UW-Madison Libraries in the Wisconsin Book Festival

The Wisconsin Book Festival is just days away!

This year’s festival will feature local literary talents alongside national voices to create a unique event full of free community programs in keeping with our library’s mission to learn, share, and create. Over four days from October 17th through the 20th, the festival will host more than 50 events incorporating literature, film, art, and performance. The festival is an opportunity for people to come together from across Wisconsin in celebration of books, reading, and ideas.

UW–Madison Libraries are kicking off the Festival with the famous Friends Fall Book Sale and then continuing to participate with other events, like the Print & Resist zine fest! Read on for more information.

Friends of the UW—Madison Libraries Fall Book Sale
Wednesday, 10/16 – Saturday, 10/19
116 Memorial Library | 728 State Street

This is the largest used book sale in Wisconsin! With more than 15,000 books to choose from on a variety of subjects, there’s something for everyone.

Hours are:

• Wednesday, October 16, 5:00-9:00pm (Preview Sale, $5 entry fee)
• Thursday, October 17 and Friday, October 18, 10:30am-7:00pm (Regular Sale, no entry fee)
• Saturday, October 19, 10:30am-1:00pm (Bag Sale, $4 per bag) Bring grocery-sized bags to fill or buy one for $1.
• Saturday, October 19, 1:05-2:00pm
• (All remaining books are free. Any unsold books remaining after 2:00pm will be donated to Better World Books)

For more information about the book sale or donating books, visit the Friends website at cms.library.wisc.edu/friends, email friends@library.wisc.edu or call 608-265-2505.

Library as Art Space Drop-In Workshops
Saturday 10/29, 10:00am-12:00pm
Central Library | 201 West Mifflin Street

The Library as Incubator Project is hosting three fun drop-in workshops for blackout poetry, mapmaking, and tracing art using other texts, maps, artwork in books, and a Library Workbook. You can participate in all three, or just one! Then, feel free to explore the new Central Library.

The Library as Incubator Project began with 3 co-students from UW–Madison’s School of Library and Information Studies: Erinn Batykefer, Laura Damon-Moore, and Christina Endres. Batykefer and Damon-Moore both held the position as Communication Specialist for the UW–Madison General Library System. The co-founders of LAIP saw the ways in which libraries and artists could work together to support and strengthen each other. Read more about the project, including about their upcoming book, The Artist’s Library: A Field Guide from the Library as Incubator Project, on their website.

Madison Print & Resist
Saturday 10/19, 11:00am-5:00pm
Helen C. White
College Library

Join us at College Library for a day-long festival of zines, political print media, grassroots journals and experimental publications.  The roster of exhibitors is drawn from the world of experimental publishers, visual artists, artisanal bookmakers and printers, radical imprints, grassroots zine authors, and activist designers. The exhibitors hail from across Wisconsin and from around the United States. They include an array of subversively creative print media artists and publishers, including names such as Just Seeds and Xexoxial. Learn more it on the Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative website.

Wisconsin Poet Laureate Max Garland
Saturday 10/19, 4:00-5:00pm
A Room of One’s Own Bookstore

Wisconsin Poet Laureate, Max Garland will read a selection of his poetry. Max is the author of one of Parallel Press’s very first poetry chapbooks, Apparition (Parallel Press, 1999).

Friends of the CCBC Fall Book Sale
Saturday 10/19, 8:00am-2:00pm
4207 Helen C. White

CCBC stands for Cooperative Children’s Book Center, a place for educators, librarians, students, and other individuals to learn more about children’s and young adult literature. Their book sale includes $2-4 hardcover fiction, paperbacks, and picture books. Check it out and read more about it here!

Public Poets Conversation
Sunday 10/20, 11:30am-12:30pm
Central Library Community Room

Madison Poets Laureate Sarah Busse and Wendy Vardaman will host a discussion with several poets (including Wisconsin Poet Laureate Max Garland!), on the topic of public poetry.

For more information including the full events schedule, visit The Wisconsin Book Festival’s website at https://www.wisconsinbookfestival.org/