All Write in Sin City

Marty Gervais is an award-winning journalist, photographer, poet, playwright, historian, editor and teacher. He is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Windsor, Ontario, and now Poet Laureate Emeritus. His awards include the Toronto’s Harbourfront Festival Prize, the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award, the City of Windsor Mayor’s Award for literature, and nearly twenty awards for journalism. Marty is al...

Lindsay Wong is the bestselling, award-winning author of The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug-Raids, Demons, And My Crazy Chinese Family . Her debut memoir won the 2019 Hubert Evans Nonfiction Prize, and it was a finalist for the Writers Trust’s 2018 Hilary Weston Prize, the 2019 edition of Canada Reads, and long listed for the 2019 Stephen Leacock Medal in Humour. It was also named a Best...

Part of a series that was recorded at BookFest Windsor/Festivale du livre 2019, this podcast features four poets in conversation about Respect , a new anthology of poems inspired by the incredible richness of Detroit music. The book was published in late 2019 by Michigan State University Press.  Two of the poets in this interview were also editors of the book, Jim Daniels and M.L. Liebler . They a...

This podcast is one of a series recorded at BookFest Windsor 2019. In this episode, we talk with Mark Bourrie, an award-winning writer and a respected military historian with a PhD in history. A National Magazine Award-winning journalist, he has been a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery since 1994. Bourrie lectures on propaganda and censorship at the Department of National Defence...

On the podcast this week, recorded at BookFest Windsor 2019, we’ll hear from two fiction writers, Blair Hurley and Nadja Lubiw-Howard. Blair Hurley received her A.B. from Princeton University and her M.F.A. from NYU. Her stories are published or forthcoming in Ninth Letter, The Georgia Review, West Branch, Mid-American Review, Washington Square, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Descant, Fugue , and elsewher...

This week’s podcast was recorded at BookFest Windsor 2019. Today, we’ll talk with Ben O’Neil and Jessica Bromley Bartram.  Illustrator, artist, and screenwriter Ben O’Neil is currently based in Toronto, but was born and raised in London. He counts Matt Groening (The Simpsons) and Greg Capullo (Spawn) among his influences. It wasn’t until Ben attended OCAD for Curatorial Practice and Art Criticism...

This podcast was recorded live at Biblioasis bookshop in Windsor in October 2019. You’ll hear Biblioasis publicist Theo Hummer introducing each author. The first reader is  Stan Rogal, reading from Investigation into the Death of Roberto Bolaño , and then you’ll hear author Michael Januska reading from Prospect Avenue. After the readings, there’s an insightful Q&A moderated by Theo. Stan Rogal...

Born and raised in Windsor, Michael Januska has worked with books his whole life, both as a bookseller and for several publishing companies. He is the author of the Border City Blues mystery series set in the Prohibition Era of Windsor/Essex. There are three books in the series beginning with Riverside Drive. Stories from Januska’s Prohibition-era Border City Blues novels have won two consecutive...

"To chance the ducks" is a nineteenth-century idiom that means to do something regardless of the risks or potential for disaster. Windsor's Biblioasis press has grown  from a 1-person operation into "the first truly great new Canadian press of the 21st century" according to The Globe and Mail . In this podcast, you'll hear highlights of the celebratory evening if 15 y...

Born in Chatham, Ontario, Daniel Wells attended the University of Windsor as a history and philosophy major. He opened a second-hand bookshop, Biblioasis, on Ouellette Avenue in Windsor in 1998.  Dan and his wife Alexis helped to found BookFest Windsor in 2002, where he was inspired to think about publishing a book by another author. The Biblioasis bookshop was moved to Wyandotte Street in the tre...

Patrick Brode was born in Windsor, Ontario. He was called to the Ontario Bar in 1977 and has practiced law ever since, most recently as Senior Legal Counsel for the City of Windsor. As a well-respected historian, he has written six books, including Sir John Beverley Robinson: Bone and Sinew of the Compact , which was a finalist for the City of Toronto Book Award, and The Odyssey of John Anderson ,...

Windsor, Ontario is one of several Canadian cities that boasts a Poet Laureate program. In this podcast, we talk with the two current Poets Laureate of Windsor, Poet Laureate Mary Ann Mulhern and Youth Poet Laureate Samantha Badaoa. Mary Ann Mulhern, Poet Laureate of Windsor, was a well-respected teacher before she embarked on a second career as a poet. Mulhern’s first book of narrative poetry, Th...

