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Category: Nonfiction

  • Spooky (And Not So Spooky) Halloween Books for Kids

    Halloween is a holiday for children. Adults may try to get in on the fun by throwing masquerade parties, but children — their candy, costumes, and trick-or-treating adventures — make Halloween what it is. And for parents who worry about sugar overdoses, a charming Halloween picture book might be the perfect low-calorie treat. The Spooky […]

  • The Starling for Citizenship

    Starlings are unloved, with notable exceptions being Shakespeare and Mozart. Few poets find the starling an attractive bird, most do not. The starling is broadly reviled as an urban pest bird, the haunt of every feedmill, lumber yard, shopping mall, church belfry, every industrial egregiousness, every road bridge. Starlings even fly weird. They look clownish. […]

  • Peter Sloma: Fish Creek’s Resident ‘Generalist’

    A decade ago, with the advent of e-books, prognosticators predicted the end of the printed book. And for a time it looked like the predictions might be correct; but after a rapid rise in sales through 2013, e-book sales have since leveled off. Indeed, the number of printed titles being published each year from established […]

  • Washington Island Lit Fest Announces Author Slate

    The Washington Island Literary Festival Committee announced the festival’s 2018 slate of authors who reflect the festival’s theme of “Words on Water.” The 6th Annual Festival will be held Sept. 13-16 at the Trueblood Performing Arts Center and various locations throughout the island. “All of the authors invited to this year’s festival have made clean […]

  • The Bestseller List: July 13, 2018

    HARDCOVER FICTION The President Is Missing by Bill Clinton There There by Tommy Orange A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles Warlight by Michael Ondaatje The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah HARDCOVER NONFICTION Calypso by David Sedaris Educated by Tara Westover The World as It Is by Ben Rhodes How to Change Your Mind by […]

  • Of Watercress, Potato Salad, Grilled Cheese and Liver Flukes

    As a kid we gathered watercress at the creek for sandwiches, mayonnaise, baloney and watercress on white bread. It was a sandwich a kid could make, one step up from peanut butter. We were Boy Scouts then, when a watercress, baloney and mayo sandwich counted as living off the land. Eating like Daniel Boone. In […]

  • ‘Picturing the Past’ Book Inspires Ephraim Exhibit

    A new publication from the Ephraim Historical Foundation (EHF) highlights a portion of the organization’s extensive Door County art collection. Spanning from the mid-1800s to today, the art collection includes more than 100 pieces, ranging from paintings to sculpture to jewelry. This publication is a collaborative work with art historian Virginia Jones Maher and author […]

  • The Bestseller List: June 8, 2018

    TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION 1. Less by Andrew Sean Greer 2. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood 3. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 4. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward 5. Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION 1. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann 2. Evicted by Matthew Desmond 3. Hillbilly […]

  • Review: ‘The Language of Kindness’

    The Language of Kindness Christie Watson/336 pages, Tim Duggan Books, 2018   There was a time in your life when you tried everything. Full-time, part-time, gig-worker, entrepreneurship, you changed jobs like most people change clothes. It’s exhausting and disheartening and author Christie Watson had the same experience:  café worker, milk deliverer, video shop clerk, she […]

  • The Bestseller List: May 25, 2018

    TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION 1. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward 2. Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout 3. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 4. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman 5. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION 1. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann 2. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance […]

  • Nonfiction: When the Cardioderma Cor Sings

    Birds sing; mockingbirds, sandhills and robins sing…a bird as doesn’t sing is risking excommunication. Wrens sing ceaselessly…a friend with a famous jungle experience relates how the chatter of a house wren reminds him of an AK-47. Same tinny, toy-like staccato, if not quite so lethal. The sound of wrens, he says, haunts him. Birds sing, […]

  • Wisconsin Historical Society’s Latest Book Explores State’s Natural History, Geology

    Tour Wisconsin’s unique geologic past with Wisconsin Historical Society’s recently published, Wisconsin State Parks: Extraordinary Stories of Geology and Natural History by Scott Spoolman. This book offers a deeper understanding of our state’s dramatic natural history, and explores the complexity behind the impressive landscape seen today. Spoolman uses his accessible storytelling style to take readers […]

  • Book Review: Michael Perry’s ‘Montaigne in Barn Boots’

    In the first sentence of his new book, Montaigne in Barn Boots, Michael Perry attempts to test an electrified pig fencer by seizing it with both hands. Two chapters later, while packing his van for a book-and-performance tour, Perry keeps reminding himself not to forget the cash box. He jumps into his van, heads down […]

  • Questions & Authors: Hal Prize Judge José Rodríguez

    Mexico-born writer José Antonio Rodríguez got his literary start penning poetry, but it is nonfiction which he will judge in the Peninsula Pulse’s 2018 Hal Prize photo, poetry and prose contest. Rodríguez is a native of Mexico who was raised in south Texas. A poet, memoirist and translator, his work has appeared in The New […]

  • 2018 Hal Prize Judges Announced

    The Peninsula Pulse newspaper is pleased to announce the judges of the 2018 Hal Prize poetry, prose and photography contest. They are:  award-winning Wisconsin photographer Carl Corey, Minneapolis poet Leslie Adrienne Miller, Minnesota novelist Peter Geye, and nonfiction writer José Rodríguez. Conducted annually since 1998, the mission of the Peninsula Pulse’s Hal Prize is to […]

  • Isherwood: How to Dress Warm

    Weather forecasters like NOAA include advice of how to dress for a cold winter’s day. Never mind for Northerners alerting the hazard at a measly zero degrees seems a touch wimpy. Once zero wasn’t cold enough to be considered hazardous, and that with six volt batteries and a hand crank. This warning demonstrates the remarkable […]

  • Door County Reads Author on Writing, Refugee Experience

    This year’s Door County Reads book selection is The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, by Kao Kalia Yang. The book is the memoir of a Hmong family displaced by war, a childhood in the Ban Vinai refugee camp, and her family’s experiences making a life in America. The author will give a keynote address at […]

  • Isherwood: Soviet Man Gains Eternal Life

    We knew this was gonna happen, it’s the logical sequence of where all this is going. Those letters A.I., where artificial intelligence is going. Verge.com recently reported on the death and resurrection of a Russian named Roman Mazurenko, born in Belarus, 1981. Only child of Sergei and Victoria with a tendency to red hair, a […]

  • Announcing the 2018 Hal Prize Contest

    The Peninsula Pulse newspaper proudly presents the 2018 Hal Prize. Conducted annually since 1998, the mission of the Peninsula Pulse’s Hal Prize is to encourage and appreciate artistic expression through various literary forms and photography. The contest has showcased works from individuals of all ages and backgrounds – novice writers and photographers to professionals. The […]

  • Justin Isherwood: The Tree In the Barn

    My father was a curious man, perhaps strange, perhaps odd, the streak of oddness as routinely happens to dairymen. A lifetime of what ungodly early mornings will do to you, as will the abiding love of cows. My dad loved his cows. Our father went into a Zen state at evening milking, as could less […]