Author Biography

Jean Feraca is an award-winning poet and creative nonfiction writer. Her memoir, I Hear Voices: A Memoir of Love, Death, and the Radio, was selected as the winner of the 2007 Kingery/Derleth Booklength Nonfiction Award, sponsored by the Council for Wisconsin Writers. It was also named an Outstanding Book by the American Association of School Librarians, and one of the year's Best Books for General Audiences by the Public Library Association. The essay, “Roger and Me, Too,” which appears in the new edition, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. 

Jean won The Nation's l975 Discovery Award and was named "one of the most promising poets of her generation." She published her first book of poems, South From Rome: Il Mezzogiorno, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work is anthologized in The Dream Book, which won The American Book Award in l986. She received a Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship to complete Crossing the Great Divide, her second book, which was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In l996 she was named the lead poet in a major public series commissioned by Wisconsin's Dane County Cultural Affairs. She is a member of Poets and Writers, Inc. and is listed in the International Who's Who in Poetry, and Who's Who in American Writers, Editors and Poets. Madison Magazine named her one of its "10 Most Talented".

Feraca holds a B.A. cum laude in English from Manhattanville College in New York where her honors work in dramatic literature was completed with Harvard University. She received an M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan and completed the course work toward her Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky. She did graduate studies in drama at the University of California in Berkeley and studied studio art at Columbia University.

A native of New York, Feraca has lived in Italy and has traveled widely throughout the world.  She is the mother of two sons and the wife of UW-Madison geneticist Alan Attie. The couple lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Author's Events: 

Roger and Me, Too

Date and time: 

Monday, April 16, 2012 - 3:00pm - 4:00pm

Genre: 

nonfiction, memoir

Venue: 

UW Fox Valley

There is no word in English to describe the special closeness that sometimes binds a man and a woman who are never lovers, but more than friends.  Roger was my husband’s best friend, but I loved him too. Had we met decades earlier, I would have jumped on the back of his Harley and ridden off with him. As it was, what grew between us was something much subtler. But because there is no word for it, it stayed mysterious in my mind, to be brought to light only in the course of my becoming Roger’s memoirist.

This session will be held in Perry Hall at UW-Fox Valley.. See the campus map for location. The closest exit to the Communication Arts Center is Exit 13S.

  |  Tags: memoir, nonfiction