The poetry and prose of Hamlin Garland is a testament to just that. Although Garland eventually settled on the East Coast, he was born in West Salem, near La Crosse, and, as the 20th century approached, he spent his youth on Midwestern farms. In many of his novels, among them "Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly," published in 1895, the influence of Garland's surroundings is clear.

Set on farmland on the west side of Wisconsin near the Mississippi River, the novel provides an account of a young girl, Rose, who dreams of traveling to Madison to get a taste of life outside the farm. The sense of place in Garland’s writing is strong not only in his setting, but also in the language of his characters. For instance, early in the book, a talkative 5-year-old Rose, excited upon seeing a flock of birds, asks her father, “They’s 'bout a million of 'um, ain’t they? They’re glad spring has come, ain’t they, pappa?”

Madison native David Maraniss, who also currently works as an associate editor for The Washington Post, carries on this style of writing today. Unlike Kort and Garland, the effect Wisconsin has had on Maraniss is reflected less in terms of pastoral-related prose and more in his experiences growing up and attending school in the state capital.

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Walter T. McDonald discusses “Finding Freedom: The Untold Story of Joshua Glover, Runaway Slave,” a book he co-authored about a runaway slave jailed by Wisconsin abolitionists in the 1850s.

Maraniss said growing up in Wisconsin “certainly” affected his writing.

“I became infused with the sensibility of sifting and winnowing, looking hard for the truth,” he said.

His father was a newspaper writer, and the volatile environment in Madison during Maraniss’ impressionable years greatly influenced his prose. While attending UW-Madison in the late 1960s, the area’s distinct political atmosphere had a lingering effect on Maraniss that is evident in his experience documenting the campus’s infamous Vietnam War protests, which he much later used in publishing the 2004 book "They Marched Into Sunlight."

“They [the protests] grew as the war dragged on,” Maraniss explained. “The campus seemed to have a protest every month, a strike of some sort every semester. The scent of tear gas was the smell of campus.”

Even well after winning the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on former president Bill Clinton's life and career during the 1992 presidential race, Maraniss returned to his roots, his home state’s individuality, when in 2000 he wrote "When Pride Still Mattered," a detailed biography about famous Packer coach Vince Lombardi and life in and around Green Bay in the 1960s.

Jane Hamilton, another contemporary and highly successful writer, grew up in the Midwest and made Wisconsin her home in the 1980s. Hamilton currently lives in an orchard farmhouse in the southeastern part of the state, near Milwaukee, and the sense of being somewhere special that has affected so many writers who have lived in Wisconsin also resonated with her. Many of Hamilton’s books are set in and around the state and are based on real events whose characters are often inspired by local acquaintances.