All Write in Sin City

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...

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 C...

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 righ...

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 Bo...

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...

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 Revi...

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 a...

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 Tupe...

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...

Marty Gervais and André Narbonne About 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 Laur...

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, subvers...

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 studi...

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 ha...