WWA Board of Directors
| Name | Title and Term | Bio | Assignments | |
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Luella Schmidt |
President Jan 2024-Jan 2027 |
Luella Schmidt is the co-founder and co-host of the Midwest Writers Room podcast. She writes fiction and essays about culture, democracy, justice, and history. She is the author of the America This Week series on Medium and the creator of Mirror in the Sky, a community that lingers with our best novels, movies, and albums, and celebrates the joy and growth this brings. She is the founder of Fine Point Consulting, a professional services firm that helps small businesses flourish. She lives with her husband Roger, cat Stifler, and dog Cece. | Board Chair |
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Laurie Scheer | Vice President Jan 2024-Jan 2027 |
Laurie Scheer is the co-founder of New Nature Writers and a Writing Ranger. As a former vice president of programming for WE: Women’s Entertainment, Laurie analyzed manuscripts and scripts as they entered the competitive media marketplace. Laurie has been an instructor at numerous universities across the U.S. from Yale to UCLA. As a professional speaker, she has appeared at numerous annual writing conferences. As the Director of UW Madison’s annual Writers’ Institute, Laurie was the managing editor of The Midwest Prairie Review, and a writing mentor to hundreds of students (of all ages) in person and online. |
Events, Vision Team |
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Barry Wightman |
Member Dec 2021- Dec 2025 |
Barry Wightman has been president of WWA since 2018. His novel, Pepperland, received a starred review on Booklist, and was a winner of the Silver IPPY from the Independent Publishers Association. He is past fiction editor of Hunger Mountain, A Journal of the Arts in Montpelier, VT. He holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A long-time reviewer for the Washington Independent Review of Books, he is also a professional voiceover talent and a Milwaukee NPR award-winning essayist. He’s a member of the Wisconsin Writers Association Board of Directors and is past program chair for the UWM-Waukesha SE WI Festival of Books. | Events |
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Russ Klingaman | Member Nov 2022- Nov 2025 |
I’m a pilot and an aircraft owner. My law practice included aviation law and intellectual property. I have taught Aviation Law at Marquette’s law school. My book isn’t finished but it tells the story of the legal and business feuding between the Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss and other inventors over the invention of flying machines and controlled flight. It is the untold story of the aileron patent litigation. It demonstrates how the combination of poor business decisions and attorney misconduct wrecked the early U.S. aircraft industry, wasted fortunes, took lives, with a negative impact on the course of world history. | Vision Team Co-Chair |
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Treasurer |
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Christa Bruhn |
Secretary Jun 2023- Jun 2026 |
Christa Bruhn is an American author, photographer, and culinary artist with a lifelong passion for peace and justice. She grew up in Detroit following the rebellion of 1967 and has since witnessed the revival of Detroit, hopeful change with the fall of the Berlin Wall, reconciliation in South Africa and Northern Ireland, and increased understanding of racial injustice and inequality in the US. Through her father’s curiosity to explore his divided homeland as a professor of German, Christa spent time on both sides of the Iron Curtain to witness the dual narrative of one nation. She also traveled to Israel and Palestine which sparked a lifelong commitment to make a difference in a land two peoples call home. Her decades of experience as the mother of three Palestinian Americans culminated in her memoir Crossing Borders: The Search for Dignity in Palestine. Christa holds degrees in International Studies (BA), Middle Eastern & North African Studies (MA), and Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis (PhD). She splits her time between her home in Madison, Wisconsin and Jalameh, Palestine. |
Secretary Archival Chair
(Board Meeting Minutes/State Archives Oversight/ Google Drive Oversight) |
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Nick Chiarkas | Member Nov 2021-Nov 2024 |
I grew up in the Al Smith housing projects on Manhattan's Lower East Side. When I was in the fourth grade, my mother was told by the principal of PS#1 that "Nick was unlikely ever to complete high school, so you must steer him toward a simple and secure vocation." Instead, I became a writer, with a few stops along the way: a New York City Police Officer; the Deputy Chief Counsel for the President's Commission on Organized Crime; and the Director of the Wisconsin State Public Defender Agency. On the way, I picked up a Doctorate from Columbia University; a Law Degree from Temple University; and was a Pickett Fellow at Harvard. How many mothers are told their child is hopeless? How many kids with potential surrender to desperation? That's why I wrote Weepers and Nunzio's Way — for them.
