Northshore Library in Glendale, Wisconsin, is offering a series of three writing seminars with noted Wisconsin poet and essayist Tom Montag. Montag will be at the library, 6800 N. Port Washington Road, from 7:00-8:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 30th, 2003, to discuss "Keeping a Writer's Journal;" from 7:00-8:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 6th to talk about "Writing Creative Nonfiction;" and from 7:00-8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 12th for "Writing Memoir."

Those wishing to attend any or all of the seminars should pre-register for them by stopping at the Northshore Library or phoning 414-351-3461, according to Library Director Svetlana Foley. There is no charge to attend these seminars.

The writer's journal "can serve all at once as a refuge, a practice session, and a test of new possibilities," Montag says. He promises a wide range of perspectives about the writer's journal, from those who worry that keeping a journal will reduce the time and energy available for their "real" work to those who can't imagine living without their notebook as a constant companion. The session will focus on the kinds of journals a writer can keep, how to get started keeping a journal, how to record rich and varied information, and how to mine the treasures that accumulate for use in other writing. Those attending should be prepared to do some small amount of journal-keeping during the session.

"Creative nonfiction" is an essay or piece of journalism that employs the tools of imaginative writing to convey information. Techniques taken from fiction, poetry, and other genres are used to deliver material that stays true and factual. Creative nonfiction, Montag says, "should swing and hump the way good poetry does, and good fiction, all the while telling the true stories of our lives. True narrative does not have to plod." Specific attention will be given to understanding the overall shape of a piece of writing and to fashioning the individual blocks of material that go into it. Some small amount of writing will be done during the session.

Everyone has a story. Memoir, Montag says, "lays out the theme of the life, not the whole life itself, and tells enough to illustrate the arc of the life's meaning." When memoir rises to art, the telling becomes not so much the story of a specific person's life but the story of an Any-man, an Every-woman. That is why we care: we see in another life that "this could be me," Montag believes. Good memoir appropriates all the tools of creative nonfiction for the telling. A bit of writing will be done during this session too.

Tom Montag is a Wisconsin poet and essayist who has published more than twenty books and chapbooks during the past thirty years. Curlew:Home (Midday Moon Books, 2001), his memoir of growing up on an Iowa farm during the 1950s, records Montag's remembrances of his first fourteen years in rural Iowa on the one hand; then on the other hand, journal entries Montag made during a trip back to his home town in October of 2000 are interleaved among his memories to create narrative thrust and tension between what was and what is.

Donna Seaman at Booklist magazine called Curlew:Home a "companionable and reverent memoir" and said "Montag's prose is thoughtful and unhurried, opening out into moments of beauty and wry humor, echoing in its quiet rhythms and low-key observations the gentle roll of the rich midwestern landscape he loves.... He celebrates the country's most overlooked and underestimated region and movingly portrays his hardworking and loving parents."

Curlew:Home was read on Iowa Public Radio in January-February of 2002; and the popular public radio show Prairie Home Companion has kept a chapter from Curlew:Home on its web site in the "Stories for Home" feature at www.prairiehome.org for the past two years.

Kissing Poetry's Sister (Joint Venture, 2002) is a collection of Montag's essays specifically about writing and being a writer. It includes the piece "Creative Nonfiction in Steamy Baltimore" which not only tells but also shows what "creative nonfiction" is; and the title essay, "Kissing Poetry's Sister," which asserts that writing the essay is like kissing poetry's sister.

Jessica Powers at newpages.com wrote of Kissing Poetry's Sister: "Tom Montag has a gentle style; he writes with depth - thought and emotion are carefully balanced and you get the sense as you read this that here is a wise man - not a perfect man, but a good man - and he is letting us into his house and his life for a few moments each day so we can experience the richness that is his.... I look forward to reading whatever Montag writes in the future."

Montag says he is currently at work on a five-year project he calls "Vagabond in the Middle," an exploration of what makes us middle western. Since the beginning of the year, he has been drilling down into the lives of twelve "focus communities," one in each of the middle western states, to gain an understanding of who we are and what we're made of. His journal entries about his experiences in the towns he visited during the first seven months of the project total more than 100,000 words. He reports on his visits in an irregular Vagabond newsletter. More information about the venture can be found at: www.wlhn.org/vagabond .

Montag's poem "Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain" is one of 60 works by Wisconsin writers permanently incorporated into the design of the Midwest Express Convention Center in Milwaukee. His most recent books of poems have been: Ben Zen: The Ox of Paradox (Cross+Roads Press, 1999); Ben Zen: The More I Know (Hummingbird Press, 2000); and The Sweet Bite of Morning (Juniper Press, 2003).

Montag's poems, essays, and journal entries have appeared in a wide variety of literary journals over the years and on the web site www.ourcommongroundmag.com, where he is a featured writer.

In October 2002, Montag retired from a career in the printing industry to devote himself full-time to his writing. He and Mary, his wife of thirty-four years, live in Fairwater, Wisconsin, in the big cinnamon-colored house. The couple has two grown daughters, Jenifer and Jessica.

For interested readers, copies of Montag's books will be available for purchase at the library after his presentations.