Talking Spirits

by Callen Harty

Talking Spirits is an annual cemetery tour sponsored by the Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison. On the tour, docents lead groups through Forest Hill Cemetery and talk about the artwork and symbolism of the tombstones and the history of the people buried there. In addition, at a number of the burial sites, actors bring that history alive by portraying several of the people buried there. Governors, scientists, soldiers, artists, and others have been featured. Callen Harty wrote and directed the first six years of the tour, which won awards from the Wisconsin Historical Society and the American Association of State and Local History. This volume contains all of the pieces from those first six years.

213 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 8, 2024

About the author

Originally from Shullsburg, Wisconsin Callen Harty is the author of twelve books. He is also the author of 23 full-length plays, an adaptation, a one-act play, and 50 monologues that have been produced. Most of them have been produced at Broom Street Theater in Madison, Wisconsin where he has worked as an actor, writer, and director since 1983. He served as the Artistic Director of the theater from 2005-2010. Monologues that he wrote for the Wisconsin Veterans’ Museum won him awards from the Wisconsin Historical Society and the American Association of State and Local History.

His essays, poems, and articles have been published in newspapers and magazines around the country and he has taken the top prize in several photo contests. His writing has appeared in Out!, James White Review, Scott Stamp Monthly, Wisconsin State Journal, and elsewhere. He has had several essays published online for Forward Seeking, Life After Hate, and The Progressive. He has also published dozens of essays as Facebook notes and on his own blog, A Single Bluebird.

Callen has also been a community activist for many years. He was the co-founder of Young People Caring, UW-Madison’s 10% Society (now The Pride Society), and Proud Theater. He served as the first President of Young People Caring and as the Artistic Director for Proud Theater during its first five years. He served for two years on the Same-Sex Domestic Violence Committee of the Dane County Coordinated Community Response to Domestic Violence Task Force. In 2003 he won OutReach’s Man of the Year award for his queer community activism. OutReach is Madison, Wisconsin’s lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender community center. In 2013 he won Community Shares of Wisconsin’s “Backyard Hero” award for his work on organizing Paths to Healing, a conference on surviving childhood sex abuse. In 2016 he won Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault's Courage Award. He has been invited to speak before many community groups, at a roundtable on queer community theater in New York City, as a child sex abuse survivor, and has emceed several events.