​​​​The Effects of Urban Renewal on Mid-Century America and Other Crime Stories​​

Jeff Esterholm​

​The last good time in the Great Lakes region, the so-called Third Coast gouged into the Upper Midwest of America, was in the shipbuilding era of the two world wars. But even in 1941, in Port Nicollet, Wisconsin, a certain taint grew and spread. It was a port city: sketchy men; fresh-faced boys; salesmen with their sample cases; able-bodied seamen. Always passing through. Occasionally, the locals glimpsed opportunity, but, just as quickly, it was gone. The prospect of something better could not gain purchase on the south shore of Lake Superior. It was as if the people and region, an area in the distant past promoted by developers as the next Chicago, had slipped the moorings and drifted, minus captain and crew, on the waters of Lake Superior. In The Effects of Urban Renewal on Mid-Century America and Other Crime Stories, Jeff Esterholm explores what happens when people slip their moorings and are set adrift.

To pre-​order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu​

​Hoist House: A Novella & Stories

Jenny Robertson

Cher Bebe manages the dance floor and flogs patrons at a nightclub while his estranged father takes his last breaths back home; a man walks a moonlit trail through his ancestral lands on his way to abduct a child; a Michigan tornado spotter grieves the end of his marriage; Maggie Pancake returns to her Minnesota hometown, jilted by her fiancée, a professional clown; and the titular novella follows fourteen-year-old Sadie and her Finnish immigrant mining family in Iron Range Minnesota in the months leading up to the Milford Mining disaster of 1924. With power and compassion, Jenny Robertson weaves tales that explore the precarity of immigrant life, worker exploitation, the tensions and dangers inherent in growing up, and the ephemeral nature of the American Dream.

​​

To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu​

“These comedies and tragedies are sweaty and fragrant, brimming with energy, and the language is exuberant.”—Bonnie Jo Campbell, National Book Award Finalist, author of American Salvage

​​“Beautiful and shattering, these stories cut deep grooves into my memory.” —Alexandra Lytton Regalado, author of Relinquenda​

​“Jenny Robertson’s stories evoke my favorite Midwestern writers: Jon Hassler, Joan Chase, and Jim Harrison—no-nonsense storytellers who lure you in with a sentence and then keep you rapt with prose as straight as an arrow aimed at your heart. Hoist House is everything you could possibly want in​​ a debut.”—John McNally, author of The Book of Ralph

“Every next story took me deeper, and deeper into that human realm where hilarity and tears combine in a rare and lovely kind of magic.”—Jack Driscoll, author of 20 Stories: New & Selected

“Robertson has conjured a stunning debut that every reader should cherish.”—Craig Lesley, author of Winterkill and The Sky Fisherman

Reviews & Interviews

Grey Sea & Sky (Hillary Moses Mohaupt)​ ​KAXE (Northern Minnesota)​​

​

​Where Are Your People From?

James B. De Monte

Meet Giacomo Agostini, retired coal miner and first-generation American, a son of foreigners, a Depression kid who never got over it, the second-oldest living member of the St. Theresa’s Knights of Columbus hall, and a pick-and-shovel man from Appalachian Ohio. Spanning ninety years, James B. De Monte’s Where Are Your People From? explores the fellowship and hardship of Midwest Italian-Americans in the post-industrial Appalachian region of Ohio through the eyes of a son of immigrants. With authenticity, humor, and grace, De Monte delivers a truly American story.

​​

To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Where Are Your People From?

“A completely original, ambitious collection of stories skillfully united by voice, place, and spirit. While spanning decades of struggle in one Italian-American family, De Monte writes with both humor and pathos of these complex, unvarnished working-class lives.” —Jim Ray Daniels, author of The Perp Walk and Gun/Shy

“By turns elegaic and brimming with vivid, immediate life, James DeMonte’s collection evokes the soul and concern of Carlo Levi and the gorgeous rough detail of the Appalachian writer Breece Pancake. The reach is bold, novelistic, the individual stories break ground into the soil of Frank O’Connor’s ‘submerged populations."—Varley O'Connor, author of The Welsh Fasting Girl and The Master's Muse

​Finding the Bones: Stories & A Novella

Nikki Kallio

A father tries to explain to his daughter what Earth was like, a boy believes his mother has been abducted by aliens, a ghost hunter wonders if her absent father is a deceased serial killer, and in the near future the sun makes people go insane. Weaving science fiction, gothic storytelling, and paranormality into eight stories and a novella, Nikki Kallio establishes herself as a fresh, innovative, and compassionate voice in speculative fiction and magical realism.

