MINERAL POINT, Wis.—Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts will welcome nine writers in residence at the start of 2026. Marking the fifteenth year of the Winter Writers Reading Series, this upcoming year will feature award-winning Wisconsin writers reading from their work on select Thursday evenings. Shake Rag Alley is excited to partner with Republic of Letters Books, Mineral Point’s independent bookstore, for our 2026 reading series, with additional programming at the Mineral Point Public Library, and Rountree Gallery in Platteville, Wisconsin. Unless noted, readings will be held at Republic of Letters Books, 151 High St., Mineral Point, at 6 p.m.
Since 2011 Shake Rag Alley has partnered with a number of Wisconsin writing organizations to provide residencies to their annual writing contest winners. For 2026, these organizations include Wisconsin People & Ideas, the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission through the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters, Arts + Literature Laboratory. and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.
From January to March, writers stay in Shake Rag Alley’s inspiring lodging facilities surrounded by the nurturing environment of historic Mineral Point’s artistic community. Visiting writers participate in community outreach activities, including readings, workshops, and school visits. See the full schedule to enjoy the chance to meet award-winning authors during the upcoming free Winter Writers Reading Series. More information available at www.ShakeRagAlley.org/writers-reading-series/
Thursday, Jan. 15: Elizabeth Hendricks & Alison Thumel
Elizabeth Hendricks was awarded the Wisconsin People & Ideas Fiction Award. Elizabeth Hendricks is from New Berlin and currently a junior at the University of Iowa. An aspiring fantasy author, she works as the web editor for Earthwords Undergraduate Literary Review, the oldest literary magazine on campus. When she isn’t writing, she loves reading, drawing, and spending time in nature.
Alison Thumel was awarded the Wisconsin People & Ideas Poetry Award. Alison Thumel’s debut poetry collection, Architect, won the 2024 Miller Williams Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the 2025 Kate Tufts Poetry Award. She is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in poetry at Stanford University, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the Martha Meier Renk Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she completed her MFA. Her poems have appeared widely, including in Poetry, Ploughshares, and the New England Review. She lives and writes in Wisconsin.
Thursday, Jan. 22: Susanna Daniel was awarded the Wisconsin Writers Zona Gale Short Nonfiction Award. Susanna Daniel’s third novel, Girlfriending, will be published in February of 2026 by Third Rail Press. Girlfriending is a spinoff of “The Goddess of Illicit Choices,” which won the 2024 Zona Gale award for short fiction. Her debut novel, Stiltsville, was awarded the 2011 PEN/Bingham prize, and her second novel, Sea Creatures, was a Target Book Club pick. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Writers’ Workshop as well as a MacDowell Fellow and UCross Fellow.
Thursday, March 5: Robert Fromberg was awarded the Wisconsin Writers Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award. Robert Fromberg’s books include the award-winning memoir How to Walk with Steve, about caring for his autistic brother; the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award–winning novel Gee, That Was Fun: 7 Days of Mayhem, 1983; and the new novel The Serial Stowaway. A product of Peoria, Illinois, Fromberg moved at age 16 to New York City’s Lower East Side, where he spent his nights at CBGB, after which he obtained a degree from the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers and taught writing for seventeen years at Northwestern University. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Wednesday, March 18 at Rountree Gallery, Platteville: Brenda Cárdenas is the Wisconsin Poet Laureate. Brenda Cárdenas was born and raised in Milwaukee and has also lived in Beaver Dam, Appleton, Menasha, and Fond du Lac. She obtained her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Michigan. From 2007 to 2024 she taught Creative Writing and U. S. Latin o/x Literatures at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. A former City of Milwaukee poet laureate, Cárdenas has authored two full-length books: Trace (Red Hen Press) and Boomerang (Bilingual Press). She has also authored or co-authored three chapbooks: Bread of the Earth/The Last Colors, Achiote Seeds/Semillas de Achiote, and From the Tongues of Brick and Stone.
Thursday, March 19: A.M. Goodhart & Nick Gulig
A.M. Goodhart was awarded the Wisconsin Writers Loriene Niedecker Poetry Award. A.M. Goodhart is a Madison based writer and textile artist. They have published poems in Epiphany, The Indianapolis Review, Passages North, and Lake Effect. Their collection Neither Kind of Body was a semi-finalist for the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize at BOA Editions and the Pamet River Prize at Yes Yes Books.
Nick Gulig was awarded the Wisconsin Writers Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award. Nicholas Gulig is a Thai American poet from Wisconsin. He is the author of The Other Altar (Center for Literary Publishing, 2024), winner of both the Colorado Poetry Prize and the Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award; Orient (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2018), winner of the CSU Poetry Center Open Book Competition; Book of Lake (CutBank, 2016); and North of Order (YesYes Books, 2015). A recipient of a 2011 Fulbright Fellowship to Bangkok, Thailand, Gulig has also been awarded the Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award, the Black Warrior Review Poetry Prize, and the Grist’s ProForma Award. Currently, Gulig works as an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater where he founded and co-edits Either/Or magazine. In 2023, he was appointed poet laureate of Wisconsin and received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
Thursday, March 26 at the Mineral Point Public Library: Marcia Bjornerud & Rebecca Jamieson
Marcia Bjornerud was awarded the Wisconsin Writers Blei/Derleth Nonfiction Book Award. A structural geologist whose research focuses on the physics of earthquakes and mountain building, Bjornerud combines field-based studies of bedrock geology with quantitative models of rock mechanics. She has done research in high arctic Norway (Svalbard) and Canada (Ellesmere Island), as well as mainland Norway, Italy, New Zealand, and the Lake Superior region. Bjornerud is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Oslo, Norway and University of Otago, New Zealand. A contributing writer to The New Yorker, Wired, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, she is also the author of several books for popular audiences — Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth; Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World and Geopedia: A Brief Compendium of Geologic Curiosities. Timefulness was longlisted for the 2019 PEN/E.O.Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing, and was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in Science and Technology.
Rebecca Jamieson was awarded the Wisconsin Writers Kay W. Levin Short Nonfiction Award. Rebecca Jamieson is the author of The Body of All Things (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Entropy, Mid-American Review, The Offing, Rattle, and she is a regular contributor to Isthmus. She is the recipient of the Tupelo Press Prose Prize, a Wisconsin Writers Award, and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Rebecca holds an MFA in Writing and Publishing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also the founder of Contemplate Create, where she teaches creative writing through a mindfulness-based lens. She lives on Ho-Chunk land in Madison, Wisconsin. When she’s not writing, you can find her hiking, baking, or cuddling her two cats.
For more information and updates throughout the year, see www.ShakeRagAlley.org, call (608) 987-3292, subscribe to twice-monthly e-newsletters and follow Shake Rag Alley on Facebook and Instagram.
