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2024 Annual Membership is Now Open!
Membership runs to the calendar year, so renewals are always due for January. But it’s never too late! We welcome renewals and new members throughout the year, so whenever date you join, your membership is good through to December 31st.
Membership is now OPEN for 2024 for renewals and new memberships. Any new memberships from this point in the year go through to the end of 2024.
Members receive a bi-monthly LIWLRA email newsletter, a discount code to use for early bird pricing for LauraPalooza conferences in conference years, and free access to our Virtual Literary webinars.
2024 membership is $30 for the year.
Gifting A Membership
A LIWLRA membership makes a great gift for someone that might be hard to buy for, or says that they don’t need anything. If they love Laura, consider gifting them a membership to the LIWLRA. Get in touch with us if you would like us to provide an e-card to accompany your gift.
If you have ideas, questions or would like to help in membership recruitment and engagement, please contact the membership committee via email to the LIWLRA Membership Committee.
Virtual Literaries
In August 2022, we were thrilled to announce a new membership benefit: we launched our “Virtual Literaries” – a webinar program featuring presentations from past LauraPalooza conferences, plus some brand new content. These online presentations last around 60 – 75 minutes, featuring a speaker and some time for audience questions. The Virtual Literaries are free to LIWLRA members, and we have some great content lined up!
For some of our Literaries in 2024, we will also make a small number of paid tickets available for non-members on an individual event basis. We’ll release those details on this page and on our social media.
Past Virtual Literaries:
August 2022: Our first Virtual Literary featured Laura F Keyes, giving a brand new presentation on “Fashioning the Wilder Family”.
September 2022: Our Virtual Literary featured meteorologist Dr Barb Mayes Boustead presenting on “The Long Winter, Revisited,” from the 2022 conference.
October 2022: Just in time for Halloween, author Sallie Ketcham revisited her enchanting presentation from the 2015 conference on ‘Fairy Tales, Folklore and the Little House in the Deep, Dark Woods.
November 2022: Historian Patty Dowd Schmitz gave us a real treat, sharing her research ‘Before Laura was born: Finding the childhood homes of Charles Ingalls in New York & Illinois’.
December 2022: Caroline Ranald Curvan presented ‘Hidden artifacts from the archives of Laura and Rose’. Caroline was the lead researcher for the PBS special TV documentary Laura Ingalls Wilder: Prairie to Page in 2020.
January 2023: Popular LIW author & historian, Cindy Wilson, gave a seasonally appropriate presentation: ‘The Big Cut West of Tracy and the Hard Winter of 1880-81‘, exploring some of the details from her book ‘The Beautiful Snow’.
February 2023: In February, just in time for Laura’s birthday, William Anderson shared his expertise with an exclusive Q&A for LIWLRA members.
March 2023: In March we marked the week of International Women’s Day with two presentations drawing comparisons between Laura Ingalls Wilder and another heroine of literature, Louisa May Alcott. Our speakers were Beth Nolan Conners, on ‘Laura and Louisa: Little Houses’ and ‘Little Women‘ through time and Nancy McCabe, on ‘From Little Houses to Little Women: The Shaping of the Female Artist.‘
April 2023: In April we be hosted a Homesite Preview where we heard from representatives of LIW Homesites across the US talk about their plans for the 2023 visitor season. Speakers from Mansfield, De Smet, Burr Oak, Pepin, Spring Valley – told us about their events, exhibits and more.
May 2023: May, we welcomed Coyote Shook, with a presentation titled: “Mary Goes to College​: Blindness, Home Economics and Rural Futurism in the World of Laura Ingalls Wilder.” Coyote’s paper borrowed from critical disability studies and the histories of home economics & agriculture science to discuss the narratives of Laura Ingalls Wilder though a new lens.
June 2023: We held a Virtual Dime Sociable – a whole hour of member discussion in place of an invited speaker. We called it ‘A Rose in June‘ because our theme was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter Rose Wilder Lane.
Future Virtual Literaries:
Members will be contacted about future Virtual Literaries in 2024.