Literature In Person

Tommy Dean

Bio: Tommy Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press 2022). He lives in Indiana, where he is the Editor of Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. A recipient of the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction, his writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, 2023, Best Small Fictions 2019 and 2022, Laurel Review, and elsewhere. Find him at tommydeanwriter.com and on Twitter @TommyDeanWriter.

Brandon Rushton

Bio:  Brandon Rushton is the author of The Air in the Air Behind It (Tupelo Press, September 2022), selected by Bin Ramke for the 2020 Berkshire Prize. He was born and raised in Michigan. A finalist for the National Poetry Series and the American Poetry Review / Honickman Book Prize, his individual poems have received awards from Gulf Coast and Ninth Letter and appear widely in publications like The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, Bennington Review, and Passages North. His essays appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Terrain.org, the critical anthology, A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke (Ohio University Press, 2020), and have been listed as notable by Best American Essays. After earning his MFA from the University of South Carolina, he joined the writing faculty at the College of Charleston. Since the fall of 2020, he's been a visiting professor of writing at Grand Valley State University.  

Tirzah Price

Tirzah is the author of the Jane Austen Murder Mysteries. She grew up on a farm in Michigan, where she read every book she could get her hands on and never outgrew her love for YA fiction. She earned her BA at Ferris State, holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and is a former bookseller and librarian. Now, she’s a contributing editor at Book Riot. When she’s not writing, reading, or thinking about YA books, she splits her time between experimenting in the kitchen and knitting enough socks to last the fierce Michigan winters.

Nicholas Ward

Nicholas is an essayist and arts administrator. His first book, All Who Belong May Enter, won the 2020 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize. His work has appeared in Catapult, The Billfold, Bird’s Thumb, Midwestern Gothic, Hinterland Magazine, and in Belt Publishing’s Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook. He is a long-time company member with 2nd Story, a Chicago-based storytelling collective with whom he tells stories, curates shows, teaches classes, and serves on the board of directors. He previously founded a small boutique agency, NCW Booking, where he managed a collection of poets and interdisciplinary artists. He was the Assistant Casting Director and Screenings Coordinator for the Emmy-nominated web series, Brown Girls. Currently, he lives in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, works as the Booking Manager at Young Chicago Authors, and organizes with the 48th Ward Neighbors for Justice.

M. L. Liebler

M. L. Liebler is an internationally known & widely published Detroit poet, university professor, literary arts activist, and arts organizer. He is the author of fifteen books and chapbooks, including the award winning Wide Awake in Someone Else's Dream which won both The Paterson Poetry Prize for Literary Excellence and The American Indie Book Award in 2009. Liebler has taught English, Creative Writing, American Studies, Labor Studies, and World Literature at Wayne State University in Detroit since 1980, and he is the founding director of both The National Writer's Voice Project in Detroit and the Springfed Arts: Metro Detroit Writers Literary Arts Organization. In 2017, Liebler received two Library of Michigan Notable Book Awards for his collection of poems entitled I Want to Be Once and for Heaven Was Detroit: An Anthology of Detroit Music Essays from Jazz to Hiphop. The beginning of 2020 saw the release of RESPECT: Poets on Detroit Music, edited by M. L. Liebler & Jim Daniels.

Kai Coggin

Kai is the author of PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants 2014), WINGSPAN (Golden Dragonfly Press 2016), and INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press 2019), as well as a spoken word album SILHOUETTE (2017). She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black Lives Matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and the host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award and named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated four times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016 and 2018. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cultural Weekly, Bellevue Literary Review, Entropy, SWWIM, Sinister Wisdom, Calamus Journal, Lavender Review, Luna Luna, Blue Heron Review, Yes, Poetry and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review. She lives with her wife and their two adorable dogs in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas. 

Nader K. Uthman

Nader K. Uthman, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University, is a Clinical Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University where he teaches Arabic. His most recent translation is Traces: A Memoir (American University of Cairo Press, 2020). Traces: A Memoir was written by Gamal Al-Ghitani, one of Egypt's most celebrated authors, and is described as “Haunting.” This event is sponsored by the Department of English, Literature, and World Languages.

Karen Stefano

Marissa Glover

Marissa Glover teaches and writes in Florida, where she is the co-editor for Orange Blossom Review and the poetry editor at Barren Press. Marissa was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Lascaux Review for her poem “Some Things Are Decided Before You Are Born,” and she is the founder and host of the Friday Night Open Mic event series, where all it takes is courage to be FNOMenal.

Adam Schuitema

Adam Schuitema is the author of the short-story collections The Things We Do That Make No Sense (2017) and Freshwater Boys (2010) and the novel Haymaker (2015). His works have twice been named Michigan Notable Books by the Library of Michigan.

Noley Reid

Noley Reid is author of the novel Pretend We Are Lovely, which The O, Oprah Magazine called “scrumptious.”  Her previous books are the short story collection So There! and the novel In the Breeze of Passing Things.

Katie Kalisz

Katie Kalisz is the author of the collection of poetry, Quiet Woman. Her poem “Calling Unemployment Once-A-Week in Michigan” was nominated for the 2013 Best of the Net Anthology, and “Pregnant at a Funeral” was recreated as a broadside by The Michigan Poet.

Marcus Wicker

Marcus Wicker’s first collection of poetry Maybe the Saddest Thing was a National Poetry Series winner and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. His second book, Silencer, was also an Image Award finalist.  Wicker is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, The Missouri Review's Miller Audio Prize, as well as fellowships from Cave Canem, and the Fine Arts Work Center.

Gordon Henry

Gordon Henry is an enrolled member of the White Earth Chippewa Tribe, Gordon Henry has received an American Book Award for his novel The Light People. His poetry, fiction and essays have been published extensively, in the U.S. and Europe.

Patrick LeBeau

Patrick LeBeau is the author of Stands Alone, Faces and Other Poems, Rethinking Michigan Indian History, and Term Paper Resource Guide to American Indian History. LeBeau has also written many articles and book chapters, the most notable, “The Fighting Braves of Michigamua,” which appeared in the book, Team Spirits. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota (his father’s home) and he is a descendent of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe of North Dakota (his mother’s home).