Sturgeon Bay Author Releases First Novel

Jill Stukenberg. Photo by Emma Whitman.

Sturgeon Bay native Jill Stukenberg has released her first publication: a fiction work titled News of the Air. As the winner of the Big Moose Prize hosted by Black Lawrence Press, she received an award and cash prize and had her work published.

In it, Allie Krane is heavily pregnant when she and her husband flee urban life after a rash of eco-terrorism breaks out in their city. They reinvent themselves as the proprietors of a northwoods fishing resort, where they live in relative peace for nearly two decades – until two strange children arrive by canoe. 

Like the small ecological disasters lapping yearly at their shore, have the problems of the modern world finally found Allie, her husband and their troubled teenage daughter? This eco-novel of a family, told from three points of view, explores how we remake our lives once we open our hearts to all the news we’ve chosen to ignore.

Write On, Door County will host a reading with Stukenberg on Oct. 8, 2-3:30 pm.

Stukenberg (jillstukenberg.com) graduated from New Mexico State University’s MFA program and is an associate professor of English at UW-Stevens Point. She lives in Wausau with poet Travis Brown and their child.