All Write in Sin City

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 by the Library of Michigan.

www.doct...

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 Windsor 2024 and published by Woodbridge Fa...

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’s Award for literature, and he is W...

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://tinhouse.com/author/ghassan-...

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://www.hachettebookgroup.com/tit...

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 of poetry. He is the recipient of mult...

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 we spoke about in thi...

 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, and two titles published by Wayne S...

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 was the co-founder of Poetry in Mot...

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 Calgary. His first novel is The Years S...

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 right to you!
For tickets ...

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 Boston University. A lifelong English...

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 events that happened there. [non]disclo...

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 Review of Comparative Literature, Journ...

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 and conflict, and the environment.

He...

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 Tupelo Press’s inaugural chapbook award. A ...

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 his characters, he has also worked...

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 Laureate Emeritus and publisher of Black...

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, subversion, rhythm, gesture, and more. Col...