy mysteries are The Devil Wears Prada meets a Wisconsin supper club, and they’ve earned an IBPA Humor medal, a Claymore, and an IPPY. She also has a new magical romance series releasing in DECEMBER, THE VALENTINE LINES. She’s on the Wisconsin Writers Association’s board, host of the Wispresso Café, an author talk show, and a member of Blackbird Writers, SISTERS IN CRIME, and SCBWI. SYNOPSIS: The Valentine Lines reimagines Cupid—aka Bart McGee—as an underdog ditching the corporate grind of Mt. Olympus, Inc., for small-town life in quaint Mineral Point, Wisconsin. When Bart launches a matchmaking business and falls in love with a local baker, chaos ensues as his meddling Olympus relatives crash the scene. It’s packed with snappy banter, slapstick escapades, mythological mishaps, and thoughtful explorations of love, trust, and self-discovery. It’s "Kate & Leopold" meets "The Holiday,” a modern “Bell, Book, and Candle.” A light, literary escape for readers craving whimsy with emotional resonance. No sex, politics, foul language. Manuscript winner/finalist in CIBA (humor) and Southwest Writers. LINKS: https://tksheffieldwriter.com/

    21 min

  3. NOV 28

    Chapter Break with Steve Fox

    BIO: Steve is the winner of the Rick Bass Montana Prize for Fiction, the Zona Gale Award for Short Fiction, The Great Midwest Writing Contest, the Jade Ring Award, the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters Fiction Contest, and the Midwestern Gothic Summer Flash Contest. His fiction has appeared in New Ohio Review, MQR, Whitefish Review, and others. SYNOPSIS: Award-winning writer Steve Fox returns with These Are My People, where some houses are dark, some are bright and smell of busy kitchens, and some have rooms beyond a looking glass. People crash trucks and make snow angels and spill coffee and buy pottery and self-starve and roam basements and day-drink at nursing homes and can smell broken love through brick walls and make apple pies for new neighbors. Whirling and wondrous, these stories show Fox at the peak of his powers. LINKS: https://stevefoxwrites.com/

    22 min

  4. NOV 19

    Chapter Break with Pernille Ipsen

    BIO: Pernille Ipsen was professor of gender and women’s studies and history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for fifteen years and is now a full-time writer. The Danish-language version of this book, Et åbent øjeblik (An open moment), was published in 2020 and was awarded the Montana Prize for literature, one of Denmark’s top literary prizes. She divides her time between Madison and Copenhagen, Denmark. SYNOPSIS: On New Year’s Eve in Copenhagen in 1972, seven women had a child together: one gave birth and six others attended. They had met a year earlier at a feminist women’s camp on a small island and now, with about twenty other women’s liberationists, they occupied three dilapidated apartment buildings in the center of Copenhagen. One became the country’s first Women’s House, the nerve center of the Women’s Movement in Denmark, and the other two were women-only communal living spaces that were Pernille Ipsen’s first home. In this intimate portrait of life during the exhilarating early days of women’s liberation in Scandinavia and dramatic social change around the globe, she tells the stories of these seven women, her seven mothers. LINKS: pernilleipsen.com

    25 min

  5. NOV 17

    Chapter Break with Harvey Araton

    BIO: Harvey Araton is a longtime sports journalist, a former New York Times columnist and author of 10 books, including Driving Mr. Yogi, a New York Times best-seller, and When The Garden Was Eden, the same title of an ESPN 30for30 documentary, which he co-produced. Araton was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017 for his work in media. SYNOPSIS: The Goal of the Game is a middle-grade readers novel that explores the pleasures and pressures of youth sports at a time when for-profit business has developed a major impact on the games children play. The story follows Zane Hamill, known as Z, from early days of rec league soccer to elite club competition and finally to a declaration of the terms by which he is willing to play.  LINKS: https://www.harveyaraton.com/

    29 min

  6. NOV 14

    Chapter Break with Sarah Jane Peters

    BIO: Sarah Jane Peters is a peace and love teacher in Green Bay, WI, licensed counselor, storyteller, musician, and mother of three. Through her practice, she helps families navigate the digital world with presence, emotional connection, and care.  SYNOPSIS: Written with busy caregivers in mind, it offers quick-access tools, age-specific strategies, and reflective prompts that deepen your understanding of how to meet your child’s emotional needs in a fast-paced, tech-saturated world. Through nervous system awareness, creative analogies, and gentle encouragement, Sarah Jane invites you to return to presence, nurture your relationship with your child, and explore how healing your own story transforms the parenting journey. Ideal for parents, educators, and cycle-breakers ready to foster conscious connection and emotional clarity—without shame, rigidity, or overwhelm. LINKS: Peaceful-practicellc.com

    21 min

  7. NOV 10

    Chapter Break with Dennis McBride

    BIO:  Dennis McBride is Mayor of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He holds a journalism degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a master’s degree in public administration from Princeton University, and a law degree from New York University. He practiced law for 35 years for Boston and Milwaukee law firms and the U.S. government.  A two-time marathon champion, he is a member of the UW-Milwaukee and Wauwatosa East High School Athletics Halls of Fame. He is the author of A City on the Edge: Pandemic, Protest, and Polarization and co-author, with his twin brother Patrick, of The Luckiest Boy in the World.  SYNOPSIS: As a pandemic convulsed America in 2020, mass shootings soared and the murder of George Floyd touched off international protests. Churning in the background were a bitter presidential campaign and counterprotests opposing health measures and the election result. Every mayor struggled with some of these challenges, but Dennis McBride, the new mayor of a mostly-white suburb bordered by Milwaukee, faced them all. His city was a microcosm of a troubled nation. A City on the Edge tells how mayors have steered our hometowns through a storm of personal and political divisions, and how those events are still affecting America today.

    25 min

  8. NOV 3

    Chapter Break with James Francisco Bonilla

    BIO: James is a New York City–born Puerto Rican writer now living just across the Mississippi in Winona, Minnesota. He was born with congenital cataracts and has never had sight in his left eye. At age nine, he lost much of his remaining sight in the right eye due to a racial assault. A decade later a medical breakthrough restored the sight to his right eye. Because of his experiences his memoir follows his entry into the early disability rights movement which helped ground his work as a community organizer and, later as a nationally recognized social justice educator and environmentalist. SYNOPSIS: After a classmate hurled a horseshoe at his face James became legally blind. At home, too, he feared physical violence, experiencing the unpredictable outbursts of a single mother suffering from mental illness. Searching for relief and inspiration, he discovered an unexpected solace in the natural world, spiritual encounters with Mother Earth that led him toward both personal healing and advocacy. An Eye for an I presents both James and his aggressors with refreshing nuance and humility, inviting readers to empathize, be inspired, and consider their own potential to be of service in a broken, yet beautiful, world.  LINKS: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517919146/an-eye-for-an-i/

    26 min
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5
out of 5
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About

Podcast from the Wisconsin Writers Association. We discuss all things writerly, with an emphasis on the unique flavor of works that originate in the Midwest.

Information

  • Creator
    Luella and Ken
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    116
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Midwest Writers Room
  • Show Website
    Midwest Writers Room