To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Finding the Bones

“With themes of home and homelessness, destruction and humanity, Nikki Kallio delivers a focused and nuanced collection with whimsical and surreal connections to Wisconsin and the Midwest. These are very fine stories.” —Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Godspeed

“Nikki Kallio . . . deftly moves through time and space to illustrate griefs both massive and particular, as well as the impossibility of understanding and loving anything new.” —Rebecca Meacham, author of Let’s Do and Morbid Curiosities

Reviews & Intervie​ws

Madison Magazine 2023 "Don't Miss Collection" Wisconsin Writers Association

Windy City Reviews A Geography of Reading​Readers' Favorite ​

​Sometimes Creek

Steve Fox

The seventeen unrelenting stories in Steve Fox’s debut story collection, Sometimes Creek, traverse a sub-zero trail of plausible magic and grit from a kaleidoscope of broken ice at a hockey rink in Wisconsin that coils through haunted rivers and around dangling legs of jamón serrano in sweltering Spanish bars and back again to a place where Kafka and Carver meet up on the page. Fox’s clean prose takes you by the hand and weaves a tapestry of tenderness, dissonance, indifference, dystopia, and charm into that gauzy space that collectively takes shape in your hands as Sometimes Creek.

*Winner, Zona Gale Award for Short Fiction (Wisconsin Writers Awards 2022​)

To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Someti​mes Creek​

“Perfectly Midwestern, perfect portraits of perfectly imperfect people. Like coal that never turns into diamonds, but sparks up just the same.” —Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You

“You fall into these words, are enveloped by these lives, troubled by the uncanny—coming away from this collection moved, haunted, and not quite intact.”—Richard Thomas, author of Spontaneous Human Combustion

“Endlessly surprising, strange, and satisfying.”—Richard Mirabella, author of Brother & Sister Enter the Forest

“Hardscrabble and tender, these seventeen story gems gleam in Midwestern dust.”—Amy Cipolla Barnes, author of Ambrotypes

Reviews & Interviews

Kirkus Reviews Madison Magazine​Wisconsin State Journal​

Madison Magazine 2023 "Don't Miss Collection" 

Wisconsin Writers Association CutBank (interview)​

CutBank (review) Twin Cities Pioneer Press​

Eyes on Imagination​

​The Plagues

Joe Baumann

To order directly from the press, email 

Praise for The Plagues

“Over and again, Baumann’s characters reach across the ever-widening gulfs opened by the ever-increasing weirdness of their worlds for human connection, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but that’s where the hope lies.” —Adam Brooke Davis, editor of Green Hills Literary Lantern

“Joe Baumann is a force of nature, and his collection is imaginative, heartfelt, and brilliant, and an absolute must-have.” —Aura Martin, author of Butterflies Over Flame

Reviews & Interviews

Peculiar Journal

​Kind of Blue

Christopher Chambers

The stories in Kind of Blue juke and jive in an unpredictable voice-driven romp. Set in rural Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Duluth, Milwaukee, Detroit, New Orleans, Houston, and South Florida, these are stories that start and stop and surprise, swerving all over the road.These are stories of wanderlust and music, loss and misdirection, disasters large and small. With the sound and rhythm of language driving each tale, Christopher Chambers gives voice to the working- and middle-class worlds of the American Midwest and the South.

To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Kind of Blue

“I finished it feeling as if the man had left little pieces of his soul on every page, and I swear to God I lost count of the number of sentences I wish I had written.” —Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time and The Heavenly Table

“Chambers accomplishes what only the best writers can; he makes every character feel both universal and unique, each setting both a vacation and a return home.” —M.O. Walsh, New York Times bestselling author of My Sunshine Away and The Big Door Prize

Reviews & Interviews

Madison Magazine

​The Clayfields

Elise Gregory

In The Clayfields, Elise Gregory’s powerful debut, the lives of three women are threaded together through the changing backdrops of farming communities in the twenty-first century. Where country churches are closing and old man bars are turning into wineries, an eclectic mix of characters must decide to evolve with new forces or leave their settler roots for new lives.

To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for The Clayfields

“Elise Gregory has brought a world to life in this beautiful, engaging book. ” —Samuel Ligon, author of Wonderland, Among the Dead and Dreaming, Drift and Swerve, and Safe in Heaven Dead

“The Clayfields is a sensual and heartfelt debut.” —Keith Lesmeister, author of We Could Have Been Happy Here

Reviews

Volume One   Madison Magazine 2023 "Don't Miss Collection"

​Twin Cities Pioneer Press Cutleaf​

​Evangelina Everyday

Dawn Burns

Evangelina is as everyday as women come. If she were a landscape, she'd be a patch of woods on the edge of a fallow Indiana field, her edges visible from all directions from miles away. Nothing special on the outside. A disturbance to nobody. One might think her a boring, self-contained Midwestern housewife. Mixing humor and sincerity, Dawn Burns roots her debut collection firmly in the minutiae of Midwestern life, focusing on the inner life of one who suffers the annoyances of a Midwestern lifestyle in a manner all her own, a manner filled with anxious contemplation of the worth of her life.