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Events |
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Margaret Rozga | Member May 2023-May 2026 |
Margaret Rozga served as the 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate and the 2021 inaugural artist/scholar in residence at the UW Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station where she offered workshops and write-ins. She continues to offer Field Station poetry events and is working on a new collection of poems, Restoring Prairie. Her fifth book is Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems (Cornerstone Press 2021). | TBD |
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Christy Wopat | Member Mar 2024-Mar 2027 |
Christy Wopat’s award-winning memoir, “Almost a Mother: Love, Loss, and Finding Your People When Your Baby Dies,” was published by Orange Hat Publishing in 2018. A 4th-grade teacher, busy mama, and wife, Christy has always relied on writing as a way to cope. Recently she decided to use that strength as a way to help others, so they don’t have to feel alone. Christy is a board member of the Mississippi Valley Writers Guild, and an award-winning essayist at Um, You Guys?. She lives with her husband and kids in Holmen, Wisconsin. |
Events Committee Chair |
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TK Sheffield | Member Mar 2024-Mar 2027 |
I write cozy mysteries for readers who want to laugh and escape. Award-nominated debut novel, Model Suspect, where a retired fashion model discovers "posers" in her touristy hometown, will be released Nov. 14, 3023. Model Suspect is the first in the Backyard Model Mysteries. The next, Pontoon, is released May 2024. I am represented by Julie Gwinn, AAR, The Seymour Agency. My social media presence includes The Backyard Model, where I offer ideas about writing, books, thrifting, and fashion. I blog for the popular Valerie Biel website and my substack, Bubbles & Fiber. | Events |
 | Jim Landwehr | Member Apr 2025 - Apr 2028 | Jim Landwehr is an author and poet living in Southeast Wisconsin. He has several traditionally published memoirs and poetry collections, a forthcoming short story collection, and is working on his first novel. He is a co-vice president for the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and was appointed poet laureate for the Village of Wales, Wisconsin, from 2018-2019. He has also served on the Program Committee for the Wisconsin Festival of Books. Jim loves traveling, fishing, kayaking, biking, and pretty much all things outdoors. He retired in 2023 after a 37-year career in mapping and Geographic Information Systems and is spending much of his spare time writing furiously and stretching himself artistically through painting and even trying his hand at pottery. He lives in Waukesha with his wife, Donna. | |
 | Sara Biren | Member Apr 2025 - Apr 2028 | Sara Biren writes stories from the Northwoods with heart, humor, and happy ever afters. The author of adult and young adult contemporary romance, she earned an MFA in creative writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato, and works part-time as a freelance editor. Until recently a lifelong Minnesotan, Sara now lives in Wisconsin along the Lake Michigan lakeshore. If she’s not reading, writing, or watching hockey or football, you’ll most likely find her at a concert with her husband and kids or hiking the Ice Age Trail. |
WWA Committee Chairs
| Committee | Name | Bio | |
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Membership | Tricia Quinnies | 10 Fun Facts About Me: * Foo Fighters Fan Forever * They will always be called bubblers, not water fountains. * Raised in Milwaukee, adore Lake Michigan and love road trips to Door County. * My three sons taught me how to be silly. “Laughing more means living better.” * I'm energized by her sisters and soul sisters. * As a journalism major, I am a profound news junkie. * I studied art history at University of West London and fell in love with England. * My favorite museums: Tate Modern, Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum. * Twizzlers or Red Vines? Twizzlers * My life guru is Tom Petty |
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Publications | Lisa Lickel | Lisa Lickel is a Wisconsin author of inspiring fiction who loves books, collects dragons, and travels. She writes novels, short stories, feature articles, and radio theater, and loves to encourage authors through mentoring, speaking, and leading workshops. Lisa is a member of the Wisconsin Writer’s Association, where she is the WWA Press manager and editor of Creative Wisconsin Magazine. She is also a book coach and assistant director for Novel-In-Progress Bookcamp and Writing Retreat, Inc. Lisa is an avid book reviewer and blogger, and a freelance editor. |