LOCAL AUTHORS DISCUSS is a (mostly!) monthly program featuring members of the Door County Published Authors Collective. Each month features new themes and new authors. This month: Local Authors Discuss Writing About Family in Fiction.

Join four members of the Door County Published Authors Collective will read from their work and discuss how and why they incorporated family into their novels. Today's presenters are Jane Hensge, author of  Do Over in Pearl Center ; Patricia Neuman, author of  Dressing Myself ; Margaret Philbrick, author of  House of Honor ; and Dan Powers, author of  How Long a Shadow. Authors will discuss and answer questions about their specific novels ans well as participate in a general discussion about writing and publishing a novel.

This program is free and open to the public. Book clubs are especially welcome, as are readers and writers of all ages.

Jane Hensge has had careers in college administration, medical research, and real estate. Her very best job was raising her children, who proved to be great teachers. She enjoys cooking, gardening, and participating in her improvisational acting group. Her novel, Do Over in Pearl Center , is about goiong home, old friends, romance, and sabotage.

Patricia Neuman is a graduate of Indiana University-Purdue with a major in journalism and a minor in English. She has worked as a reporter, editor, and freelance writer before shifting her focus to writing novels. She and her late co-author, Roasalind Burgess, wrote and published seven books in  The Val & Kit Mystery Series , as well as  Dressing Myself , which explores a marriage breaking apart and subsequent growth and change. Patricia and her husband John have been married for 57 years and have three children and twelve grandchildren. They have lived in Door County for the past 19 years.

Margaret Ann Philbrick began gardening at five years old when her mother gave her a pansy garden to plant and tend. She grew up in a small Illinois town with a busy street out front and a big river out back. After several years working in advertising, she stayed home with her children and helped them plant their own gardens. Now they’ve grown, so she is cultivating a garden of words at her mother’s old desk looking out at the Delta Gamma Sorority house on the U.W. campus. Her novel,  House of Honor , explores who we choose to honor in our families and why.

After retiring, Dan pooled his background in music composition, literacy and education and began to write fiction. He published his first novel How Long A Shadow in 2020. That same year he became a founding member of the Door County Publishers Authors Collective. His novel asks the question is genealogy destiny. In 2022, he won first flace in the Hal Prize for Fiction with his short story "Two, Three...Which Is Me?"