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Waupaca Book Festival authors announced

Plans are under way for the second Waupaca Book Festival.

The event will be held Friday, Oct. 12 and Saturday, Oct. 13.

Michael Perry, Matt Tavares and Brett Laidlaw will be the festival’s featured authors.

Perry is a humorist and the author of the bestselling memoirs Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time, Truck: A Love Story and Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting, as well as the essay collection Off Main Street.

He has written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Outside, Backpacker, Orion and Salon.com, and is a contributing editor to Men’s Health.

Perry has performed and produced two live audience humor recordings (I Got It From the Cows and Never Stand Behind a Sneezing Cow) and performs regularly with his band the Long Beds.

He lives in rural Wisconsin, where he remains active with the local volunteer rescue service.

Tavares grew up in Winchester, Mass, a suburb just outside of Boston.

He wrote and illustrated his first picture book, Sebastian’s Ball, as his senior thesis at Bates College. Three years later, after much revision, Sebastian’s Ball became Zachary’s Ball, his first published picture book.

Zachary’s Ball went on to win an Oppenheim Gold Seal Award, a Massachusetts Book Award Honor and was named one of Yankee Magazine’s 40 Classic New England Children’s Books.

Since then, Tavares has published 11 more books: he is the author-illustrator of There Goes Ted Williams: The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived, Henry Aaron’s Dream, Mudball and Oliver’s Game, and the illustrator of Over the River and Through the Wood by L. Maria Child, Jack’s Path of Courage: The Life of John F. Kennedy, written by Doreen Rappaport, The Gingerbread Pirates, written by Kristin Kladstrup, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, attributed to Anonymous, Jack and the Beanstalk, written by E. Nesbit, Iron Hans: A Grimms’ Fairy Tale, retold by Stephen Mitchell and Lady Liberty: A Biography, written by Doreen Rappaport.

His books have won several awards, including three Parents’ Choice Gold Awards, a Parents’ Choice Silver Honor, four Oppenheim Gold Seal Awards, an International Reading Association Children’s Book Award and an Orbis Pictus Award for Oustanding Nonfiction for Children.

His artwork has been exhibited at the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators, the Brandywine River Museum and the Mazza Museum of Picture Bok Art.

Tavares lives in Maine with his wife, Sarah, and their two daughters.

Laidlaw is a writer, cook, bread baker, trout bum, mushroom hound and gardener.

After spending most of his life in the Twin Cities area, he recently relocated (along with his wife, Mary Eckmeier, and two wire-haired pointing griffons, Annabel and Lily) to hilly northern Dunn County in Wisconsin.

He is the author of two novels – Three Nights in the Heart of the Earth and Blue Bel Air.

His short stories, essays and reviews have appeared in Gray’s Sporting Journal, the Star Tribune newspaper, Minneapolis Observer Quarterly and elsewhere.

Laidlaw has also recorded essays on northern foods for the “Wisconsin Life” series on Wisconsin Public Radio.

In 2008 he started Trout Caviar, a blog celebrating local, seasonal eating and the distinctive foods of the upper Midwest.

The blog led to a book of recipes, essays and photographs called Trout Caviar: Recipes from a Northern Forager, which was published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press in September of 2011.

The book was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award in general non-fiction, and Laidlaw was nominated for the Best Chef of 2011 for the “Silver Whisk Awards” of the Heavy Table website.

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