Author Melissa Faliveno at Boulder Junction Library

Melissa Faliveno will speak at the Boulder Junction Public Library on Thursday, August 11 at 6 pm in the Boulder Junction Community Center Boulder Lake Meeting Room. Her talk is part of the Northwoods Book Festival, a series of events sponsored by seven local libraries to be held throughout the summer.  

Faliveno’s book TOMBOYLAND was named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, New York Public Library, Vogue, Oprah Magazine, Electric Literature, and Debutiful, and received a 2021 award for outstanding literary achievement from the Wisconsin Library Association. 

In this bestselling debut essay collection, Melissa Faliveno traverses the liminal spaces of her childhood in working-class Wisconsin and the paths she’s traveled since, compelled by questions of girlhood and womanhood, queerness and class, and how the lands of our upbringing both define and complicate us even long after we’ve left. Part personal narrative, part cultural reportage, TOMBOYLAND navigates midwestern traditions, mythologies, landscapes, and lives to explore the intersections of identity and place. From F5 tornadoes and fast-pitch softball to gun culture, strange glacial terrains, kink party potlucks, and the question of motherhood, TOMBOYLAND asks curious and critical questions about belonging and the body, isolation and community, and what we mean when we use words like woman, family, and home. 

Melissa Faliveno’s work has appeared in Esquire, Paris Review, Bitch, Ms. Magazine, Lit Hub, Brooklyn Rail, and Prairie Schooner, among others; received a notable selection in Best American Essays; and appears in the anthology Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown’s Cult Classic for a New Era, published by Harper Perennial. The former senior editor of Poets & Writers Magazine, she has taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Catapult in New York City, and was the 2020-21 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Born and raised in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, she earned a BA from the University of Wisconsin and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. After twelve years in Brooklyn, New York, she is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College and lives outside Columbus, Ohio. For more information, visit her website at www.melissafaliveno.com. 

The Northwoods Book Festival is a joint project of seven libraries in northern Wisconsin: Boulder Junction Public Library, Ben Guthrie Lac du Flambeau Public Library, Frank B. Koller Memorial Library in Manitowish Waters, Mercer Public Library, Minocqua Public Library, Presque Isle Community Library, and Winchester Public Library. Events will be held at each participating library, and patrons are encouraged to attend events at all of our participating locations. All programs are free and open to the public. For more information about the Northwoods Book Festival, visit www.northwoodsbookfest.org.

The 2022 Northwoods Book Festival program series is made possible by a grant from the American Rescue Plan: Humanities Grants for Libraries. 

American Rescue Plan: Humanities Grants for Libraries is an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA) made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. 

This program is free and open to the public and refreshments will be served. For more information or questions, please call the library at 715-385-2050.