Jerry Apps

Jerry Apps, born and raised on a Wisconsin farm, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of more than 35 books, many of them on rural history and country life. His nonfiction books include: Once a Professor, Living a Country Year, Every Farm Tells a Story, When Chores Were Done, Humor from the Country, Country Ways and Country Days, One-Room Schools, Cheese, Breweries of Wisconsin, Ringlingville USA (a history of the Ringling Brothers circus), Old Farm: A History, Barns of Wisconsin, Horse Drawn Days: A Century of Farming With Horses, Campfires and Loon Calls, Whispers and Shadows, and Wisconsin Agriculture: A History. His children’s books include: Stormy; Eat Rutabagas; Tents, Tigers and the Ringling Brothers; Casper Jaggi: Master Swiss Cheese Maker; and Letters From Hillside Farm (a YA novel). He has an audio book, The Back Porch and Other Stories. Jerry has published novels, Cold as Thunder, The Travels of Increase Joseph, In a Pickle: A Family Farm Story, Blue Shadows Farm, Settlers Valley, Cranberry Red, Tamarack River Ghost, and The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County. He is a former publications editor for UW-Extension, an acquisitions editor for the McGraw-Hill Book Company, and editor of a national professional journal.

Jerry has won awards for his writing from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Library Association (the 2007 Notable Authors Award), American Library Association, Foreword Magazine, Midwest Independent Publishers Association, Robert E. Gard Foundation, The Wisconsin Council for Writers (the 2007 Major Achievement Award), Upper Midwest Booksellers, and Barnes and Noble Bookstores, among others. In 2010 he received the Distinguished Service Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Science, was named a fellow by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences Arts and Letters in 2012, and was named to the Wisconsin 4-H Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2016, Jerry won the White Cedar Outstanding Teaching Award from The Clearing. For more on Apps’s writing and books, visit jerryapps.com.