Cooks and Books Tent

Tanya Denckla Cobb is a writer, professional environmental mediator and teacher of food system planning at the University of Virginia. She is passionate about bringing people together to discover common ground and create solutions for mutual gain. She is Associate Director of the UVA Institute for Environmental Negotiation where, since 1997, she works on a broad range of community, environmental, and agricultural issues. She has worked at the grassroots, co-founding a community forestry nonprofit and mediating for community mediation centers. At the state level, she facilitated the birth of both the Virginia Natural Resources Leadership Institute and the Virginia Food System Council. Recently she has coordinated the 2nd Virginia Food Security Summit that launched Virginia’s first statewide strategic food plan, and initiated the Virginia Food Heritage Project. She is author of “The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food,” and the newly released “Reclaiming Our Food: How the Grassroots Movement is Changing What We Eat.”

http://tanyadencklacobb.com/

What’s the key ingredient to eating healthy, saving money and stewarding the planet for generations to come?  A return to our nation’s farmstead roots of independence, self-sufficiency and frugality, blended with the spice of modern living and a passion for transforming our planet. Whether you’re a dedicated urbanite or rural dweller, discover simple tips for homegrown and homemade cooking, from preserving the harvest to stocking the pantry to building local community around your kitchen table.

Join Wisconsin authors Lisa Kivirist  and John Ivanko of the award-winning Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast nestled outside Monroe, WI, for fresh approaches to homesteading, including savoring your garden’s abundance and creating homemade pantry staples.

Lisa Kivirist and John Ivanko are innkeepers of the nationally recognized Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast, completely powered by the wind and the sun.   In addition to Farmstead Chef, the duo co-authored the award-winning book ECOpreneuring as well as Rural Renaissance. Lisa is also a leading national advocate for women in sustainable agriculture and directs the Rural Women’s Project for the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES).

http://www.innserendipity.com

An Italian Journey explores Italian hospitality with an emphasis on local, organic food. To learn about the Italian way of life and eating, James joined the olive harvest in 2009, working on six different Tuscan farms. The book explores the beneficial effects that reverberate through society when food is eaten and produced with an emphasis, not on the cheapest and most easily transported food, but on the tastiest and most healthful food.

The reading of Wendell Berry's seminal book The Unsettling of America was a transformational moment in James Shaw's life. He read it while researching a propaganda film for an agri-giant corporation. Instead of creating that film, he became an advocate for fresh, local food produced with an eye on preserving biodiversity. He has been writing columns for about ten years and introduced the concept of thankful stewardship in the pages of  David Kline’s Farming Magazine. James has led an adventure-filled life. He started as wheat farmer in Nebraska working for his father. He returned to the land on a small farm in Wisconsin. Between those two farms he was a ski bum in Colorado; an Army cinematographer in Vietnam, Korea and Alaska; a film producer making corporate ag films; an adventure film-maker shooting throughout the world: Peru, Greece, Alaska, New Zealand, and India; even a bush pilot in Alaska; a cowboy; a farmer; a writer; a father; and a grandfather.

Lynne Heasley is associate professor of history and environmental studies at Western Michigan University, and author of A Thousand Pieces of Paradise: Landscape and Property in the Kickapoo Valley.  As an environmental historian, she studies and teaches about the ways in which humans have shaped and been shaped by the natural world, focusing especially on fostering a shared understanding of our changing connections to particular landscapes.  Today Dr. Heasley is part of a growing community of scholars, writers, policy makers, artists, and activists concerned with the Great Lakes.  In Kalamazoo, Michigan, she is on the board of directors of Tillers International, whose mission supports sustainable rural development. Whenever possible, she is out photographing the natural world, vernacular landscapes, and any family, friends, colleagues and students willing to place themselves within the frame.
http://www.lynneheasley.com

In the spirit of cooperation we have invited poet Mary Swander from Iowa to be our featured poet for this years poetry reading. AND! For the sake of fun we've taken on the  challenge to work cool-laboratively on a poem which we will read at the Fair. So far: “We'll be ridin' in a green winkin' sporty two door/comin' back from the red hot co-op/with the ocean's blue echo in the sky...” It'll be a hoot to read and listen to. Remember, COOPERATION—It lightens the load!

Mary Swander is the Poet Laureate of the State of Iowa. Her most recent book of poetry is The Girls on the Roof (Turning Point/Word Tech, 2009). Swander has worked with the Eulenspiegel Puppet Theatre to create a performance piece of The Girls for the stage. Currently, Swander is also touring her play Farmscape, a docudrama capturing the changing rural environment.  Swander is the author of three additional books of poetry, Heaven-and-Earth House (Alfred Knopf, 1994), Driving the Body Back (Alfred Knopf, 1986), and Succession (University of Georgia Press, 1979). Ms. Swander has won numerous awards including an Iowa Author’s Award, a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, two Ingram Merrill Awards, the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and the Nation-Discovery Award. Ms. Swander received her M.F.A from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. She is a professor of English and a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University. She lives in an old Amish schoolhouse, raises geese, goats, a large organic garden, and plays the banjo.

Sarah Busse is a flirt, a feminist and a restless heart, as well as co-editor of the poetry magazine Verse Wisconsin (versewisconsin.org), Cowfeather Press (cowfeatherpress.org), and the 2013 Wisconsin Poets' Calendar. She is a contributing scholar to the Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline project, and the author of two chapbooks: Quiver (Red Dragonfly Press, 2009) and Given These Magics (Finishing Line Press, 2010). Her first full-length collection will be published by Mayapple Press in October, 2012. Her poetry has appeared in a wide variety of journals and received the Lorine Niedecker Prize for Poetry, the WFOP Chapbook Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. She received her MFA in 2003 from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her two children are enrolled in the Madison Public Schools, and she currently co-chairs the bake sales at their elementary school. She continues to search for a good recipe for pear pie and the missing Monopoly game pieces presumably hiding under the couch in the family room.

William Stobb is the author of five poetry collections, including the National Poetry Series selection, Nervous Systems (Penguin 2007). Of his most recent collection, Absentia (Penguin 2011), Alison Hawthorne Deming writes, "the vitality of these poems, the necessity of their questioning, makes life feel deep and strange and satisfying." His novel, "Aces" was a finalist for the 2011 New American Fiction Prize, but remains unpublished. With Will Bulka and David Krump, Stobb has co-authored Predator: The Musical, which opens its second Chicago run in June 2012. Stobb works on the editorial staff of the award-winning Minneapolis-based magazine, Conduit. He lives in La Crosse, WI.

E.P. Schultz is an award-winning poet who lives amongst the hidden valleys of the Driftless area of northern Crawford Co.. His work has appeared in dozens of literary journals. His chapbooks include: Echoes From Silhouettes, Misprints and Legends, Desert Poems, and Third Floor Window. Edward is founding president of the Driftless Writing Center in Viroqua, WI, and hosts a monthly poetry reading series, First Friday Poetry Reading. He conducts writing and reading workshops, and gives inspirational poetic presentations at area junior and senior high schools.