08/12/2026
Tonight! Dickinson Poetry Reading
Featuring Wisconsin Writer: Annette Langlois Grunseth
On Wednesday, August 12, at 7PM, at UUFDC
An open mic and reception follows, affording an opportunity to meet the poets. The Series is named for Emily Dickinson, a prolific poet and philosophically in tune with Unitarian beliefs. The public is welcome and there is no charge.
Annette Langlois Grunseth, Green Bay, Wisconsin, is retired from a career in healthcare marketing and public relations. She received the 2022 Hal Gruetzmacher Prize for poetry and a 2022 Gold Medal from the Military Writers Society of America for her book, Combat and Campus: Writing Through War, a biography of her brother’s Vietnam War letters and her concurrent year at UW-Madison during the antiwar protests. She earned a Pushcart prize nomination with her book Becoming Trans-Parent: One Family’s Journey of Gender Transition. Her third book is a memoir in poetry — Summer Days at the Five and Dime, released in May 2026.
Summer Days at the Five and Dime is a memoir in verse about growing up in post–World War II central Wisconsin, when summer days stretched wide and children belonged to the streets, the woods, and each other. Set in 1950s and 1960s small-town America, this coming-of-age story captures a Midwestern childhood shaped by freedom, family, and friendship. As the poems move into adulthood and aging, memory reveals resilience, gratitude, and the enduring pull of place.
