Book Club Café will return in 2025
The Book Club Café is an annual Friends of Madison Public Library tradition - an event where book club members and other book lovers gather to celebrate reading and Madison's public libraries. This fundraiser typically takes place in June and includes a featured author reading, as well as coffee, tea and desserts. Admission is $25 per person.
One perennially popular element is the Book Club Favorites booklet, which features a collection of book recommendations gathered from local book clubs! Attendees have the opportunity to contribute to and win a book gift bag raffle, as well. Event proceeds benefit all Madison Public Libraries.
Stay tuned for more details about the 2025 Book Club Café event.
Past Events
2024: Amy Pease
Amy Pease is an alumna of the University of Wisconsin and the Madison Writer’s Studio, and works as a nurse practitioner, where she is a nationally recognized HIV specialist. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband and two children. Amy's debut novel, Northwoods, was called "a riveting debut by a nurse practitioner with an insider's view of the opioid epidemic," by People magazine.
2023: Maggie Ginsberg
Maggie Ginsberg is the author of Still True, winner of the Wisconsin Library Association's 2023 WLA Literary Award for Fiction and the single honorable mention selection for the 2022 Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award, among other honors. Maggie is now a senior editor at Madison Magazine, where she has worked full-time since 2020 after freelancing for city, regional and national magazines since 2006. She has published hundreds of articles throughout her career, earning numerous awards from the City Regional Magazine Association, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Milwaukee Press Club. Follow her online via her website or on Instagram.
2019: Lucy Tan
Lucy Tan is the author of What We Were Promised, which was long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and named a Best Book of 2018 by The Washington Post, Refinery 29, and Amazon. Lucy received her M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was awarded the 2016 August Derleth Prize and currently serves as the James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow. Her work is published or forthcoming in journals such as McSweeney’s, Asia Literary Review and Ploughshares.
2018: Chloe Benjamin
Chloe Benjamin is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Immortalists, a #1 Indie Next Pick, #1 Library Reads pick, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, Amazon Best Book of the Month, and an iBooks Favorite. Her first novel, The Anatomy of Dreams, received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages. Originally from San Francisco, CA, Chloe is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin. She lives with her husband in Madison.
Follow online via her website, or @chloekbenjamin on Twitter and Instagram.