Meet the Writers

from l to r:

 

Peter Markus is the author of a novel, Bob, or Man on Boat, as well as three books of short fiction, the most recent of which is We Make Mud. He has been a writer-in-residence with InsideOut since its inception. He was named a Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow in 2012.

 

Robert Fanning is the author of American Prophet (Marick Press, 2009), The Seed Thieves (Marick Press, 2006) and Old Bright Wheel (Ledge Press Poetry Award 2003). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, The Atlanta Review, and other journals. His work has been featured on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, and on The Poet and the Poem at the Library of Congress. A graduate of the University of Michigan and Sarah Lawrence College, he is now an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Central Michigan University. Fanning's writing awards include a Creative Artist Grant from ArtServe Michigan, the Inkwell Poetry Award, and the Foley Poetry Award. He lives in Mt. Pleasant, MI. with his wife, sculptor Denise Whitebread Fanning, and their two children. To read more of his work, visit www.robertfanning.wordpress.com.

 

Nandi Comer is a former InsideOut student and Writer-in-Residence. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry and an MA in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. She has received a Vera Meyer Strube Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from Cave Canem and Callaloo. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Another and Another: An Anthology From the Grind Daily Writing Series (Bull City Press, 2012), Cave Canem Anthology XII (Willow Books 2012), Callaloo, The Journal of Pan African Studies, and Third Coast. She is originally from Detroit.

 

Marcus Wicker is the author of Maybe the Saddest Thing, selected by DA Powell for the National Poetry Series and published by Harper Perennial . The recipient of a 2011 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, he has also held fellowships from Cave Canem, the Fine Arts Work Center, and Indiana University where he received his MFA. Wicker's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Third Coast, and Ninth Letter, among other journals. Marcus is assistant professor of English at University of Southern Indiana and poetry editor of Southern Indiana Review.

 

Matthew Olzmann's first book of poems, Mezzanines, was selected for the 2011 Kundiman Prize and is forthcoming from Alice James Books (April 2013).  His poems have appeared in New England Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, The Southern Review, Rattle and elsewhere.  He's received fellowships and scholarships from Kundiman, the Kresge Arts Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.  Currently, he's teaching undergraduate creative writing and composition at Warren Wilson as the 2012-13 Joan Beebe Teaching Fellow.

 

The work of Joshua Kornreich has been published, reviewed, and discussed in various print and online literary publications, including Unsaid, Meridian, Heavy Feather Review, Hotel St. George Press, Largehearted Boy, Emerging Writers Network, The Pennsylvania Gazette, and VOX Press's Complete with Missing Parts: Interviews with the Avant-Garde, with forthcoming appearances in Radioactive Moat, The Collagist, and Front Row Lit.  His debut novel, The Boy Who Killed Caterpillars, originally published by Marick Press in 2007, will be reprinted in e-book format by Dzanc Books in Fall 2012, and his second novel, Knotty, Knotty, Knotty, will be released by The Black Mountain Press in March 2013.  Kornreich lives with his wife and son in New York City.

 

Lynn Crawford is a fiction writer and art critic based in Detroit. Her books include Blow, Simply Separate People, Fortification Resort and Simply Separate People, Two. She is a 2010 Kresge Literary Fellow and a founding board member of Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD).

 

Robert Lopez is the author of two novels, Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River and a story collection, Asunder. He teaches fiction writing at The New School, Pratt Institute, Columbia University and The Solstice MFA Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College.

 

Kazim Ali's books include four volumes of poetry, The Far Mosque, The Fortieth Day, the mixed genre Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities and Sky Ward. He has also published two novels Quinn's Passage and The Disappearance of Seth, two collections of essays, Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice as well as translations by Sohrab Sepehri, Marguerite Duras and Ananda Devi. Recently he edited the essay collection Jean Valentine: This-World Company. He is associate professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College and founding editor of Nightboat Books.

 

Internationally known Detroit poet, professor, musician and literary arts activist, M. L. Liebler www.mlliebler.com is the author of 13 books including Wide Awake in Someone Else's Dream (Wayne State University Press 2008), winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize for Literary Excellence and The American Indie Book Award for 2009. M.L. is founding director of the Detroit National Writer's Voice Project and Springfed Arts: Metro Detroit Writers.  In 2010, he received The Barnes & Noble Poets & Writers "Writers for Writers" Award. Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams, which he edited for Coffee House Press, received a Michigan Library Notable Book Award for 2011.  He is Poet Laureate of St. Clair Shores, MI, his hometown.

 

Gregory Pardlo's first book, Totem, received the American Poetry Review/ Honickman Prize in 2007. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Callaloo, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, and Best American Poetry 2010. A finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award in poetry, he is recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received other fellowships from the New York Times, the MacDowell Colony, the Lotos Club Foundation and Cave Canem.

 

Team Springfed

from l to r:

 

For twenty years Joy Gaines-Friedler made her living as a professional photographer in the Detroit area. She had the opportunity to photograph distinguished Detroiters including Mayor Coleman Young, and Roger Smith, past Chairman and CEO of General Motors. Joy has been a writer-in-residence for InsideOut Literary Arts Project and works for Springfed Arts, both as a teacher for The Oakwood Creative Writing Workshops, and at The Farmington Hills Public Library. Her writing is widely published and has earned numerous awards. She is the author of, Like Vapor, a book of poetry published by Mayapple Press in 2008. In addition, Joy runs writing workshops for young adults "at risk" and for families of victims of homicide, and is co-editor of the Michigan Jewish Historical Society Journal. A member of The Academey of American Poets, and other professional writers' organizations Joy advocates on behalf of literary arts programs.

 

Christine Rhein is the author of Wild Flight, winner of the Walt McDonald Poetry Prize (Texas Tech University Press, 2008). Her work has appeared widely in literary journals including The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review and has been selected for Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best New Poets, and The Writer's Almanac. A former mechanical engineer in the auto industry, Christine lives and writes in Brighton, Michigan (www.ChristineRhein.com).

 

Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a published poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Clackamas Literary Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Permafrost, The MacGuffin, A Twist of Noir and many other literary magazines. Her MFA is from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine.   lksienkiewicz.wordpress.com  

 

Dawn McDuffie has taught Creative Writing in Detroit since 2000. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, The MacGuffin, Connecticut Review, Feminist Studies, and in the anthology, Good Poems– American Places edited by Garrison Keillor. Her new chapbook Flag Day in Detroit is available from Adastra Press.

 

Melinda (Mindy) LePere holds an MFA from Vermont College and has participated in the Springfed Arts workshop community for many years. Her work has been published in the anthology: At the Edge of Mirror Lake, in the Paterson Review and local publications. A retired Detroit teacher, she integrated poetry into the pulse of all her classrooms and celebrated student and parent poets at annual Family Poetry Nights. She is currently working on chapbook publications and children's books.

 

Mary Jo Firth Gillett's poetry collection, Soluble Fish, won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award (Southern Illinois University Press, 2007). She's published three award-winning chapbooks and poems have appeared in Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Third Coast, Green Mountains Review, and other journals. She's been awarded a 2012 Kresge Artist Fellowship.