All Write in Sin City

Skip Spence's life started in Windsor, but he became a poster boy for the 1960s, playing with groups like Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape. His time in the spotlight lasted only three years, but he left a lasting impression on rock and roll. Cam Cobb is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Windsor and a rock journalist. Cobb's writing has appeared in such magazines as Record Collector, Shindig!, and Ugly Things. His liner notes for Skip Spence's single, "Rock & Roll Band," accompanied the release in 2019. Cobb co-directed Buskin' in the Subway for the Windsor International Film Festival, and he coproduced O(A)R, a short documentary on Skip Spence. His books include What's Big And Purple And Lives In The Ocean?: The Moby Grape Story, and Weighted Down: The Complicated Life of Skip Spence.New Rolling Stone Record Guide 2nd ed. 1983. Is cited. More information on the book here. 

Felicia B. George is a native Detroiter who loves Detroit history and culture. She earned her doctorate in anthropology from Wayne State University, where she is now an adjunct professor. Her recent book, When Detroit Played the Numbers: Gambling's History and Cultural Impact on the Motor City, was released by Wayne State University Press in 2024 and has been named as a 2025 Michigan Notable Book by the Library of Michigan.www.doctordetroit.nethttps://wsupress.wayne.edu/9780814350768/

Born and raised in Windsor, Ontario, Peter Hrastovec is the author of three books of poetry, In Lieu of Flowers, Sidelines and There Will Be Fish, which we covered on a podcast episode in May of 2022. Peter is the current Poet Laureate of Windsor, and he has contributed to several anthologies, most recently, Where the Map Begins. Limbo Moon is his new chapbook. It was featured at BookFest Windsor 2024 and published by Woodbridge Farm Books.

Marty Gervais is perhaps the most well-known figure in the Windsor writing community. He is an award-winning Canadian journalist, poet, playwright, historian photographer and editor. He won Toronto's Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian letters and to emerging writers, and he was awarded the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award. He was also awarded the City of Windsor Mayor's Award for literature, and he is Windsor's Poet Laureate Emeritus. He received an honorary doctor of laws from Assumption University in 2010. Gervais has written more than a dozen books of poetry, two plays and a novel. His most successful work, The Rumrunners, a book about the Prohibition period was a Canadian bestseller in 1980 and was #10 on The Globe and Mail's non-fiction bestsellers list. His most recent book is the poetry collection, The Sky Above, is an engaging book that follows his long and colourful career of spinning stories.We recorded the launch of The Sky Above. It was held at Biblioasis and hosted by André Narbonne and Kalie Chapman. This episode was created from that recording. 

Ghassan Zeineddine was born in Washington, DC, and raised in the Middle East. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College, and co-editor of the creative nonfiction anthology Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Ohio. His book of short stories, Dearborn: Stories is published by Tin House Books. https://tinhouse.com/author/ghassan-zeineddine/

Elly Blake is the New York Times bestselling author of the Frostblood Saga. After earning a BA in English literature, she has worked as a project manager, customs clerk, graphic designer, reporter for a local business magazine, and library assistant. She lives in Southwestern Ontario with her husband and kids. Her latest book is The Forest King's Daughter published by Hachette Canada. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/elly-blake/the-forest-kings-daughter/9780316395724/EllyBlake.com

Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. His limited series podcast, Natural Life, is an intimate and unexpectedly honest documentary on his cousin, who is serving a life sentence without parole in Michigan. Richard is also the author of I Am Herod, which takes readers undercover at one of the world's largest religious events, and Caribou Run, a collection of poetry. He is the recipient of multiple awards including two National Magazine Awards and the Writers' Guild of Alberta's 2019 Award for Best Short Story. His new book is Hello, Horse, a collection of short stories published by Biblioasis. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. https://biblioasisbookshop.com/item/N8KJ1y9ScrxoDMASDESSPAhttps://richardkemick.com/

Join us for a special minisode in which we reflect briefly on five(!) lovely years of podcasting, and on 2024 in particular.Irene, Kim, and Sarah have selected a few works each that struck us in different ways, but don't get us wrong, we have had a blast chatting with each author this year, and all are worthy of you joining the conversation!In no particular order or rank, here are the books we spoke about in this episode for your reference, or check out all of our episodes for the full list. We'll chat with you again soon in 2025!Diver Beneath the Street by Petra KuppersPrecedented Parroting by Barbara TranHow to Build a Boat by Elaine FeeneyThe Curious Lives of Non-Profit Martyrs by George SingletonOn Community by Casey PlettThe Blood of Five Rivers with Arjun BediThe Future by Catherine LerouxAnomia by Jade Wallacenon]disclosure by Renée BondySorry About the Fire by Colleen Coco Collins

 Walter Metz is a Full Professor in the School of Media Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He earned a Ph.D. in Radio/Television/Film at the University of Texas at Austin in 1996, and holds an S.B. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT (1989). He is the author of three books: Engaging Film Criticism: Film History and Contemporary American Cinema, published by P. Lang, and two titles published by Wayne State University Press, Bewitched, and Gilligan's Island. He is also the author of sixty refereed journal articles and book chapters about the intertextual relationships between film, television, novels, and theatre. His work roves across disciplines, grappling with the importance of audio-visual productions for understanding such disparate subjects as gender, comedy, poetry, opera, the Cold War, the Holocaust, science, and animals. His latest book is Gilligan's Island, part of Wayne State University Press TV Milestones Series. https://wsupress.wayne.edu/9780814333723/

