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BookFest features Wisconsin authors

This spring’s Waupaca BookFest will include a panel of Wisconsin authors.

Jim Trainor, who lives in central Wisconsin, will present and moderate the panel during the April 18 book festival.

The event will be held at the Waupaca Area Public Library, and a Wisconsin Humanities Council Grant has been applied for to help defray the cost of the book festival.

Trainor’s work as a physicist and later as an Episcopalian priest took him across the United States.

His novels include “Waverly’s Universe,” “The Sand People” and “Up North,” which was published last fall.

The panel of Wisconsin authors will also include Bill Berry, Christine DeSmet, Victoria Houston and Dean Jensen.

Berry grew up in Green Bay and for more than 20 years, worked as a reporter, columnist and editor for several daily newspapers.

When he decided to redirect his energy to communicating about conservation and agriculture, that work took him across the country to learn and teach about private lands conservation.

His book, “Banning DDT: How Citizen Activists Led the Way,” is about how a group of Wisconsinites uncovered the dangers of DDT.

Berry lives in Stevens Point and is a columnist for The Capital Times newspaper in Madison.

DeSmet is a novelist, screenwriter, short story writer and playwright.

She teaches writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the director of the annual Write-by-the-Lake Writer’s Workshop & Retreat and the Weekend with Your Novel.

Her romantic suspense novel, “Spirit Lake,” won the Romantic Writers of America’s Golden Pen contest. Her Fudge Shop mystery series takes place in Door County, while her Mischief in Moonstone mysteries take place in northern Wisconsin.

Born and raised in Rhinelander, Houston is the author of the Loon Lake mystery series, which is set in the northwoods of Wisconsin against a background of fishing.

Her nonfiction books include “Restore Yourself: A Woman’s Guide to Reviving her Libido and Passion for Life,” which she wrote with Dr. James Simon.

After careers in magazine and newspaper writing, publicity and public relations, Houston returned to Rhinelander, where she hunts, fishes and writes mysteries.

Jensen wrote for Sheboygan and Manitowoc newspapers before joining the Milwaukee Journal.

He wrote about anything, but preferred being an art critic and was eventually assigned to cover the Great Circus Parade.

The art and circus worlds came together during a visit with Alfred Pelikan, the former director of the Milwaukee Art Institute.

Pelikan’s sister, Lillian Leitzel, was one of the world’s most famous circus performers, and Jensen told her story in “Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus.”

Jensen also wrote “The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hinton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins” and “The Biggest, The Smallest, The Longest, The Shortest: A Chronicle of the American Circus from Its Heartland.”

He owns the Dean Jensen Gallery in Milwaukee and continues to write.

The April 18 book festival will also include a variety of authors for readers of all ages, workshops for writers and an author’s reception.

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