Perry is author of Population 485: Meeting Neighbors One Siren at a Time

In his Thursday address on campus, Michael Perry will reflect on how landscape and sense of place shape his work. Given that he lives in rural Wisconsin with his wife and daughters, that landscape includes cows, cheese, manure spreaders and pitchforks. Perry won critical acclaim as a regional author with the 2002 publication of his first memoir, Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time. His essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Backpacker, Outside and Orion, and he is also the author of the books Coop: A Family, a Farm and the Pursuit of One Good Egg and Truck: A Love Story. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had a recent writeup on Perry.