Molly Peacock is the author of eight volumes of poetry. Earlier titles include The Analyst: Poems and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems. She joins us today to talk about her latest collection, The Widow's Crayon Box. She also recently wrote a non-fiction book about a half-century friendship, A Friend Sails in on a Poem, published by Windsor-based Palimpsest Press. As a poetry activist, Peacock was the co-founder of Poetry in Motion on New York's subways and buses, the founder of The Best Canadian Poetry series, and the creator of The Secret Poetry Room at Binghamton University.  The Widow's Crayon Box is published by Penguin Random House Canada.https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/773911/the-widows-crayon-box-by-molly-peacock/9781324079439

Ben Berman Ghan is a writer and editor from Toronto whose prose and poetry have been published in Clarkesworld magazine, Strange Horizons, the Blasted Tree Publishing Co., the tƐmz Review and others. His previous works include the short story collection What We See in the Smoke. He now lives and writes in Calgary, Alberta, where he is a Ph.D. student in English literature at the University of Calgary. His first novel is The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits, Published by Buckrider Books/Wolsak and Wynn. https://bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/products/the-years-shall-run-like-rabbits

Here is a special short with Literary Arts Windsor President Wesley Foster talking about the exciting lineup for Windsor's annual literary festival BookFest/Festival du Livre Windsor 2024.This year, it's all virtual, so accessible from anywhere, and the theme is Bridging Communities. Here's our co-host Irene Moore Davis chatting with Wes about the literary conversations coming right to you!For tickets and more information, seehttps://www.literaryartswindsor.ca/event/bridging-communities-bookfest-festival-du-livre-2024/

Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh was born in Washington, D.C. to an Iranian father and an American mother. She moved to Iran at age 5 and grew up in Tehran under the Shah. She returned to the U.S. to attend Stanford University, and when the Islamic Revolution started brewing shortly after she graduated, she moved back to Iran and plopped herself down in it. She later received an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University. A lifelong English teacher, she has taught in schools and universities on three continents, and she now lives in the United States. Her fiction has been published in numerous publications, including The Georgia Review, Gertrude Press, and Fiction International, and she received an honorable mention for The Best American Short Stories 2018. Her latest book, Zan, a collection of short stories, is published in 2024 by Dzanc Books and was the Winner of the 2022 Dzanc Short Collection Prize.https://www.dzancbooks.org/all-titles/p/zan

Renée D. Bondy taught in Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Windsor, where she facilitated courses on queer activism, women and religion, and the history of women's movements. Her writing has appeared in Herizons, Bitch, Bearings Online, and the Humber Literary Review. She is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers. Renée lives in Chatham, Ontario, and the book is inspired by events that happened there. [non]disclosure published by Second Story Press is her first novel. https://secondstorypress.ca/collections/renee-d-bondy

Dale Jacobs is the author of Graphic Encounters: Comics and the Sponsorship of Multimodal Literacy (2013) and the co-author (with Heidi LM Jacobs) of 100 Miles of Baseball: Fifty Games, One Summer (2021). His essays have appeared in journals including but not limited to Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, English Journal, College Composition and Communication, Biography, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Journal of Comics and Culture, and Studies in Comics. Dale is the editor of the Myles Horton Reader (2003) and Jeff Lemire: Conversations (2021,) as well as the co-editor of A Way to Move: Rhetorics of Emotion and Composition Studies (2003.) He lives in Windsor, Ontario where he is a faculty member in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor. His latest book, released this year by Wilfrid Laurier Press, is On Comics and Grief.https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/O/On-Comics-and-Grief

Kim Nelson is an Associate Professor of Film at the University of Windsor, and also the Director of the Humanities Research Group and the Live Doc Project. Originally from Vancouver, she has been based in Windsor since 2005. She has a BA in Film from UBC and an MFA in Film from York University. Her work spans fiction and documentary. Her interests include women's rights and equality, colonialism and conflict, and the environment.Her documentaries have been presented at festivals and campuses across Canada, the US, and Europe. She is a co-editor of The Routledge Companion to History and the Moving Image, and the author of Making History Move: Five Principles of the Historical Film. Recently, she has also become a co-host of Moving Histories, a podcast that explores the films that connect us all with history.  https://www.thekimnelson.com/https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/making-history-move/9781978829770/

Barbara Tran's poetry and fiction have appeared in The Paris Review, The Malahat Review, and Conjunctions. Included in Barbara's writing for the screen is the narration for Madame Pirate: Becoming a Legend, a short XR film, which was a 2022 Official Selection of SXSW and in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Barbara's poetry collection In the Mynah Bird's Own Words was the winner of Tupelo Press's inaugural chapbook award. A co-editor of Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, 25th Anniversary Edition, Barbara is a member of the She Who Has No Master(s) and AfroMundo collectives. Much of her writing is conceived while walking, playing, or sharing a tasty morsel with a rescue dog.  Precedented Parroting is published by Windsor's Palimpsest Press. https://barbaratran.com/https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/precedented-parroting-barbara-tran/

