Annette Langlois Grunseth, Green Bay, Wisconsin, is retired from a career in healthcare marketing and public relations. She received the 2022 Hal Gruetzmacher Prize for poetry and a 2022 Gold Medal from the Military Writers Society of America for her book, Combat and Campus: Writing Through War, a biography of her brother’s Vietnam War letters and her concurrent year at UW-Madison during the antiwar protests. She earned a Pushcart prize nomination with her book Becoming Trans-Parent: One Family’s Journey of Gender Transition. Her third book is a memoir in poetry — Summer Days at the Five and Dime, released in May 2026.
Grunseth has also been published in Poetry of Presence II, Love is for All of Us, Amethyst Review, Silver Birch Press, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Bramble, The Poeming Pigeon, Dispatches Magazine, Veterans Breakfast Club Magazine and contributed to Door County anthologies, Soundings: Door County in Poetry and Halfway to the North Pole. She has received awards from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, The Wisconsin Academy, and The Mill, A Place for Writers.
SHORT BIO:
Annette Langlois Grunseth, received the 2022 Hal Gruetzmacher Prize for Poetry. She earned a Gold Medal from Military Writers Society of America for her book Combat and Campus: Writing Through War, and a Pushcart Prize nomination for Becoming Trans-Parent: One Family’s Journey of Gender Transition. Her third book, Summer Days at the Five and Dime is a memoir in poetry. Her poems have appeared in Poetry of Presence II, Silver Birch Press, Amethyst Review, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Bramble, The Poeming Pigeon, Soundings: Door County in Poetry and Halfway to the North Pole. Her work has been recognized with Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Wisconsin Academy. Grunseth enjoys bicycling, writing poems from her kayak, and camping. Learn more at www.annettegrunseth.com
Notable Awards:
First Place in the 2022 Hal Prize Poetry Contest, (Door C ounty, Wis) with her poem “Circadas can Reach 100 Decibels; ”
Gold Medal (2022) for Memoir/Biography (Military Writers Society of America/MWSA.) for Combat and Campus: Writing Through War, (Elm Grove Press, Old Mystic, CT, 2021); a full length book of her brother’s letters from Vietnam, 1968-’69 and Grunseth’s poetry and correpondence from the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus during the antitwar protests of the Vietnam War the same year. MWSA Review
A Pushcart Prize nominaiton for Becoming Trans-Parent, One Family’s Journey of Gender Transition (Finishing Line Press 2017) and was also nominated for a Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize.
First and second place awards and honoroable mentions of poetry with Wisconsin Academy Review, Wisconsin People & Ideas, The Mill, A Place for Writers, and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.
She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin - Madison, with a bachelors degree in Communcation Arts/Radio/TV/Film. Her career of 40 years was in marketing and pulbic relations for bnaking, Chamber of Commce, and healthcare.
When not writing, you will find her on the bike trail or in her kayak on northern lakes where her muse tags along, just for the exercise.
““Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer”.
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Highlights
Three of her nature poems, Prayers to Gaia were set to original music composed by Shannon Lauriston, and performed at the Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.
Excerpts from “Combat and Campus” have been chosen and integrated as part of two different plays (East Coast and Midwest)
Her poem, "Theory of Choir" was one of 88 poems chosen from a field of 3,000 poems for the Poetry Box/Poeming Pigeons anthology (Portland, Oregon) special music edition.
Theory of Choir “ also appeared in the American Choral Directors Choral Journal.
Her poems have appeared in Peninsula Pulse, The Door Voice, Free Verse, Portage Magazine, Blue Heron Review, SOUNDINGS: Door County in Poetry, Ariel Anthology, Fox Cry Review, The Poetry of Cold, and Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets annual calendars.
Her photography is often paired with poetry.