All Write in Sin City

Rosemary Nixon is a short story writer, novelist, editor and creative writing teacher. She has served as the Writer in Residence at the University of Windsor in 2011. Recently she returned as Writer in Residence in January and February of 2022.

 Nixon’s first collection of short stories, Mostly Country, was shortlisted for the Howard O’Hagan Award; she won it with her second collection, The Cock’s Egg. Her novel Kalila was shortlisted for the George Bugnet Award for Fiction.

Her most recent work of fiction, Are You Ready to be Lucky? was nominated for two international awards: the Frank O’Connor International Short Fiction Collection Award and the Forewords Indie Fab Award.

During her latest residency, Nixon was available to the campus and Windsor communities for one-on-one creative writing consultations.
https://freehand-books.com/product/are-you-ready-to-be-lucky/#tab-description

Born and raised in Windsor, Ontario, Peter Hrastovec is the author of two books of poetry, In Lieu of Flowers and Sidelines. He was also a contributor to the writing project Because We Have All Lived Here. Peter practises law, advocates for his community and embraces the joys of grandparenthood with his wife, Denise
https://blackmosspress.com/product/there-will-be-fish/
https://www.fitzhenry.ca/Search-Results?q=Hrastovec&LEAP_SearchSubmit=Submit

On March 19, 2022, a virtual launch was held for a wonderful project called the Community Anthology, published by A Beautiful Place Publishing House, a part of Gertrude’s Writing Room owned by our friend Vanessa Shields. 
 With poetry from 65 contributors from three continents, eight countries, four Canadian provinces, and four American states, the Community Anthology is a great celebration of what we mean by community today. It was compiled and edited by Vanessa Shields and our own Irene Moore Davis.
You’ll hear selections from: 

Colin Morton  
 Derrick Carl Biso 
 C.M. Gadapee 
 Sarah Morris 
 Judith Kambia Obatusa
 Peter Hrastovec and
Karen Rockwell 

All of whom read at the launch and allowed us to record their performance.
 The original recording was edited for length.
https://gertrudeswritingroom.com/submissions/

Christopher Lawrence Menard is a writer of stage, screen, fiction & poetry, actor, producer, director, and singer. He was born and raised in Windsor, Ontario where his love and work with local arts and artists led him to his career as the City of Windsor’s Cultural Development Coordinator where he works to support the efforts of the arts, culture, and heritage communities in Windsor. He is a proud member and supporter of the LGBTQ2S+ community. As a writer, Christopher’s original stage plays, Whatever it Was, The Best Man, The View From Here, and the DRAG Trilogy have been produced and played sold-out runs over the years at Windsor’s KordaZone Theatre. He is an award-winning screenwriter for films that have been featured in several film festivals. Christopher was also the first recipient of the Windsor Endowment for the Arts (WEA) award for Emerging Artist in the performing arts (2010). 

His poetry is published in the Windsor Review’s Border Issue of 2015, and the upcoming Community Poetry Anthology from Gertrude’s Writing Room. 

In April 2022, Christopher Lawrence Menard’s first collection of poetry entitled at the end, beginnings: A Memoir in Poems will be published by Black Moss Press. 

Christopher lives along Lake Erie in Kingsville, Ontario, where he loves spending time exploring the best of Windsor-Essex with his husband, their young son, and their dog Dexter. 
https://www.facebook.com/attheendbeginnings
https://blackmosspress.com/

Featured Guest: Rochelle Riley
About our guest:  Rochelle Riley ended a nearly 20-year career as an award-winning Detroit columnist in 2019 to become the City of Detroit’s Director of Arts and Culture. She now guides the city’s investment in the creative economy and creates opportunities for transformative innovation. She offers commentary on MSNBC and NPR and contributes to Essence and Ebony magazines.  She received the 2017 Ida B. Wells Award from the National Association of Black Journalists “for her outstanding efforts to make newsrooms and news coverage more accurately reflect the diversity of the communities they serve” and the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. She was a 2016 inductee into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame and a 2019 inductee into the North Carolina Media and Journalism Hall of Fame. And she is a co-founder of Letters to Black Girls, an initiative to give letters of advice and encouragement from women across the country to girls across the country. The essayist, keynoter, and arts advocate is the author of That They Lived: African Americans Who Changed The World along with Cristi Smith-Jones (2021) and editor of The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery (2020,) both published by Wayne State University Press. Rochelle lives near the banks of the Detroit River. But the world traveler never stays at home long. She has visited 28 countries and 33 states… and counting.
Rochelleriley.com

https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/they-lived

https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/burden

Emma Odrach is an author and literary translator from Toronto, who now calls Windsor home. Alaska or Bust and Other Stories was published by Crimson Cloak Publishing in Missouri in 2017. Her translation of novel Wave of Terror, written by her late father, Theodore Odrach and dealing with the Stalinist occupation during WW2, was published by Chicago Review Press in 2008. She won an honorable mention from the Translation Center at Columbia University for a book of her father’s stories. Her new novel, The Bank Street Peeper, was released in November, 2021, by Adelaide Books of New York City and Lisbon. Emma’s translation of her father’s Village Teacher and Other Stories will be published by Glagoslav Publications, a United Kingdom and Dutch press. Many of her works have appeared in journals such as Connecticut Review, Scrivener, The New Quarterly, Antigonish Review, Yukon, North of Ordinary, the Penguin Book of Christmas Stories edited by Alberto Manguel, and Translation at Columbia University to mention a few. She is currently working on a novel and a translation.
https://adelaidebooks.org/products/the-bank-street-peeper

Featured Guests - The Hosts!  Kim Conklin, Irene Moore Davis, Sarah Jarvis

On today’s episode of All Write in Sin City, we thought we’d mark and celebrate our 100 episodes so far. We’re going to look back on a few episodes that stood out for each of us in different ways. We loved all of our guests, and all of our episodes – but well, you’ll see how we’ve selected them. 
 
