Join us for an evening with Author Nickolas Butler. Spend the evening learning about his writing process, be inspired by his career trajectory, and ask your burning questions!
From just up the road in Chippewa Falls, Nickolas tells stories with heart. His character-driven novels and short stories are set primarily in the rural Midwest and the American West. His writing frequently explores themes of friendship, marriage, aging, and the changing landscape of modern small-town America.
Haven’t read anything by Nickolas yet, stop by the library to check out one of his books. Then join us for a reading and question-and-answer session.
Nickolas Butler was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. His first novel was the internationally best-selling and prize-winning Shotgun Lovesongs, which has been optioned for film development and has been translated into ten languages. Beneath the Bonfire, a collection of short stories, followed a year later. In 2017, he published The Hearts of Men, which was short-listed for two of France’s most prestigious literary prizes even before its American publication. In 2019, his fourth book, Little Faith, was published, and he is already at work on another novel, this one set in the mountains of the American West. Butler is the recipient of many literary prizes and commendations and has published articles, reviews, short stories, and poetry in publications such as Ploughshares, Narrative, and The New York Times Book Review, to name a few. Before publishing Shotgun Lovesongs, Butler worked a long list of jobs, including: coffee roaster, liquor store clerk, office manager, hot-dog vendor, author escort, meatpacker, bed-and-breakfast manager, telemarketer, and Burger King maintenance man. He is married and lives with his wife and two children on sixteen acres of land adjacent to a buffalo farm in rural Wisconsin.
This event is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Alma Public Library and the Alma Public Library Book Club.