Wisconsin author, Michael Perry, 2007 WLA Award Winner

Michael Perry told the audience his mom taught him to read at age 4. “I grew up very poor, “up North,” without TV, but we had lots of books."

Michael Perry was in Green Bay last week at the Wisconsin Library Association (WLA) conference to accept the RR Donnelley Award winner for 2007. The Literary Awards Committee of the WLA chose the New Auburn author of Truck: A Love Story for the highest literary achievement by a Wisconsin author for a work written in 2006.

Perry earned a nursing degree and decided he also wanted to become a writer. He moved back home to New Auburn, Wisconsin and joined the volunteer fire department and wrote about rural Wisconsin life in
Population 485: Meeting your neighbors one siren at a time, Truck, and
Off Main Street.

Perry writes freelance advertising in between “because it pays the bills.” Perry described a couple of articles he wrote about snowmobile ‘water skipping’ (over large ice holes) and a monster truck show. Those two recollections actually gave you the feeling you were right on the snowmobile and in the big truck. Perry uses words well.

Perry said he used to have waist length hair but now sports a buzz cut because: a) “crop failure,” and b) while doing some volunteer EMT fire fighting his hair caught on fire. Perry reminded me of Garrison Keillor…slow talking, hilariously funny and very easy to listen to.

Perry said his perky NYC publicists find Wisconsin mysterious…so when they call him, he tells them he was out cleaning his gun or making tallow candles in that slow, quiet voice. The Wisconsin audience smiled.

When Perry decided to become a writer he said he read The Writer’s Market. (Polk Library has this: PN 161 .W83). In closing Perry shared
his best writer’s advice: you must read your writing out loud because your mouth trips you where your eyes slide over. I just did and hope this reads well.
I wish you could have been there in the audience smiling and laughing.

Perry's books are available through Polk Library and Universal Borrowing from the UW System libraries.