Events
our
STORY
Fresh Water Press 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 publishes writers who live in or write about the northeastern Wisconsin lakeshore. The press welcomes submissions from underrepresented authors and unique voices and publishes multiple genres; at this time we are not equipped to publish art books, graphic novels, or children’s literature.
meet
THE PRESS
Tara Huck
Tara brings three decades of writing experience to Fresh Water Press. She is a lifelong storyteller and the author of Stress Fracture: A Memoir of Psychosis. Her poetry collection is titled, Just a Stop along the Way. Tara writes poetry on legal pads and prose in composition notebooks. She writes at home and in coffee shops throughout Wisconsin. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Business Administration. She lives in Wisconsin where she enjoys sailing the Great Lakes and hiking the Ice Age Trail. Tara enjoys historical fiction. 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, self-help, spiritual/religious, and science.
Tracey Koach
Tracey brings years of experience in consulting and sales. She is a voracious reader of fiction and non-fiction. 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 non-fiction. 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
Peggy has been interested in small presses since she read The Diaries 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.