All Write in Sin City

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...

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 , Prair...

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 Laureat...

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,...

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 Int...

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 Ki...

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), whi...

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 Fail...

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 publi...

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 Magazin...

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/dioramas In a city far in the future, in a society that has come...

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. The...

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 p...

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 perf...

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,...

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 pub...

Karl Jirgens, Professor Emeritus, former English Department Head and former Chair of the Creative Writing Program (University of Windsor), is author of three books of fiction and two scholarly books (Coach House, Mercury, ECW and The Porcupine’s Quill Presses). He edited two books (on painter Jack Bush, and poet Christopher Dewdney), plus the “Collaborations” issue of Open Letter magazine with Bea...

Based in Hamilton, Ontario, Jamie Tennant is a writer, author, broadcaster, and Program Director at McMaster’s radio station, 93.3 CFMU FM. He has covered music pop culture both locally and nationally. He also co-founded the Hamilton Independent Media Awards and became engaged in projects such as the 2015 JUNOs, the Polaris Prize, and Japan`s Fujirock Festival. His debut novel The Captain of Kinno...

Pauline Holdstock is an award-winning Canadian author, originally from the UK. She writes literary fiction, essays, and poetry. Her novels have been published in the UK, the US, Brazil, Portugal, Australia, and Germany. In Canada, her work has been shortlisted for a number of awards, including the Best First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Pauline’s es...

W. S. PENN is a mixed-blood Native American (Nez Perce) who was a Washburn Distinguished lecturer and has won the distinguished Faculty Award at Michigan State University. He is the author of two novels, The Absence of Angels and Killing Time with Strangers ; a collection of short stories titled This Is the World ; and two collections of essays, All My Sins Are Relatives and Feathering Custer . He...

A marine engineer by first trade, André Narbonne was living out of his duffel bag when he arrived in Halifax on a damaged tanker in the mid-eighties. He completed two degrees in English at Dalhousie University – where he was a Killam Scholar – and his Ph. D. in Canadian literature at the University of Western Ontario. He is a former chair of the Halifax chapter of the Canadian Poetry Association....

Welcome to a live session presented by BookFest / Festival du Livre Windsor 2022 featuring Luke Hathaway, David Ly and Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang. Moderated by Windsor poet Dorothy Mahoney. Sarah Jarvis, wearing two hats as podcaster and president of Literary Arts Windsor, the charitable organization that runs BookFest, introduces the sessions. This was recorded live at Fionn MacCool's, Windsor, so...

Recorded at the BookFest Windsor/Festival du livre Books and Brunch presentation, this live recording features a thought-provoking conversation between author Rinaldo Walcott and University of Windsor professor Natalie Delia Deckard about Walcott's much-discussed book, On Property: Policing, Prisons and the Call for Abolition. The book has been nominated for the Heritage Toronto Book Award, l...

This live event was recorded on October 15, 2022 at the Chimczuk Museum in Windsor, Ontario as part of the BookFest / Festival du Livre Windsor 2022 literary festival. You will hear a conversation with moderator Gord Grisenthwaite and Louse Bernice Halfe Skydancer, Carol Rose GoldenEagle, Joseph Kakwinokanasum, and Tyler Pennock. The event has been edited for sound and length. There are some matur...

A vibrant live event courtesy of the City of Windsor's Poet Laureate & Storytellers' Program, held on September 17, 2022 in the Coach House of Willistead Manor, Windsor, Ontario. Featuring and presented by outgoing Youth Poet Laureate, Alexei Ungurenaşu With contributions by:  Poet Laureate Emeritus Marty Gervais, Victoria Hecnar,  Mbonisi Zikhali Zokhonto, Serafina Piasentin, Past P...