All Write in Sin City

Featured Guest: Michael Mirolla About our guest:  MICHAEL MIROLLA’s awards for novella, short fiction, novels, and poetry include the 2020 Hamilton Literary Award for fiction, as well as three Bressani Prizes. He has been awarded writers’ residencies at Vancouver’s Historic Joy Kogawa House, in Olot, Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, and most recently, the Regina Public Library from 2025-2026 and a vir...

Happy Canada Day! To celebrate Canada’s 159th birthday, we’re offering up a few selections from early Canadian poets. Enjoy these short readings from our country’s literary history. Poems read in this episode include: The Old Red Shirt by Rebecca Gibbs Marshlands by E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) Women's Rights by Anna Louisa Walker At Niagara (1911 version) by R. Nathaniel Dett The Blue F...

Recently, the Amherstburg Freedom Museum hosted a virtual book launch for Cheryl Thompson’s latest work, Staging Blackface in Canada, which was published in April 2026 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. We’re sharing a portion of that very interesting discussion. Cheryl Thompson lives in Toronto and is the author of Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 18...

Don Gillmor is the author of To the River , which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of five novels, Cherry Beach , Breaking and Entering , Long Change , Mount Pleasant , and Kanata ; a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History ; and nine books for children, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Wal...

Fartumo Kusow is a high school English teacher, novelist, podcaster, activist, and mother of five who lives in Windsor, Ontario. Born in Somalia, Fartumo immigrated to Canada in 1991, at the start of the civil war, with fluency in Somali and Arabic but not English, and went on to earn two degrees. Fartumo Kusow first appeared on this podcast in 2020, chatting about her second novel which was her d...

Curtis Chin is the author of the award-winning memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant . The restaurant of the title was a popular downtown Detroit eatery owned by his family for generations. Chin was recently in Windsor, kicking off his five-stop Canadian book tour. A co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City, Curtis Chin served as the nonprofit&a...

Jim Johnstone is a Toronto-based poet, editor, and critic. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Chemical Life , which was shortlisted for the 2018 ReLit Award. Johnstone has also won several awards, including the Bliss Carman Poetry Award, a CBC Literary Award, the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, the Robin Blaser Award, and Poetry's Editors Prize for Book Reviewing. Cu...

In this episode, we are delighted to welcome students from the University of Windsor’s 2026 Publishing Practicum course. Together with some stand-out Canadian Poets, including Rosemary Sullivan, Molly Peacock, Dan MacDonald, and G.A. Grisenthwaite, the students talk about their unique new book of poems and recipes, The Poet’s Cookbook published by Conspiracy Press.  In this episode, the announcer...

Marcello Di Cintio is the prize-winning author of six books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades , Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense , and Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers . He has also written for the Globe and Mail , The Walrus , The International New York Times , and Canadian Geographic , among others. He lives in Calgary. His latest work for Windsor’s...

Vida Cross is a Visiting Fulbright Research Chair who has come to the University of Windsor at the invitation of Leddy Library and the Black Scholars Institute. She has been conducting intensive research towards a creative writing project, focusing on Underground Railroad journeys to the Detroit River Borderlands and especially to Canadian communities in the region. Vida is a blues poet, a two-tim...

Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse , her acclaimed memoir of mixed-race identity and mental illness, was published by Guernica Editions’ MiroLand imprint in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Since then, she’s produced a collection of poetry, Rebellion Box , a short-fiction colle...

Lisa de Nikolits is the award-winning author of twelve published novels.  She has appeared on recommended reading lists for Open Book Toronto, 49th Shelf, Chatelaine , Canadian Living , Hello ! Canada, the Quill & Quire, and most recently, the CBC’s 65 works of Canadian fiction to watch for in Fall 2022. Her book The Occult Persuasion and The Anarchist’s Solution was longlisted for a Sunburst...

C. M. Forest, also known as Christian Laforet, is the author of multiple projects including the 2023 Benjamin Franklin silver award winning novel Infested (Eerie River Publishing), and the novella , We All Fall Before the Harvest (Timber Ghost Press.) and the upcoming (Sept. 2024) short story collection, The Roots Run Deep and Other Stories (Eerie River Publishing). His short fiction has been feat...

Karen Smythe’s previous books include the novel This Side of Sad (Goose Lane Editions, 2017), the story collection Stubborn Bones (Polestar/Raincoast, 2001), and the critical study Figuring Grief: Gallant, Munro, and the Poetics of Elegy (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992). Her family background is Norwegian and German/Irish. She lives with her husband in Guelph, Ontario. Her newest release is...

Gloria Blizzard is an award-winning writer and poet, and a Black Canadian woman of multiple heritages. She holds an MFA from the University of King’s College. Her work explores spaces where music, dance, spirit, and culture collide. Her work has won the Malahat Review Creative Nonfiction Prize and has been nominated for the Pushcart prize. Her essays, reviews, and poems have been published by the...

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 a...

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...

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 Winds...

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...

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:...

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:/...

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 o...

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...

 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...

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...