Bestselling and award-winning author Nickolas Butler will present “Writing From Home: Finding Inspiration in Small Town Wisconsin” Feb. 12 as part of the spring Thursdays at the U series at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire – Barron County.
Nickolas Butler
The program will run from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in the Blue Hills Lecture Hall in Ritzinger Hall and will be livestreamed at ricelaketv.com.
During his presentation, Butler will discuss the inspiration behind his newest novel, “A Forty Year Kiss,” a small-town love story set in Chippewa Falls. His lecture will include a reading, craft talk and Q&A.
Butler’s first novel was the internationally bestselling and prize-winning “Shotgun Lovesongs,” which has been optioned for film development and has been translated into more than 10 languages. “Beneath the Bonfire,” a collection of short stories, followed a year later. In 2017, he published “The Hearts of Men,” which was shortlisted for two of France’s most prestigious literary prizes even before its American publishing.
In 2019, his fourth book, “Little Faith,” was published to critical acclaim. Butler published Godspeed in 2021, a literary thriller set in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that was longlisted for the Reading the West Book Award.
Butler was raised in Eau Claire and educated at UW-Madison and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
The Thursdays at the U weekly series is free and open to the public thanks to support from the UW-Eau Claire – Barron County Foundation. Neither seating reservations nor parking permits are needed for in-person attendees.
While in-person attendance is encouraged, most presentations in the series are livestreamed and archived on the Thursdays at the U webpage.
The next program in the series will be Feb. 19, with a presentation by the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network: CoCoRaHS.
For more information, contact Laura Holden at 715-788-6207 or holdenlk@uwec.edu.