A native "Thumbody," RS Deeren is an assistant professor of creative writing at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. His research interests include contemporary fiction, US working-class studies, and rural-urban dynamics. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in periodicals including The Great Lakes Review, Joyland, Midwestern Gothic, and more. Like some of his characters, he has also worked as a line cook, landscaper, lumberjack, and a bank teller. He received his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His debut story collection, Enough To Lose, was selected as a Michigan Notable Book in 2023, and it was published by Wayne State University Press. https://www.rsdeeren.com/https://wsupress.wayne.edu/9780814350409/

Marty Gervais and André NarbonneAbout our guests:  The Publishing Practicum is a different kind of University of Windsor English course. It's like a year-long internship for a group of students who take one or two books per year through the steps of the publishing process from editing to book design to creating a promotional campaign and a book launch. Marty Gervais, journalist, author, Poet Laureate Emeritus and publisher of Black Moss Press, has supervised the program for more than 20 years. 2024 is his final year at the helm, and he's turning it over to award-winning author and U of W professor Dr. André Narbonne. They're both joining us today to talk about the history of the program, the two books that the Practicum launched this year, and what the future holds for this popular educational experience. Usually at the end of the podcast, we have the author read a selection from the book. This time, we have readings from some of the poets who participated in the anthologies. Where the Map Begins— Kalie Chapman is a master's student at the University of Windsor in English Literature & Creative Writing. She is currently working on a creative manuscript for her thesis, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). She has been published in three chapbooks, and was on the editorial team for at the end, beginnings by Christopher Lawrence Menard. Peter James Billing. As a Poet, Author, Composer, Songwriter, Filmmaker and Incredible Dishwasher, Peter believes that a great idea at the top of a staircase stays there, if not jotted down. You may find him in deep thought in bank lines, or drifting off forming stories at cafes but always ready to listen and support artists in Windsor and Walkerville. Whether by Poe or Puck, rhyme or rhythm, pen or paper, a road hockey game may break out. What Time Can't Touch—Barry Brodie is a poet, playwright, actor, director and teacher. He has written two books: The Language of the Star – Journals of the Magi and Tom Thomson – On the Threshold of Magic. His poetry has appeared in Amethyst Review and The Orchards Poetry Journal. He held the Chair in Religion and the Arts at Assumption University, co-founded Shō – Art, Spirit & Performance and currently teaches a course on the creative process at the University of Windsor. Karen Rockwell is a lesbian poet, flash fiction author and accidental artist, who considers colour her home, chaos, a friend and words, her salvation. Author of Curious Connections, a chapbook of flash-fiction published in 2016 by Urban Farmhouse Press, Karen is published in journals and anthologies in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. Recognition includes: First Place in Room's 2013 Poetry Contest, and in Polar Expressions' 2011 Story Contest; Second Place in Brooklin Poetry Society's 2018 Poetry Contest, among others. https://www.uwindsor.ca/english/317/practicum-courses

Colleen Coco Collins is an interdisciplinary artist of Irish, French, and Odawa descent, working in songwriting, performance, poetry and visual arts. She's worked as a gallery director, in forestry, fossil preparation, and renovation; as an autism support worker, teacher, and women's shelter counsellor. Her writing, music, and art practice centers on temporality, presumptions of sentience, subversion, rhythm, gesture, and more. Collins has studied at universities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, New Zealand, and Ireland. She lives in rural Mi'kma'ki, Nova Scotia amidst crows, coyotes, grackles, bees, humpback, lichen and fox. Sorry About the Fire is her poetry debut, published by Biblioasis. https://www.biblioasis.com/shop/new-releases/sorry-about-the-fire/

Petra Kuppers is a disability culture activist and a community performance artist who uses somatics, performance, and speculative writing to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. She is the Anita Gonzalez Collegiate Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture at the University of Michigan, a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, and codirector of the somatic writing studio Turtle Disco. Her third performance poetry collection, Gut Botany, was named one of the top ten US poetry books of 2020 by the New York Public Library, and it won the 2022 Creative Book Award by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Her fourth collection, Diver Beneath the Street - true crime meets ecopoetry at the level of the soil – was published by Wayne State University Press in 2024.https://www.petrakuppers.com/https://wsupress.wayne.edu/9780814351116/

Jade Wallace (they/them) holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Windsor, and writes poetry, novels, and short fiction, serves as the inaugural book reviews editor for CAROUSEL, and is co-founder of the collaborative writing entity MA|DE. Jade's work has been published in literary journals internationally and has been shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award. Their writing has also been nominated for The Journey Prize. In addition to their own writing, Jade works on poetry and fiction editing, manuscript consultation, ghost writing, workshops, and readings. Jade's debut novel, Anomia, adapted from their Governor General's Gold Medal-winning thesis, will be released by Palimpsest Press in Spring, 2024. https://jadewallace.ca/https://palimpsestpress.ca/shop/ 

