Fresh Water Press, LLC – Literature from the Lakeshore

Fresh Water Press

Our Story

Fresh Water Press, a women-owned business, was founded in February 2024 by Tara Huck, Tracey Koach, and Peggy Turnbull, who, while discussing their love of literature among themselves, agreed that untapped talent was readily available in the greater lakeshore area. They raised their mugs and vowed to fill them with good literature by launching a publishing company.

Our Mission

Fresh Water Press elevates local writers by publishing their work and by promoting a rich literary landscape on the Lakeshore. The Press publishes multiple genres with a unifying mission to promote the voices of Northeast Wisconsin. While the subject matter or setting need not be limited to this area, the authors themselves must have a tie to this beautiful part of the state.

Our Vision

Fresh Water Press has a presence on the Lakeshore as a resource for literature, creative writing, self-expression, and community. Our body of work informs, entertains, encourages, and delights readers locally and throughout the world so that writers from these communities are added to the rich diversity of American Literature.

Meet the Press

Tara Huck brings three decades of writing experience to Fresh Water Press beginning as a journalist. Born with the gift of gab, she is a chronic storyteller and the author of Stress Fracture: A Memoir of Psychosis (Tara Meissner, 2014) and a poetry collection, Just a Stop along the Way (Tara Huck, 2018). Tara shares spiritual reflections on Substack weekly at Divine Time with Tara. Tara most enjoys spending her time with family and friends in and around fresh water.

Tara enjoys historical fiction with an authentic sense of place. Her favorite novels include City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert, American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, The Women by Kristin Hannah, and Before We were Yours by Lisa Wingate. She also loves nonfiction books including business, memoir, self-help, spiritual/religious, and science.

Tracey Koach brings years of experience in consulting and sales. Tracey started writing stories at eight years old while sitting at her family’s Milwaukee kitchen table. She has published essays in local newspapers. Her effective listening skills translate into effective communication skills to promote Fresh Water Press’s catalog of exceptional written word. She also makes a killer cup of coffee. Tracey really is a voracious reader of fiction and nonfiction. She reads everything. If she ate cereal, she would read the back of the box. What she reads and when she reads it depends on her mood. She’s a Pisces, enough said. Forced to select authors that she reads regardless of what they write, Neal DeGrasse Tyson and Robbi McCoy.

Peggy Turnbull has been interested in small presses since she read The Diary of Anaïs Nin, where she first learned of the role of independent publishers in the history of American literature. Peggy has a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Texas at Austin. After retiring from the University of Wisconsin Colleges as a librarian, and inspired by the landscape and history she lives near, she began to study, write, and publish poetry. She is a contributing poet to Mad Swirl magazine and an editorial assistant at The Solitary Plover, the newsletter of the Friends of Lorine Niedecker. She has published a chapbook, The Joy of Their Holiness (Kelsay Press, 2020), and a full-length collection under the name Margaret Coombs, Where Sweetness Falls With the Rain (Cyberwit, 2024). She views her work with the Fresh Water Press as the culmination of a lifetime of preparation. Peggy and her husband Bob live in her hometown, Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Though she likes to think her reading interests are broad, Peggy particularly enjoys reading memoirs and poetry published by indie presses, including these titles: Francisco (New Directions) by Alison Mills Newman, Killing Marias: A Poem for Multiple Voices (Two Sylvias) by Claudia Castro Luna, Standing in a River of Time (Talonbooks) by Jónína Kirton, and Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary (Graywolf) by Harryette Mullen.