To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Evangelina Everyday

“Evangelina Everyday is dazzling in its balance of satiric fun and serious storytelling, underscoring the stifling safety of traditional women’s roles and the vulnerability involved in accepting one’s own socially disruptive desires.” —Mary Catherine Harper, author of Some Gods Don’t Need Saints

“Evangelina dreams of what feels to her like the boldest fantasy of all: getting to somehow be her full self. Burns renders this vivid inner world with compassion and a sharp eye for emotional detail. As a result, Evangelina Everyday is an invitation to hope—to hope that what is bound can become free.” —David Ebenbach, author of Miss Portland and How to Mars

Reviews

Steve Henn ​Pan-o-ply: Story & Art Michiana​

Praise for Township

“Supple, deeply rooted in place, and astonishing in their bite and wit, the stories in Township reveal Jamie Lyn Smith’s mastery of the form.” —David Lynn, Editor Emeritus of The Kenyon Review

“Jamie Lyn Smith’s voice rings with the authenticity of hard-won wisdom. The stories in her debut collection, Township, open the hearts of the broken and put-upon and find the underside of the overlooked, the ignored, the tossed-away, the miscreant, the wild, the wandering.” —Lee Martin, Pulitzer Prize finalist, author of The Bright Forever

Reviews & Interviews

Kenyon CollegeBexley Public Library (OH)Dayton Daily News (OH) 

Writer Writer Pants on Fire Now, Appalachia

Praise for Responsible Adults

“Responsible Adults is devastating, in the best possible way. . . . Readers are wiser and more compassionate for knowing these stories.” —Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of American Salvage, National Book Award Finalist

In this remarkable collection, McNair hits her writerly stride with a sureness that is nothing less than breathtaking.” —Christine Maul Rice, author of Swarm Theory

Reviews & Interviews

New City LitNational Book ReviewLiterary Hub 

InterlochenChicago Review of BooksColumbia Chronicle 

Fiction Writers Review Solstice Literary Magazine  Superstition Review Booklist  

Anne-Marie Oomen

Anne-Marie Oomen’s sixth essay collection, The Long Fields, celebrates rural life as she experienced it growing up on a farm and then into an adulthood marked by both wandering and homing. The three parts cover three phases of the author’s life: moments of early farm life in “Childhood’s Lamplight,” building her own home (complete with Estwing hammer) in “The Heart of Place,” and finally “Kuieren” (Dutch for “amble”) which delves into the wide swath of daily life. These three parts build a world that offers the vitality of living country. At its heart, The Long Fields voices the best of Midwestern rural living: a relationship to land, stewarding a place, and honoring the sacred quotidian.

To pre-order (at a 20% discount), email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Erik Mortenson & Christopher Kramer

Amidst the ruins of Detroit, two seekers question all that they thought they knew as they struggle to achieve spiritual awakening in this collaborative memoir. Guided by Ryan, an eccentric mystic from the suburbs, the pair explore a ramshackle city while running experiments on themselves in a bid for understanding who they are and what life means. But as the questions Ryan poses deepen, the two are left wondering what happens when you truly “kick out the bottom.”

To pre-order (at a 20% discount), email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

​Wrong Tree: Adventures in Wildlife Biology

Jeff Wilson, with illustrations by Terry Daulton

During his ​30+ year career as a wildlife technician for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Jeff Wilson learned to be at home in an eagle nest at the top of a white pine, tracking furbearers on snow covered forest roads, and spending nights under the stars banding loons. Jeff’s adventures (or misadventures) in wildlife biology, are incredibly informative, entertaining, occasionally hilarious, and passionate in the concern for the wildlife of the Midwest, North America, and the future.

​

To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Wrong Tree

“Jeff’s wild and often amusing lifestyle, captured in this book, shows that he is the last of a breed. But our movement, environmentalism, is not dying and Jeff offers a beacon for the next generation to preserve its ties to the land.” —Rocky Barker, Pulitzer Finalist & author of Scorched Earth: How the Fires of Yellowstone Changed America

“An illuminating and entertaining journey of inquiry into the wonders of nature.” —Tia Nelson, environmentalist and daughter of Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson

"Here is a well-written story of love for the outdoors and especially its wildlife.” —Jerry Apps, author of Whispers and Shadows, A Naturalist'​s Memoir

“Jeff Wilson…is a world class individual and has more stories than anyone I have ever met.” —Jim Paruk, author of Loon Lessons

Reviews & Interviews

Outdoors Radio with Dan Small ​​​

​At the Lake

Jim Landwehr

One year when asked around the campfire what their favorite vacation memories were, Jim Landwehr’s kids replied, “trips to the cabin.” In At the Lake, stories of fishing and kayaking, a single mother and growing teenagers, and parents wanting what’s best for their children weave a larger tale of the cabin experience in the Upper Midwest. Despite the changing settings and cast of characters, the principles of rest, relaxation, and renewal remain central to three generations of a Midwestern family. With fifteen rich personal histories, Landwehr delivers a memoir filled with humor, warmth, and reverence for life up North.

