Ann Heyse

Ann Heyse has long thought that words are beautiful and powerful. For many years, she tried to make kids value them, too. After several years teaching both younger students to read and community college students to write essays, she finished her teaching career with ninth graders whose enthusiasm for life and idealism for the future are things she still occasionally misses.

Since moving eight years ago to Door County, Wisconsin, a place surrounded by water, she marveled at the thriving literary community to which she's arrived. She has written two best-selling children's books, "Good Morning, Door County" and "Good Night, Door County," both rhyming picture books with colorful illustrations. She joined a poetry critique group and subsequently published a collection of poems entitled "Drink In Sweet Rain. She started Sand Beach Press, a small publishing company, and published nine books for other Wisconsin authors including memoirs, Civil War history, a children's picture book, and three poetry collections.

Her first novel, "The Light is Ours," a work of historical fiction set in a lighthouse on the shores of Lake Michigan in 1872, will come out later this summer.