The Wisconsin Book Festival brings authors to Madison all year long, but their big event happens in October every years. The four-day long Fall Celebration will bring more than 50 to town from October 19th through October 22nd. On today’s A Public Affair, host Nate Carlin talks with 4 poets who will be in Madison for the celebration!

First, we talk to Taylor Byas about her book I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times. She will reading on October 20th at 3pm at Central Library. Second, we talk with Leslie Sainz, the author of Have You Been Long Enough At Table. Leslie is followed by Alisha Dietzman who wrote Sweet Movie. They will be doing a joint reading at October 20th at 9 p.m. at Central Library. Lastly, Erin Marie Lynch joins us to talk about her book Removal Acts. She will be at Arts + Literature Laboratory on October 21st at 6 p.m.

Taylor Byas is the author of I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times. She is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is the 1st place winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway, the 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contests, and the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Prize. She is the author of the chapbooks Bloodwarm and Shutter.

Leslie Sainz is the author of the debut poetry collection Have You Been Long Enough at Table. The daughter of Cuban exiles, she is the recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, the Yale Review, New England Review, Kenyon Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. Leslie is the managing editor of the New England Review.

Alisha Dietzman is the author of Sweet Movie. Her chapbook Slow Motion Something For No Reason was the 2021 editors’ choice selection for the Tomaž Šalamun Prize. Her poetry has appeared in  Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.

Erin Marie Lynch is the author of Removal Acts. Her writing appears in Poetry, New England Review, DIAGRAM, Narrative, Best New Poets, and other publications. She has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, Indigenous Nations Poets, and the Hugo House. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California, as well as an associate editor at Air/Light magazine.

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