Wisconsin Book Festival

The Wisconsin Book Festival, presented by Madison Public Library in partnership with Madison Public Library Foundation, presents free, public author events that celebrate books and spark conversations. Each year, the festival creates a robust schedule of accomplished and new writers whose fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books appeal to all ages of readers. The festival presents stand-alone events throughout the year with a culminating celebration each fall.

Schedule of Events:

Friends of UW-Madison Libraries Book Sale
4 p.m. - 8 p.m.
Memorial Library

This semiannual sale is organized by the Friends to help to support public events and lectures, priorities identified by the Dean of Libraries, special purchases and preservation of library materials, and grants for the visiting scholar program. The Friends accepts donations for upcoming sales on a continual basis. The sale is free (except the preview sale) and open to the public. 80 – 100 community volunteers participate in this event that draws students, faculty, and visitors from around the Midwest. Books for the sale are donated by University of Wisconsin faculty, staff, students, and Madison-area residents.

UW-Madison Go Big Read: Sitting Pretty
Rebekah Taussig
7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m
Union South - Wisconsin Union

Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.

Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life.

Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.