To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Chosen as the #1 Best New Lake Book of 2023 (Book Authority)

Praise for At the Lake

“In good times and in grief, Landwehr reminds us, the small moments we spend in nature with those we love are sacred.” —Kim Suhr, author of Nothing to Lose

“Landwehr’s memoir is a heartwarming collage of personal yet universal memories.” —Patricia Skalka, author of the Dave Cubiak Door County Mysteries

“Jim Landwehr’s At The Lake takes us on a journey of Northwoods adventures.” —Jeff Nania, author of the Northern Lakes Mystery Series

Reviews & Interviews

KFAN 100.3  Lakeland Times  Twin Cities Pioneer Press​

Body Talk

Takwa Gordon

Blending poetry and nonfiction prose into a hybrid memoir brimming with humanity, Takwa Gordon’s Body Talk explores being bipolar, Black, a refugee, a woman, a Muslim, a child sexual abuse survivor, and a first-generation college student in America. At once a narrative of trauma and disruption, Gordon also investigates the power of love and community, and ultimately what healing looks like for a Black-American trying to carve out a story, and a future, of her own.

Praise for Body Talk

“An artistic, poignant portrait of vulnerability, self love, and survival.” —Aitch Alexandar, author of My Body is a Junkyard

“Takwa Gordon’s Body Talk is at once an unflinching study of abuse and trauma, an illuminating meditation on the impact of racism and religious bigotry, and an uplifting chronicle of recovery and empowerment.” —Vince Font, Glass Spider Publishing

“Anyone who has experienced armed conflicts in Africa or elsewhere may benefit from reading this memoir.” —Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, author of The Suicidal State in Somalia

North Freedom

Carolyn Dallmann

With the clarity of sharp memory and the innocence of youthful charm, Carolyn Dallmann takes readers on a nostalgic journey through family, farming, and growing up in North Freedom. Dozens of interrelated stories weave a narrative of promise and hard work, built on the backs of three generations of Wisconsin farmers within a thriving, small town community in the 1950s and 1960s. Dallmann’s raw, immediate style illuminates the past and reminds us of the vision and vitality of remembrance.

Praise for North Freedom

“Carolyn Dallmann captures the innocence of a little girl growing up on a farm in a small rural Wisconsin community.”—Keri Olson, author of Find Your Heart, Follow Your Heart

“The rural charm and humor of these reminiscences is delightful. Wonderful family photos add to this portrait of mid-20th-century rural Wisconsin.” —Marc Seals, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Baraboo Sauk County

The In-Between State

Martha Lundin

The essays in The In-Between State forward a compassionate analysis of bodies: queer bodies, bodies of water, bodies that are hated, and bodies that deserve love. Martha Lundin, in fifteen moving, finely-crafted essays, attempts to understand the ways in which people try to shape landscapes—how this can be a violent act, even as it seeks to be loving in some ways, and that this violence is not so different from the ways in which queer people shape their bodies to fit in or live outside of a norm. With essays both personal and progressive, The In-Between State forms a love letter to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and, ultimately, a love letter to Lundin’s queer body and queer bodies across the United States.

Praise for The In-Between State

“Rendered in crisp and sumptuous prose, and grappling toward transcendence, Lundin’s work uncovers the beautiful ‘outliers’ lurking amid the ornaments of our world. And in doing so, these essays levitate and whirl, as if miracles.” —Matthew Gavin Frank, author of Flight of the Diamond Smugglers

“This collection marks the arrival of a thrilling new voice in American literature.” —May-lee Chai, American Book Award winner, author of Useful Phrases for Immigrants

Ohio Apertures

Robert Miltner

The inaugural volume in our "Back Home" series, Robert Miltner's Ohio Apertures is a collection of brief pieces of creative nonfiction that turns its attention to northeast Ohio's position as both a Great Lakes state and the north coast of America. Its dozen selections, which include flash memoir, lyric essays, narrative nonfiction, literary nonfiction, travel writing, and historical excavations of place, trace the author's life from early childhood onward, offering a template for understanding the impact of place, region, family, literacy, and cultural influence on the shaping of a Midwest identity.

Praise for Ohio Apertures

“Miltner’s essays and reflections grant dignity to the commonplace.” —David Giffels, The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt

“Ohio Apertures represents storytelling at its lyric best.” —Barbara Sabol, Solitary Spin 

Reviews & Interviews

Rust Belt Girl The Boom Project River Teeth