Our featured author in this episode is Jason McBride. We're bringing you the recorded highlights of a recent book event, a talk by McBride titled: Autobiography, Autofiction, Autoeroticism. It took place  in downtown Windsor and was hosted by The University of Windsor's Humanities Research Group. In his talk, Jason McBride discussed his first book, Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker, the result of a ten-year project that produced a biography of the punk-rock era experimental novelist. Kathy Acker's novels have been described as “visionary” and “transgressive,” with titles that include Blood and Guts in High School; Empire of the Senses; and Pussy, King of Pirates. She wrote about love and the limitations of language, as well as gender, sex, capitalism and colonialism.Jason McBride is a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, The Believer, The Village Voice, The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Hazlitt, and many others. He lives in Toronto, and he recently wrote a piece on Windsor for an article in Maclean's called THE GREAT ESCAPES: 10 Places in Canada to Visit Right Now. The event and the recording took place at the University of Windsor's School of Creative Arts. We'd like to thank Jason McBride, the author, as well as Dr. Kim Nelson, Director of the Humanities Research Group, and Trevor Pittman from the School of Creative Arts for their assistance in putting this podcast together. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Eat-Your-Mind/Jason-McBride/9781982117023https://macleans.ca/culture/travel/best-places-to-travel-in-canada/

Carlos Anthony is a screenwriter, producer, and novelist who addresses the historically silenced experiences of Black men. With a background in Advertising and Marketing, he learned effective communication and storytelling. Through diverse work experiences, he empathized with individuals from various backgrounds, observing the impact of factors like education, class, culture, and immigration status on masculinity. As a survivor of loss, abuse, and addiction, Carlos draws from his personal struggles, using art as a healing tool to break generational curses. He lives in Windsor, Ontario with his family and is involved in various initiatives, including directing operations at the Windsor Black International Film Festival and co-founding the Millennial X filmmaking program. Carlos' creative work spans web series, short films, best-selling novels, essays, and viral short story series, exploring themes such as Black adolescence, fatherhood, relationships, addiction, and more. Shades of Black, published in 2023 by James Lorimer & Company, is his first novel.https://formaclorimerbooks.ca/contributor/carlos-anthony/

George Singleton is a Southern author who has written ten books of short stories, two novels, an instructional book on writing fiction and a collection of essays. He was born in Anaheim, California and raised in Greenwood, South Carolina. In 2011 he was awarded the Hillsdale Award for Fiction by The Fellowship of Southern Writers. Singleton was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers in April 2015, and was awarded the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence in 2016. His latest collection of short fiction is The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs from Dzanc Books of Michigan.https://www.dzancbooks.org/all-titles/p/nonprofit-martyrsAlso in this episode:  we want to briefly highlight an upcoming annual event in the Windsor literary community. It's the annual book launch evening for the Publishing Practicum program at the University of Windsor. It's a unique educational program where thirty students collaborate each year to edit, publish and launch a book. This year, the Practicum is publishing two books with Black Moss Press, both poetry anthologies about our local communities. Where the Map Begins explores our roots through the neighbourhoods of Windsor. The anthology What Time Can't Touch captures the spirit of Amherstburg through its history. Look for a full episode on the Publishing Practicum and these two anthologies  in an upcoming episode of All Write in Sin City. If you're looking to hear some talented local poets, the launch celebration for both books will take place on April 2nd at Mackenzie Hall, starting at 7 p.m. Admission is free. Now, we have two selections of the poetry in the books read by their authors. First, we have Peter Hrastovec. He is a Windsor-born University of Windsor law and literature grad, with three published poetry books, his most recent being There Will Be Fish (Black Moss Press, 2022). Previous books include Sidelines and In Lieu Of Flowers. He also contributed to the anthologies Because We Have All Lived Here and In The Middle Space with the University of Windsor Publishing Practicum. He is the current Poet Laureate for the City of Windsor. Peter teaches and practices law. He and his wife, Denise, have three children and four grandchildren.Peter reads his poem, Kanata House, from the Windsor anthology, Where the Map Begins. Rawand Mustafa, is a Palestinian Syrian writer living in Windsor, Ontario. She received her MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor. Rawand draws inspiration from social justice causes, and she is particularly impassioned by the struggles and resilience of Palestinians living in exile or under occupation.Rawand reads her poem, Outside In, from the Amherstburg anthology, What Time Can't Touch.

Ben Robinson is a poet, musician and librarian. His most recent publication is Without Form from The Blasted Tree and knife | fork | book. He has only ever lived in Hamilton, Ontario on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. His first book is The Book of Benjamin from Palimpsest Press.You can find him online at benrobinson.work.https://palimpsestpress.ca/our-authors/ben-robinson/

Catherine Leroux is the author of three highly praised novels and an innovative sequence of short stories. Her first novel, La marche en forêt (2011), was a finalist for Quebec's Booksellers' Prize. Her bestselling second novel, The Party Wall, a translation of Le mur mitoyen, won the France–Quebec Prize in the original and, in translation, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Dublin IMPAC Award. In the United States, The Party Wall was a prestigious Indies Introduce selection. Leroux's story sequence, Madame Victoria, won Quebec's Adrienne Choquette Prize and was a finalist for the Booksellers' Prize. Her novel, L'Avenir, won the Jacques Brossard Prize and was a finalist for the Imaginary Horizons Prize. Catherine Leroux works as a translator and editor in Montreal. She was awarded the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for Translation. L'Avenir has now been translated into English by Susan Ouriou as The Future. Published by Biblioasis, The Future was released in the fall of 2023.  It is now short listed for CBC's Canada Reads championed by author Heather O'Neill. https://biblioasisbookshop.com/item/N8KJ1y9ScrwyM7ez4DnvLw/lists/L9Zzzb3Vt5iUhttps://www.cbc.ca/books/meet-the-canada-reads-2024-contenders-1.7073689

