Coffee Spew

Bob Wake studied English Lit at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (MA’83). Four of his short stories have won first-place writing awards: “The Sacred Grove” (Madison Magazine, 2000), “Knights of Pythagoras”  (Wisconsin Academy Review, 2002), “Mudstone” (Wisconsin People & Ideas, 2017), and “Mending Ruth” (Wisconsin People & Ideas, 2024).

In 2018, Bob won the Zona Gale Award for Short Fiction from the Council for Wisconsin Writers, and, in 2025, took the “Honorable Mention” slot in the same category. (The Wisconsin Writers Awards are now administered by Madison’s Arts + Literature Laboratory.)

His essay on August Derleth, “Walden West and the Twilight of Transcendentalism,” won the Rediscovering Wisconsin Writers Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers in 2004.

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“Bob Wake is a truly excellent storyteller. And ‘Mudstone’ is exactly the kind of story that sticks to my ribs: smart, unfettered by heavy-handed authorial involvement, witty yet blessedly unironic, and engaging as all get out. I love it. But what provokes me (in the very best ways) is Mr. Wake’s ear for language and the possibilities he huddles inside almost every sentence, phrase, word. That’s hard to do. But he does it. And with absolute effortlessness.”

—Jill Alexander Essbaum, judge of the 2018 Zona Gale Award for Short Fiction.

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“I was drawn into the tense, mystifying suburban setting and its central family who, at first, seems familiar until the narrative slowly peels back the layers of their unique dynamic. The prose is sparse, rhythmic, alluring, and befitting of the Twin Peaks meets the Midwest story—all winding down fittingly to that layered and captivating final image.”

—Sean Enfield, judge of the 2024 Wisconsin People & Ideas Fiction Contest. First Place awarded to “Mending Ruth.”