UW-Stout Summer Reading Program
UW-Stout promotes a first-year-student program to encourage community building among students. This includes the Into the Book Summer Reading Program. Students are expected to read a selected book. Group discussions of the book will be held in September 2008.
Population: 485, Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time by Michael Perry is the selection for UW-Stout's Into the Book program for 2008-09 first year students.
The UW-Stout English Department coordinates much of the Into the Book project including selection of the book, recruiting faculty and staff as discussion leaders, and providing guidance. The Admissions Department is instrumental in coordinating the First Year Experience Program.
About Michael Perry and Population: 485
Mike Perry grew up on a dairy farm near New Auburn, Wisconsin, population 485, about an hour north of Menomonie. He went off and worked as a cowboy for a while and also got a nursing degree at UW-Eau Claire, but what he really wanted to be was a writer. So, after twelve years away from home, getting educated in a variety of appropriate and inappropriate ways, he returned to New Auburn, joined the volunteer fire and rescue department and settled back into small town life. His best-selling memoir, Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time, is a fascinating mix of the humorous and the serious. We meet a variety of small-town eccentrics, among them One-Eyed Beagle, another fire fighter and butcher by trade, whose ex-wives just happen to run the only gas station in town, and Perry’s own mother, a stalwart member of the volunteer fire department for many years. There are moments of great good humor, but also of stark tragedy as Perry pulls no punches concerning his experiences as a first responder to serious house fires and crash scenes. This is a wonderful and quirky portrait of small town life as seen by someone who feels a fierce love for the place he came from
--Michael Levy, Chair of the UW-Stout Dept. of English & Philosophy
Big Rigs, Elvis, & the Grand Dragon Wayne
Photo c2006 J. Shimon and J. Lindemann (courtesy of Michael Perry)