All Write in Sin City

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/

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/

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