Events Calendar

Writers Talk Writing: A Panel Discussion

Saturday, March 21

1:00 pm

Location: Village Center Meeting Room

Award-winning, bestselling local authors Valerie Biel, Liam Callanan, Rochelle Melander, and Jeannée Sacken discuss their journeys to publication. Writing adult fiction and non-fiction as well as books for children and teens, they will share what led them to become authors and what their typical writing days are like. Learn what drafting and revising a manuscript entail and pick up some tips on getting an agent or publishing your own work.

About the authors:

Valerie Biel is an award-winning author of six books, writing stories for middle grade to adult audiences. She assists other authors with editing, promotion, and marketing, and frequently teaches workshops to students (of all ages). She also co-hosts the WisMissus Podcast. When she and her husband aren’t traveling for their charity, The World Orphan Fund, they live in Dodge County on a (tiny) piece of her family’s century-old farm.

Liam Callanan is a writer and teacher. His novel, Paris by the Book, a national bestseller, was translated into multiple languages and won the Edna Ferber Prize. He’s also won the Hunt Prize, and his first novel, The Cloud Atlas, was a finalist for an Edgar Award. Liam’s work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and he's recorded numerous essays for public radio. He's also taught for the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and lives in Wisconsin with his wife and daughters.

Rochelle Melander is a professional certified coach with a specialty in ADHD and writing coaching, a speaker, editor and the author of 14 books, including the award-winning children’s book Mightier Than the Sword: Rebels, Reformers, and Revolutionaries Who Changed the World through Writing.

Described by MKE Lifestyle as “Indiana Jones with a camera,” Jeannée Sacken is a photojournalist who travels to the ends of the earth, documenting endangered species. She is also the award-winning author of The Annie Hawkins Series and The Women Who Stand Between. Her novels have won the 2021 American Writing Awards Novel of the Year and the Hawthorne Prize, the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Suspense and the Literary Global Award for Novel of the Year, among other prizes. She publishes with Ten 16 Press.