About Wisconsin Life
“Wisconsin Life” celebrates what makes Wisconsin unique through the diverse stories of its people. Our award-winning producers travel the state in search of stories that are humorous, surprising, emotional, and/or thought provoking. All of the stories are personal and rich with the personality of the state we call home.
“Wisconsin Life” is a co-production of Wisconsin Public Radio and PBS Wisconsin. Wisconsin Life has been recognized with numerous awards from the American Association for State and Local History, the Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association, the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association, the Milwaukee Press Club, and the Chicago/Midwest Emmy Awards.
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Carol Griskavich is the Community Engagement Manager at PBS Wisconsin, which means she wants to use your input to create the community events that get your Wisconsin neighbors engaged. She stays out of trouble by doing improv comedy, cooking perfectly edible meals, and accepting compliments on her glasses that people…
Shannon Henry Kleiber is a producer for “To the Best of Our Knowledge,” from Wisconsin Public Radio and PRX. She’s a former staff writer and columnist for The Washington Post and author of two non-fiction books. When she’s not recording, writing and editing she loves to explore Wisconsin farmer’s markets and cook…
Since 2009, Ex Fabula has been strengthening community bonds through the art of true, personal storytelling. Ex Fabula, which is Latin for “from stories,” presents storytelling workshops, StorySlams and Community Collaborations where people listen to each other, feel heard, and grow in empathy and understanding. Special projects like the Ex Fabula Fellowship, the Puente Project, and Equal Access use…
The Lands We Share initiative includes a traveling exhibition and public dialogue tour that focuses on the intersection of farming, land, ethnic culture and history in Wisconsin. The exhibit will feature the stories, histories, artifacts, images and sounds of six culturally and regionally distinct farms and farm sites and invites…
Storytelling has a way of amplifying voices and lowering fences in our communities. “Inside Stories” podcast explores Madison one story at a time. In each episode, Takeyla Benton and Jen Rubin feature a story that was told in front of an audience in Madison, then interview the storyteller to dig deeper into…
The Sounds Like Home audio series covers music and everyday life in Wisconsin’s Chippewa Valley. In six episodes, we present the voices of regional musicians telling their own stories. Sounds Like Home is an initiative of the Chippewa Valley Museum. It’s a regional music documentation project that spans field research,…
Victoria Davis is a multi-media freelance journalist for publications across the U.S. such as Isthmus, Capital Times, SDNews and Hidden Remote. A city girl through-and-through, Victoria loves all things arts and entertainment. She has a particular affinity for film and “geek culture,” spending most of her free time at the…
Matt Geiger is a Midwest Book Award Winner, a national American Book Fest Finalist, and an international Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist. He is also the winner of numerous journalism awards. His books include “Astonishing Tales!* (Your Astonishment May Vary)” and “Raised by Wolves & Other Stories.”
During the 2018-2019 school year, Monona Grove Liberal Arts Charter School, or MG21, high school students created radio pieces for Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Wisconsin Life.” The final stories were featured on the radio and online through the “Classroom Frequency: Student Voices From Wisconsin” project.
A Waukesha writer, Nancy Jorgensen partnered with her daughter Elizabeth Jorgensen to write their 2019 memoir, Go, Gwen, Go: A Family’s Journey to Olympic Gold (Meyer & Meyer Sport). Her choral education books are published by Hal Leonard Corporation and Lorenz Corporation. She enjoys baking, playing medieval music and working with textiles.
Robert Root is the author the forthcoming Walking Home Ground: Time, Terrain, Transition and other books. His essays have been listed in the Best American Essays series and given the Council of Wisconsin Writers Award for Short Nonfiction. He teaches in the Ashland University MFA Program and at the Loft…
Breann Schossow is a former network producer for The Ideas Network. She was also WPR’s 2013-14 Lee Ester Fellow, a reporter for Wisconsin Public Radio News and a producer at Minnesota Public Radio. Outside of radio, Breann was a research assistant for Barbara Bradley Hagerty, a reporter at the Milwaukee…
Lynda Barry is an award-winning author and cartoonist best known for her weekly comic strip “Ernie Pook’s Comeek.” Her graphic novel “What It Is” won the comics industry’s 2009 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work. her latest book is “Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor.” She lives on a farm…
John Hildebrand is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and the author of several books, including his most recent, The Heart of Things: A Midwestern Almanac. He has been awarded a Minnesota Book Award, Banta Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, Bush Fellowship, Wisconsin Arts Board…
Erika Janik is the co-creator and former executive director of Wisconsin Life. She is the author of six books, including Pistols and Petticoats: 175 Years of Lady Detectives in Fact and Fiction, Apple: A Global History, and Marketplace of the Marvelous: The Strange Origins of Modern Medicine. She’s currently the executive…