Miriam Wright is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Windsor. She teaches Canadian history, and her recent work has focussed on race and sports in Canada as well as on Chinese immigration to Newfoundland and Labrador. Miriam is one of the researchers behind the award-winning Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding & the Chatham Coloured All-Stars project. Her new book, released by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in Fall 2023, is Sporting Justice: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars and Black Baseball in Southwestern Ontario, 1915-1958.https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/S/Sporting-Justice

Casey Plett is the author of A Dream of a Woman, Little Fish, and A Safe Girl to Love, the co-editor of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers, and the publisher at LittlePuss Press. She has written for the New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications. A winner of the Amazon First Novel Award and the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award, her work has also been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. On Community is the latest in the Field Notes series published by Biblioasis, and was released in 2023. On Community  has been named one of CBC's "30 Canadian books to read in winter 2024." https://www.cbc.ca/books/30-canadian-books-to-read-in-winter-2024-1.7073501https://caseyplett.wordpress.com/https://www.biblioasis.com/shop/new-releases/on-community/

Arjun Bedi is a second generation Indian-Canadian writer. He was born and raised in Mississauga. Formally educated in Philosophy, with an eclectic set of experiences to follow, his aim has always been to interact with the world in a way that keeps his curiosity alive. The Blood of Five Rivers is his first novel and is published by Palimpsest Press. https://palimpsestpress.ca/our-authors/arjun-bedi/

About our guest:  Elaine Feeney is an award-winning poet, novelist, short story writer and playwright from the west of Ireland. Her 2020 debut, As You Were, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Irish Novel of the Year Award, and won the Kate O'Brien Award, the McKitterick Prize, and the Dalkey Festival Emerging Writer Award. Her second novel, How to Build a Boat, is longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023. Previously, Feeney has published three collections of poetry, including The Radio Was Gospel and Rise, and her short story “Sojourn” was included in The Art of the Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories, edited by Sinéad Gleeson. Feeney lectures at the National University of Ireland, Galway. https://www.biblioasis.com/brand/feeney-elaine/

Join our three podcasters: Kim Conklin, Sarah Jarvis, and Irene Moore Davis for a fond look at some of the titles that caught our attention in 2023.  It's not an exhaustive list as we loved all our interviews and you can find them all in our episodes. Here are links to the ones we mentioned here:The Middle Daughter  Chika Unigwehttps://www.buzzsprout.com/327233/12557891G.A. Grisenthwaite's Tales for Late Night Bonfireshttps://www.buzzsprout.com/327233/13410063Psych Murders with Stephanie Heithttps://www.buzzsprout.com/327233/12415544https://stephanie-heit.com/books-psych-murders/Black Scientist, Black Activist, Black Icon by Howard McCurdy. Edited by George Elliott Clarke https://www.buzzsprout.com/327233/13453444 The African Samurai by Craig Shrevehttps://www.buzzsprout.com/327233/13445022Raising Bean by W.S. Pennhttps://www.buzzsprout.com/327233/11908024Ordinary Wonder Tales with Emily Urquharthttps://www.buzzsprout.com/327233/12838402Tend by Kate Hargreaves https://www.buzzsprout.com/327233/12514105 Stephen Marche's On Writing and Failure https://www.buzzsprout.com/327233/12867483 Arboreality by Rebecca Campbellhttps://www.buzzsprout.com/327233/12962533

Jacqueline Vogtman's fiction has appeared in Hunger Mountain, Permafrost, The Literary Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Third Coast, and other journals. A graduate of the MFA program at Bowling Green State University, she is currently Associate Professor of English at Mercer County Community College. She has lived in New Jersey most of her life and resides in a small town surrounded by nature, which she explores with her husband, daughter, and dog. Girl Country is her first book. https://www.dzancbooks.org/all-titles/p/girl-country#:~:text=A%20near%2Dfuture%20farmer%20battling,the%20end%20of%20the%20world.https://jacquelinevogtman.com/

Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General's Award for non-fiction. He is the author of three novels: Breaking and Entering, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata. He is also the author of a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People's History, and has written nine books for children, two of which were nominated for a Governor General's Award. He was a senior editor at Walrus magazine, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, Walrus, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. He has won twelve National Magazine Awards and numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto. His latest book is Breaking and Entering, published by Biblioasis in 2023. Don was a featured author at this year's BookFest/Festival du Livre Windsor, October 12th-15th in Windsor, Ontario. https://www.biblioasis.com/brand/gillmor-don/http://www.dongillmor.ca/

Alise Alousi's writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Three Fold Press, Mom Egg Review, The Detroit Free Press, Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry and We Call to the Eye and the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Descent. She is a 2019 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow and has received awards and fellowships from the Knight Foundation, Mesa Refuge, Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and others. Alise Alousi has worked at InsideOut Literary Arts in Detroit for two decades, she serves the Room Project, a workspace for women and nonbinary writers in Detroit, and she currently teaches poetry to teens at the Arab American National Museum. Her latest poetry collection, published by Wayne State University Press in August 2023, is What to Count.https://alisealousipoetry.com/https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/what-countOur local writer feature this time is Erik ETomic Johnson. You'll catch one of his poems later in the episode. Erik E-tomic Johnson is a local hip-hop lyricist, vocalist and slam poet. From the Windsor-Essex county area. Erik has been writing and performing poetry for a number of years. He draws his poetic inspiration from his Afro-Indigenousculture and experiences as an artist of color and physically disabled creator. His goal as an artist is to highlight the experiences of BIPOC through storytelling, a theme that is deeply ingrained in all of his poetic endeavours.https://biblioasisbookshop.com/https://storytellersbookstore.ca/