New this year, the All Access Café is a unique series of readings and performances that features differently-abled artists and is ASL-accessible through Deaf Can, Inc. It's sponsored by the Detroit Writer's Guild, the Knight Foundation, Poets & Writers, the Detroit Public Library, Wayne State University and Third Man Records.  In this episode, you'll hear performances from sever...

Marian L. Thorpe grew up in Harrow, Ontario. She holds a Masters in Biology from the University of Guelph, and has recently retired as a Special Education supervisor at a school district in Ontario. Marian is the author of the alternative world medieval trilogy Empire’s Legacy . The series was rated Top Ten (#5, #7, and #8) in Alternate History, on Amazon.com, April 8, 2019.  Her life-long interes...

This week's podcast takes place at Gertrude’s Writing Room on the grounds of historic Willistead Manor in Windsor. We talk with two authors of very different genres who just happen to be married. They live in Windsor with adjoining writing spaces and their menagerie of animals. Alexander Zelenyj is the author of the books Blacker Against the Deep Dark, Songs for the Lost, Experiments at 3 Bil...

This week’s podcast brings you a variety of Detroit poets reading at Poets and Pies, a regular event hosted by the Detroit Writers’ Guild. This set of readings was recorded in August at the St. Clair Shores library.  Joyce Jenkins is a Detroit native who has spent much of her life in Berkeley, California. Joyce has long been a noted Bay Area poet and the editor of “Poetry Flash,” as well as the pr...

Last week on All Write in Sin City, we talked with Teajai Travis, Windsor activist, artist and writer and also the recipient of the 2018 City of Windsor Heritage Grant. One of his recent projects is the Windsor Storytellers Collective. He and two other artists recently kicked off their first experimental, collaborative spoken-word presentation at the Green Bean Cafe.   Titled Wordz!, the sound and...

Teajai Travis is a proud and mindful descendant of Afro-indigenous ancestors who survived slavery in the Americas and settled in North Buxton, Ontario prior to the American Civil War. Teajai’s relations spread across the North American continent, and abroad. Teajai researches and writes about his ancestors, specifically those in the Americas during a time of chattel slavery. He is inspired by the...

How did one of the shining cities on the hill in mid-century North America become the poster child for de-industrialization? In this All Write in Sin City, you’ll hear Part Two of a presentation by Anna Clark, talking about her award-winning book, The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy .  Anna continues her commentary about the Flint water crisis, and takes a look at possi...

When the people of Flint, Michigan, turned on their faucets in April 2014, the water pouring out was poisoned with lead and other toxins. Through a series of disastrous decisions, the state government had switched the city’s water supply to a source that corroded Flint’s aging lead pipes. Anna Clark is a journalist in Detroit. The Poisoned City was named one of the year’s best books by the Washing...

This podcast features two outdoor readings from the Woodbridge Farm Writer's Retreat Reading Series in Kingsville, Ontario. Windsor Poet Laureate Mary Ann Mulhern reads selected poems from her seven books, and Alix Hawley reads from her award-winning historical fiction series about the life of Daniel Boone. Mary Ann Mulhern holds a Masters of Education and a Bachelor of Arts from the Universi...

This podcast features two award-winning speculative fiction authors reading to a live audience at Windsor’s Phog Lounge. Coming to us from London Ontario, Timothy S. Johnston is an award-winning writer of futuristic and contemporary mystery/thrillers. He has won multiple awards including the CYGNUS, the CLUE , and the Science Fiction Epic Award. In this episode, he reads from his lates award-winni...

Part Two of last week's podcast, a live recording of a recent interview with award-winning fiction author Casey Plett, recorded at Biblioasis bookstore. Windsor poet Vanessa Shields is the interviewer. Casey Plett is the author of the short story collection A Safe Girl to Love and the novel Little Fish, which won this year's Amazon Canada First Novel Award and the Lamda Literary Award. I...

In this podcast, you'll hear a live and lively recording of a special event in Windsor. Today, you’ll hear Part One of a recent interview with award-winning fiction author Casey Plett, recorded at Biblioasis bookstore. Windsor poet Vanessa Shields is the interviewer. Casey Plett is the author of the short story collection A Safe Girl to Love   and the novel Little Fish, which won this year&ap...

This episode was recorded in the cozy library at All Saints’ Church in downtown Windsor. It usually has the advantage of being quiet, intimate, and full of actual books, however today we shared the hallway with excited folks from the Arts Collective Theatre (ACT) company which also rents space from All Saints’. It’s all part of being embedded in the lively Windsor-Essex arts scene!  Josef Bastian,...