All Write in Sin City

Kim/Irene/Sarah

Let's talk about writers and writing, right here in Sin City. Before we were the Motor City, one of the nicknames we were known by was "Sin City." Maybe that's why we've got so many great stories to tell. Our Windsor-Detroit region is full of inspiring poetry, first rate fiction, outstanding non-fiction, amazing writers, and exciting publishers. At All Write in Sin City, we aim to bring them to you. Check out our shows here, or take a listen wherever you listen to podcasts. 

  1. 4 hrs ago

    Late Invocation for Magic with Jim Daniels

    Jim Daniels has authored more than thirty collections of poetry, seven collections of fiction, and one collection of essays, and has written four produced screenplays. He has also edited or co-edited six anthologies, most recently RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music. He is a recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His books have won four Michigan Notable Books awards, the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, the Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry, the Tillie Olsen Creative Writing Award, the Milton Kessler Award, and three gold medals in the Independent Publisher Book Awards, among others, and his films have won awards in film festivals around the world. His work has been published in The Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize volumes. He has read his poetry on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, and his poems were frequently featured on Keillor’s Writer's Almanac. Poet laureates Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, and Tracy K. Smith all showcased his writing as part of their work to bring poetry to average Americans. During his long career, he has warmed up for singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, read poems at a Jamestown Jammers AA baseball game, had his poem “Factory Love” displayed on a race car, and sent poetry into space as part of the Moon Arts Project. A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh, where he is the Baker University Professor Emeritus of English at Carnegie Mellon University. He currently teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.  Author Jim Daniels spoke at Marshall District Library as part of the 2026 #MiNotableBks author tour and was also honored as the 2025-2026 #MiAuthorAward recipient. Special thanks to MDL for hosting and to the Library of Michigan Foundation for their support of both programs. Visit www.Michigan.gov/NotableBooks and www.Michigan.gov/MiAuthorAwardfor more details on each program.   An Ignorance of Trees: A Memoir in Essays was published in August 2025 by Cornerstone Press and won a Michigan Notable Book Award in 2026. This was his fifth Michigan Notable Book Award: two in poetry, one in fiction, one in nonfiction, and one for editing (RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music. More info on the Michigan Author Award at link above.  https://msupress.org/9781611865745/late-invocation-for-magic/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Daniels Writers mentioned: Andrew Collard, Dustin M. Hoffman, R.S. Deneen

  2. 4d ago ·  Bonus

    The Reading List: Bronzeville at Night with Vida Cross

    This podcast is an excerpt of a longer episode featuring an interview with poet Vida Cross.  Vida Cross is a Visiting Fulbright Research Chair who has come to the University of Windsor at the invitation of Leddy Library and the Black Scholars Institute. She has been conducting intensive research towards a creative writing project, focusing on Underground Railroad journeys to the Detroit River Borderlands and especially to Canadian communities in the region. Vida is a blues poet, a two-time Pushcart nominee, a Carl Sandburg Literary Award honoree and a Cave Canem Fellow. Vida’s work references her ancestry as a third generation Chigagoan as well as the work of Archibald J. Motley Jr. and Langston Hughes. Vida’s work has appeared in multiple journals and anthologies such as The Creativity and Constraint Anthology for Wising Up Press, A Civil Rights Retrospective with the Black Earth Institute, Tabula Poetica with Chapman University, Transitions Magazine at the Hutchinson Institute, the Cave Canem Anthology XII, The Literary Review with Fairleigh Dickinson University, Reed Magazine at Reed College, and The Journal of Film and Video from The University of Illinois at Chicago. Her poetry collection Bronzeville at Night: 1949 was published by Avst Press in 2017. Vida Cross holds an MFA in Writing and an MFA in Filmmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an MA in English from Iowa State University and a BA from Knox College. She is a faculty member at Milwaukee Area Technical College and Chairperson of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission.   https://vidacross.com/bio  The Virtual Black History Presentation Vida recorded for the museum can be found here: https://youtu.be/BlMchbCSPYA?si=0_ca3rOOnfPt-6uy

  3. Jul 19

    BLACK SUMMERS: Growing Up in the Urban Outdoors

    This episode covers a new anthology from Wayne State University Press. Titled Black Summers: Growing Up in the Urban Outdoors, this vibrant collection invites readers to breathe deeply and return to that "carefree" season from an urban perspective. These emerging and award-winning creators of all ages recount the struggles and triumph of staking their claim to public spaces. Ranging from poetry to essay, creative nonfiction to comics, this collection blends nostalgia with struggle and resilience.  DESIREE COOPER Desiree Cooper, the book’s editor, was born in Japan as a military dependent and spent her adulthood in Detroit. She now lives in coastal Virginia where she is raising her grandchildren. She is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, and among her accolades are a 2017 Midland Authors Award Winner in Adult Fiction, a 2017 Michigan Notable Book, a 2016 Midwest Book Award Finalist, and inclusion in the Poets and Writers 5 Over 50. NANDI COMER  Our next author is Nandi Comer, an award-winning poet and essayist. She served as the 2nd Poet Laureate of the state of Michigan 2023-2025, during which time she spearheaded Michigan Words and the video series Michigan in Verse. She is the author of the chapbook American Family: A Syndrome. Her debut poetry collection, Tapping Out, won the 2020 Society of Midland Authors Award and the 2020 Julie Suk Award. Her poems and essays have appeared in American Poets, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, and others. She currently serves as the 2025-2026 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Creative Writing and co-director of Detroit Lit.  ROCHELLE WILSON-ELLIS Next we have, Rochelle Wilson-Ellis. She is a U.S. Navy veteran whose journey has been shaped by service, resilience, and care for others. Having served aboard the USS Ross and USS George Washington, Rochelle has carried that same spirit of dedication into every chapter of her life. A loving mother of two and a certified baker and pastry chef, she has also spent years working in healthcare. In 2021, Rochelle was trained as a citizen journalist through the Sarah E. Ray Project, helping preserve the oral histories of those who attended Detroit’s legendary Action House in the 1970s and ’80s.  LILLIEN WALLER Our final reader is Detroit native Lillien Waller, a poet and essayist. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets, and, in 2015, she received a Kresge Artist Fellowship in Poetry. In 2023, Lillien was awarded an Arts Writers Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Her essay “Listen Children, All Is Not Lost” appears in the anthology Black Summers: Growing Up in the Urban Outdoors.  For more information on the book and the authors, please see the Wayne State University Press website.

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About

Let's talk about writers and writing, right here in Sin City. Before we were the Motor City, one of the nicknames we were known by was "Sin City." Maybe that's why we've got so many great stories to tell. Our Windsor-Detroit region is full of inspiring poetry, first rate fiction, outstanding non-fiction, amazing writers, and exciting publishers. At All Write in Sin City, we aim to bring them to you. Check out our shows here, or take a listen wherever you listen to podcasts. 

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