Josh Cook is a bookseller and co-owner at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has worked since 2004. He is also author of the critically acclaimed postmodern detective novel An Exaggerated Murder and his fiction, criticism, and poetry have appeared in numerous leading literary publications. He grew up in Lewiston, Maine and lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. His latest book is The Art of Libromancy with Biblioasis Press. https://www.biblioasis.com/brand/cook-josh/

Lisa Alward grew up in Halifax during the 1960s and 70s. She worked in literary publishing in Toronto in the 80s and began writing fiction at 50. Her stories have won The Fiddlehead Prize and the Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award and have appeared in Best Canadian Stories and The Journey Prize Stories, as well as literary journals such as The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, untethered, Prairie Fire, and Exile. She lives with her husband, John, near the Wolastoq River in Fredericton.  Cocktail is her first book, published by Biblioasis. More information here: https://www.biblioasis.com/shop/fiction/short-fiction/cocktail/Lisa's website: https://www.lisaalward.com/More about BookFest / Festival du Livre Windsor 2023 here:  https://www.literaryartswindsor.ca/bookfest/

Poet, novelist, playwright, and critic Dr. George Elliott Clarke is a native of Windsor, Nova Scotia. He is a seventh-generation Canadian of African American and Mi'kmaq Indigenous descent. He earned his BA from the University of Waterloo, MA from Dalhousie University, and PhD from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario (which is where I first met him.) Clarke has served as both Poet Laureate of Toronto, Ontario and Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada, and he teaches Canadian literature at the University of Toronto. He is a member of the Order of Nova Scotia and the Order of Canada. He has written too many books to mention but some particular favourites of mine are Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues, Whylah Falls which he later adapted for the radio and stage, Lush Dreams, Blue Exile: Fugitive Poems, Execution Poems: The Black Acadian Tragedy of George and Rue, which won the Governor General's Literary Award, Red, Black, Blue, Gold, White, Canticles, War Canticles, Canticles III, and Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir (2021.) He's also the author of many critical and scholarly works, including Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature (2002).George Elliott Clarke is no stranger to the Detroit River borderlands and to BookFest/Festival du Livre Windsor in particular, and this October, he'll be appearing BookFest Windsor again. On October 14th, he'll be appearing at the Windsor launch of his latest project, Black Scientist, Black Activist, Black Icon, and on October 15th, he'll be part of the always popular BookFest Windsor event, the Poetry Café.Available from Nimbus Publishing.About BookFest / Festival du Livre Windsor https://www.literaryartswindsor.ca/bookfest/

Craig Shreve was born and raised in North Buxton, Ontario, a small town that has been recognized by the Canadian government as a National Historic Site due to its former status as a popular terminus on the Underground Railroad. He is a descendant of Abraham Doras Shadd, the first Black person in Canada to be elected to public office, and of his daughter Mary Ann Shadd, the pioneering abolitionist, suffragette, and newspaper editor/publisher who was inducted posthumously into the National Women's Hall of Fame in the United States. Craig has volunteered internationally on humanitarian building projects, and is a keen outdoor sports enthusiast – including climbing, hang gliding, caving, and other terrifying activities. Craig is the author of One Night in Mississippi and a graduate of the School for Writers at Humber College. His latest novel is The African Samurai, published by Sribner Canada which has already been optioned by Netflix. Craig will be one of the spotlight authors featured  during BookFest/Festival du Livre Windsor 2023, happening October 12th-15th in Windsor.For more information: https://craigshreve.com/bioAvailable from: https://www.simonandschuster.ca/authors/Craig-Shreve/191441634and your favourite independent bookstore.For more information about BookFest / Festival du Livre Windsor : https://www.literaryartswindsor.ca/bookfest/

G. A. Grisenthwaite is Nlaka'pamux [Ing-khla-kap-muh], a member of the Lytton First Nation. He was a graphic designer in Vancouver and Kelowna before completing his master's in English literature and creative writing at the University of Windsor. His stories and poems have appeared in The Antigonish Review, Our Stories Literary Journal, FreeFall, Exile Quarterly, ndnCountry, Offset 17, Prism International, and Bawaajigan: Stories of Power. Grisenthwaite's work has earned a number of prizes, including the 2014 John Kenneth Galbraith Literary Award for his short story “The Fine Art of Frying Eggs;” his first novel, Home Waltz, published by Palimpsest Press, was shortlisted for the 2021 Governor General's Award for English Language Fiction and his short story “Splatter Patterns” was shortlisted for the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize. His new short story collection, published by Freehand Press, is Tales for Late Night Bonfires. G.A. Grisenthwaite lives in Kingsville, Ontario. And we're thrilled that G.A. Grisenthwaite will be one of the authors featured during BookFest/Festival du Livre Windsor 2023, happening October 12th-15th in Windsor.*Contains a mention of suicide. For more information: https://www.gordongrisenthwaite.com/Available from: https://freehand-books.com/product/tales-for-late-night-bonfires/#tab-descriptionand your favourite independent bookstore.More about BookFest / Festival du Livre Windsor: https://www.literaryartswindsor.ca/bookfest/