We’ll share some lovely feedback from former guests, and then reveal an episode that - well, knocked us all sideways with delight – and audience participation. 
Are there any Easter eggs in there? Maybe ;)

List of clips: 

Deep Dark Secrets with Shani Mootoo, 

Samantha Badoa and Mary Ann Mulhern Giving voice to the community with the Windsor Poets Laureate program 

ML Leibler

Detroit Love Stories with Esperanza Cintron, 

Natalie Zina Walschotts

Mark Bourrie

Margaret Noodin

Christian Laforet’s nom de plume is C.M. Forest

Natalie Zina Walschot’s Hench was featured on CBC’s Canada Reads

Greeting from Gord (G.A. Grisenthwaite: ʔéxʷweʔƛ̓uʔ,

New YA novel out from Fifth Avenue Press called Center-Mid. Here's the Amazon link for it - Jeff Kass 

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/194798991X?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

Featured Guests: Elaine Weeks and Chris Edwards

 About our guests:  Elaine has a B.A. in English from the University of Windsor plus two years of
 postgraduate studies in Visual Arts. She’s a community leader with over 30 years experience in advertising, public relations, event planning, publishing, writing, editing, photography, conservation and heritage preservation. She’s written a novel called “Time Trespasser” and is working on a sequel.
 Chris Edwards holds a Master of Arts in Communication Studies degree from the University of Windsor, and has been an instructor at the University of Windsor, St. Clair College and Elder College.
 He’s a publisher, photographer, digital design guru, educator and world-traveller.
 Chris has a long career in marketing and advertising and has managed numerous traditional and new media projects.
 Together with Walkerville Publishing, they have produced several best-selling books on Windsor and this region’s rich visual heritage.
Their latest book together is Brewed in Windsor: A Tasty History
https://www.walkerville.com/shop

 The Occasion: In October 2021, something wonderful and astonishing happened: three authors published by small but mighty Windsor-based Palimpsest Press were nominated for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Awards: Sadiqa de Meijer for non-fiction, G.A. Grisenthwaite for fiction, and Tolu Oloruntoba for poetry. In November, Sadiqa de Meijer and Tolu Oloruntoba were indeed announced as two of this year’s seven English language Governor General’s Literary Award winners. Today we’re speaking with Palimpsest Press publisher and past guest Aimee Parent Dunn, along with GGLA winning poet, Tolu Oloruntoba.

About Tolu: Tolu Oloruntoba was born in Nigeria, and practiced medicine before his current work managing virtual health projects for BC health organizations. His poetry has appeared in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, PRISM International, Pleiades, Columbia Journal, Obsidian, The Maynard, Humber Literary Review, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His short fiction has appeared in translation in Dansk PEN Magazine. He founded Klorofyl, a magazine of literary and graphic art. His debut chapbook, Manubrium, was published by Anstruther Press, and was shortlisted for the 2020 bpNichol Chapbook Award, while his debut full-length poetry collection, The Junta of Happenstance, published by Palimpsest Press in Spring 2021, recently won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. He lives in Surrey, BC with his family.

About Aimee:  Aimee Parent Dunn is from Essex County and received her BA in English at the University of Windsor. In 2012, she became a publishing assistant at Palimpsest Press, which had been founded by Dawn Kresan in 2000. Just over a year later, with the support of her husband Shaun Dunn, she bought the press and became its publisher, with Dawn remaining as a poetry editor and designer. Palimpsest Press is a small independent publishing house that publishes beautifully designed books of poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction. A palimpsest, by the way, is a piece of writing material manuscript on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for other writing.

https://palimpsestpress.ca/ 

Robert Earl Stewart’s first collection of poetry, Something Burned Along the Southern Border (Mansfield Press), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. His poems have been published in journals in Canada, the U.S., and Great Britain. In 2010, he received the Windsor Endowment for the Arts’ grant for Emerging Artist in Literary Arts. His poetry has appeared in

magazines, journals and anthologies in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., including This, Magma Poetry, Poetry Super Highway, Nthposition, Monday Night, Iota, Moosehead Anthology, and The Best Canadian Poetry 2012. In 2018 he was nominated for a Canadian Magazine Award for an article he wrote about a pro-wrestling role-playing game he co-created as a teenager. He has been a journalist, and has spent time as a creative writing instructor, a photography instructor, a CBC radio book panelist, and the manager of a book shop. He lives in Windsor with his wife and their three children. Robert Earl Stewart’s new book, Running-Shaped Hole will be published by Dundurn Press in Spring 2022.
https://www.dundurn.com/books_/t22117/a9781459749054-the-running-shaped-hole