In a special summertime "minisode" of All Write in Sin City, we connect with our friend and poet Kevin Spenst to find out what can happen on a no-holds-barred poetic romp across Canada. When he visited Windsor, he performed at the City of Windsor's birthday celebrations with our Poets Laureate, at the Art Windsor-Essex Gallery, and at Biblioasis bookstore. He was recorded live by Kim Conklin and interviewed by Irene Moore Davis. Kim Conklin and Sarah Jarvis did the editing (Kim did most of the editing - sj). Kevin Spenst, a Pushcart Poetry nominee, is the author of Ignite, Jabbering with Bing Bong, and Hearts Amok: a Memoir in Verse (all with Anvil Press), and over a dozen chapbooks including Surrey Sonnets (JackPine Press), Upend (Frog Hollow Press) and a holm with the Alfred Gustav Press coming out at the end of 2022. In 2019, he was writer-in-residence at the Joy Kogawa House. His work has won the Lush Triumphant Award for Poetry, been nominated for both the Alfred G. Bailey Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and has appeared in dozens of publications including Event, the Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, CV2, the Rusty Toque, Lemon Hound, Poetry is Dead, and the anthologies Best Canadian Poetry 2019, Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds. He co-organizes the Dead Poets Reading Series, writes a chapbook column in subTerrain magazine, is an occasional co-host with RC Weslowski on Wax Poetic on Co-op Radio, teaches Creative Writing at Vancouver Community College and is the 2022 Poetry Mentor at SFU's Writers Studio. He lives in Vancouver on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territory.https://kevinspenst.com/about/

Dr. Heidi L.M. Jacobs was born and raised in Edmonton. A graduate of the University of Alberta, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Western University, she is currently a librarian at the University of Windsor as well as an award-winning writer and documentary producer. Her previous books include the novel Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear (NeWest Press, 2019), which won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour in 2020, and 100 Miles of Baseball: Fifty Games, One Summer (with Dale Jacobs, Biblioasis, 2021). She is one of the researchers behind the award-winning Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding & the Chatham Coloured All-Stars project. Her new book, published by Biblioasis, is 1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars' Barrier-Breaking Year.https://www.biblioasis.com/brand/jacobs-heidi-lm/

Rebecca Campbell is a Canadian writer of weird stories and climate change fiction. Her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and Interzone. She won the Sunburst award for short fiction in 2020 for “The Fourth Trimester is the Strangest" and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 2021 for “An Important Failure.” NeWest Press published her first novel, The Paradise Engine, in 2013. Her latest novel, ARBOREALITY, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. She lives in Windsor. https://www.stelliform.press/index.php/product/arboreality-by-rebecca-campbell/Featuring Brittni Brinn:Brittni Brinn writes science fiction. She has an M.A. in Creative Writing from UWindsor. Her interests include rocks kicked up by the ocean, books from friends, and comfortable sweaters. She lives in a tower and sometimes a cottage with her husband and two cats in Nova Scotia. Her latest book is Where Long Shadows End, third in her series, The Patch Project. https://brittniinink.wordpress.com/

Stephen Marche is a novelist, essayist, and cultural commentator. He is the author of half a dozen books, and has written opinion pieces and essays for The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Walrus, and many others. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children. On Writing and Failure is his latest book, and it is the latest in a series of essays call the Field Notes published by Biblioasis. http://www.stephenmarche.com/https://www.biblioasis.com/brand/marche-stephen/

Emily Urquhart is a journalist with a doctorate in folklore. Her award-winning work has appeared in Longreads, Guernica, and The Walrus, and elsewhere, and her first book was shortlisted for the Kobo First Book Prize and the BC National Award for Canadian Nonfiction. Her most recent book, The Age of Creativity: Art, Memory, my Father and Me, was listed as a top book of 2020 by CBC, NOW Magazine and Quill & Quire. She is a nonfiction editor for The New Quarterly and lives in Kitchener, Ontario. Her new book, Ordinary Wonder Tales, published by Biblioasis, explores the truths that underlie the stories we imagine, and reveals the magic in the everyday. “Wonder tales” is the Irish term for fairy tales. http://emilyurquhart.ca/https://www.biblioasis.com/shop/non-fiction/memoir/ordinary-wonder-tales/

Blair Austin was born in Michigan. A former prison librarian, he is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan where he won Hopwood awards for Fiction and Essay. He lives in Massachusetts. Dioramas is his first novel. It won the Dzanc Prize for Fiction in 2021. https://www.dzancbooks.org/all-titles/p/dioramasIn a city far in the future, in a society that has come through a great upheaval, retired lecturer Wiggins moves from window to window in a museum, intricately describing each scene. Whales gliding above a shipwreck and a lost cup and saucer. An animatronic forest twenty stories tall. urban wolves in the light of an apartment building. A line of mosquitoes in uniforms and regalia, honored as heroes of the last great war.Bit by bit, Wiggins unspools the secrets of his world—the conflict that brought it to the brink, and the great thinker, Michaux, who led the diorama revolution, himself now preserved under glass.After a phone call in the middle of the night, Wiggins sets out to visit the Diorama of the Town: an entire, dioramic world, hundreds of miles across, where people are objects of curiosity, taxidermied and posed. All his life, Wiggins has longed to see it. But in the Town, he comes face to face with the diorama's contradictions. Its legacy of political violence. Its manipulation by those with power and money. And its paper-thin promise of immortality.In this hybrid novel—part essay, part prose poem, part travel narrative—Blair Austin brings us nose to the glass with our own vanishing world, what we preserve and at what cost. Ben Van Dongen: Born in Windsor, Ben spent many years thinking about writing and becoming an author without doing any of the actual work. Eventually, he figured he should give it a try, and after more time being bad at writing, he managed to write some books he's proud of. Snow from a Distant Sky is Book Five in his science fiction series, The Synthetic Albatross. Currently the book is available at Biblioasis, or you can order it online.https://benwltp.wordpress.com/https://biblioasisbookshop.com/item/2yThqHuKelrII0-XD9yJ0Q

Jade Wallace is a writer from the Niagara fruit belt, currently living just south of the Detroit River and just north of Lake Erie. Wallace's writing has won the Muriel's Journey Poetry Prize and Coastal Shelf's Funny & Poignant Poetry Contest, placed third in the Ken Belford Poetry Contest, been a finalist for the Wergle Flomp Humour Poetry Prize, and been nominated for The Journey Prize. They are the author of several solo and collaborative chapbooks, the reviews editor for CAROUSEL Magazine, and the co-founder of MA|DE, a collaborative writing entity. Love Is A Place But You Cannot Live There is their first book. https://jadewallace.ca/https://guernicaeditions.com/collections/vendors?q=Jade%20Wallace

Chika Unigwe was born in Enugu, Nigeria. She was educated at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and the Catholic University of Leuven prior to earning PhD from Leiden University in the Netherlands. She now lives in the United States and teaches at Georgia College in Milledgeville, Georgia. Her work has been widely translated and has won multiple awards. Unigwe's previous publications include the poetry collections Tear Drops and Born in Nigeria, novels The Phoenix, On Black Sisters' Street, Night Dancer, and The Black Messiah, and the short story collection Better Never than Late, along with numerous other short stories, essays, and works of journalism. She has been widely anthologized and has published works in the New York Times, Guernica, Kenyon Review, the UK Guardian, Wasafiri, and Transition. She teaches at Georgia College, in Milledgeville, Georgia. Chika Unigwe's highly anticipated new novel, The Middle Daughter, will be released by Dzanc Books in April 2023.https://www.dzancbooks.org/all-titles/p/the-middle-daughter

Trigger Warning: Stephanie Heit speaks and writes courageously and frankly about her own mental health issues and treatments, which included ECT shock therapy. Stephanie Heit is a queer disabled poet, dancer, teacher, and codirector of Turtle Disco, a somatic writing space. She is a psych system/shock survivor, bipolar, a mad activist, Zoeglossia Fellow, and a member of Olimpias, a disability performance collective. She lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, on Three Fires Confederacy territory and is the author of the poetry collection The Color She Gave Gravity. Her new book, Psych Murders, is a collection of experimental writing. It takes readers inside psychiatric wards and shock treatments toward new futures of mental health care. https://stephanie-heit.com/books-psych-murders/Our colleague Irene Moore Davis could not join Kim and Sarah for this episode recording. 

Kate Hargreaves is the author of the poetry collection, Leak, as well as Jammer Star, a roller derby novel for young readers, and Talking Derby, a book of prose vignettes. She holds an MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor, where she received the Governor General's Gold Medal in Graduate Studies. Her work has appeared in literary journals across Canada, the US, and the UK. As a book designer for numerous Canadian presses, Hargreaves has received honours from the Alcuin Society for Excellence in Book Design, the CBC Bookie Awards, and the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. She grew up in Amherstburg, Ontario, and lives and works in Windsor. Her latest poetry collection, published by Book*hug Press in October 2022, is Tend.https://bookhugpress.ca/shop/author/kate-hargreaves/tend-by-kate-hargreaves/The City of Windsor, through the Poet Laureate & Storytellers Program, is gearing up for the upcoming launch of the fifth book in the City's South Shore Collections series, In the Middle Space. The South Shore Collection books help capture, preserve and share Windsor's stories with the community – one of the primary goals of the program.The book is being published by Windsor's Black Moss Press, in partnership with the City of Windsor and the University of Windsor's Editing & Publishing Practicum program. Additional support for the publication comes from the Canada Council for the Arts and Museum Windsor.Thirteen well-known local authors are featured in the collection. They are: Barry Brodie, Carlinda D'Alimonte, Irene Moore Davis, Peter Hrastovec, Maya Jessop, Dorothy Mahoney, Christopher Lawrence Menard, Mary Ann Mulhern, Rawand Mustafa, André Narbonne, Vanessa Shields, Laurie Smith and Teajai Travis.You can find the book at https://blackmosspress.com/product/in-the-middle-space/

Ray Robertson is the author of nine novels, four collections of non-fiction, and a book of poetry. His work has been nominated for several awards and have been translated into many languages. His non-fiction work, Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live has been made into a film. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, he lives in Toronto. Estates Large and Small is his latest book, published by Windsor publisher Biblioasis. http://biblioasis.com/brand/robertson-ray/https://rayrobertson.com/Note: our teammate Irene Moore Davis could not join us for this recording, hence Ray referring to "both" Kim and Sarah!