Ann Arbor native Samiya Bashir’s most recent book of poems, Gospel, was a finalist for both the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and along with her first collection, Where the Apple Falls, the Lambda Literary Award. Previously an editor with Ms. Magazine and Black Issues Book Review, she co-edited Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. A founding organizer of Fire & Ink, recognized as the most influential supporter and advocate for LGBT writers of African descent, Samiya holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as Poet Laureate, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she received two Hopwood Poetry Awards. She is also the recipient of the Aquarius Press Legacy Award, the Astraea Writers Award, and fellowships from Cave Canem, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Soul Mountain Writers Colony, The Austin Project, and the National Association of Pen Women, among others. She teaches writing at the University of Michigan.

Matt Bell is the author of Cataclysm Baby, a novella, and How They Were Found, a collection of fiction. He also serves as the editor of Dzanc Books and The Collagist.

Russell Brakefield is a musician, editor, and educator. He received his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, where he now teachings creative writing and composition. His most recent work appears or is forthcoming in The Michigan Quarterly Review, The New York Quarterly, Poet Lore, and Drunken Boat. He is also a member of an ongoing folk music collective called winter/sessions.

In the meanwhile, we’ve posted pics from this month’s event on our photo page, so check them out!

Elizabeth Ellen‘s stories have appeared in numerous online and print journals over the last ten years, including elimae, Quick Fiction, Hobart, Lamination Colony, Mud Luscious, Sleepingfish, kill author, Pindeldyboz, and many others. She is the author of the chapbook Before You She Was a Pit Bull (Future Tense) and her collection of flash fictions, Sixteen Miles Outside of Phoenix, was included in A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: four chapbooks of short short fiction by four women (Rose Metal Press). Fast Machine is a collection of her best work from the last decade. Currently she lives in Ann Arbor where she co-edits Hobart and oversees Hobart’s book division, Short Flight/Long Drive books.

Kyle Minor is the author of In the Devil’s Territory, a collection of short fiction. His stories and essays appear in The Southern Review, Gulf Coast, and Plots with Guns, and in anthologies published by Random House, Houghton Mifflin, and Harper Perennial. He lives in Ohio.

Susanna Piontek was born in Bytom, Poland and immigrated to Germany in 1965. She earned an M.A. at Bochum University, specializing in language pedagogy research, history, and American studies. After working at the University of Saarbrücken for several years, she completed her education as a broadcast editor at a journalism school. While working at a radio station, she started writing short stories and poems. They have been published in book form, anthologies, and magazines in Germany, the U.S., Israel, and Albania. Since 2006 Piontek is living in the United States as a freelance writer. She is a member of the European Authors’ Association “Die Kogge” (“The Cog”, named after the vessels of the Hanseatic League) in Minden, Germany, as well as of SCALG (Society for Contemporary American Literature in German), and of P.E.N. Zentrum deutschprachiger Autoren im Ausland (P.E.N. Center for German-speaking authors in foreign countries).

Last month we had our best turnout yet, and we’re hoping for an even bigger one in February. Remember, 7-8 PM at Mentobe Cafe in downtown Farmington, Michigan. We’d love to see you!

Amanda Goldblatt is a writer of fiction and creative nonfiction. She has led workshops in both genres at Washington University in St. Louis and currently teaches at the University of Michigan. Her work has been published in American Short Fiction, The Collagist, Thermos, NANO Fiction, and elsewhere. Catalpa: This is Not True, a prose chapbook, was published by Cupboard in 2010. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of the online journal Super Arrow, and lives in Michigan.

Benjamin Paloff grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and was educated at Harvard and at the University of Michigan, where he now teaches. He is the author of The Politics, a collection of poems, and has translated several books from Polish, including Lodgings: Selected Poems of Andrzej Sosnowski. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fulbright Program, he is a poetry editor at the Boston Review.

Matthew Olzmann is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Inch, Gulf Coast, Rattle and elsewhere. He’s received fellowships from Kundiman and the Kresge Arts Foundation. Currently, he is a writer-in-residence for the InsideOut Litereary Arts Project and the poetry editor of The Collagist.

A native Detroiter, Amy Elliott Bragg left home for a while to edit an arts and culture magazine in Milwaukee. She returned to Detroit in 2009 where she lives with her husband, freelances as a writer and editor, and works hard at old books. She started the blog “The Night Train” (http://nighttraintodetroit.com/) about the history of metro Detroit.

Vievee Francis is the author of two poetry collections Blue-Tail Fly (2006) and Horse in the Dark (forthcoming 2012, Winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize). Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Sou’wester, Indiana Review, Best American Poetry 2010, and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, among others. In 2009 she was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, and became a Kresge Fellow in 2010. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan where she was the 2009/2010 Poet in Residence for the Alice Lloyd Hall Scholar’s Program. In 2010/2011 she was the Visiting Poet at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies. A Cave Canem Fellow, she is currently an Associate Editor for Callaloo.

Jeff Kass is an award-winning poet and fiction writer who teaches Creative Writing at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and at Eastern Michigan University. He also directs the Literary Arts Programs at the Neutral Zone, Ann Arbor’s teen center. He was named the 1995-96 California Education Placement Association’s New Teacher of the Year for Northern California Secondary Schools. In April, 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union honored him as Michigan’s Wendy Joyrich Teacher of the Year. April 29, 2009, was proclaimed Jeff Kass Day in Ann Arbor in recognition of his work with young writers. Invisible Staircase, a chapbook of poems, was published by Winged City Press in January, 2010. His poems, stories and essays have been published in literary reviews, newspapers, magazines, and anthologies. Jeff has taught poetry workshops to thousands of young people in schools, juvenile detention centers and synagogues. His one-man performance poetry show, Wrestle the Great Fear, debuted in April, 2009.

If you haven’t yet been to one of our readers, the setting (Mentobe Cafe) is a brilliant little cafe with world-class coffee and snacks, and the overall atmosphere is fun, fun, fun. Hope to see you there!

David Blaine was born in a pizza patch in the Bronx, New York. When he was young, mafia hoodlums roughed him up and stole his middle name. His parents were too poor to buy him a new one. Dave’s family moved to Michigan when he was three. He attended his grandfather’s alma mater, Whasamata U, with a degree in history. It only took three years because, back then, there was a lot less history to learn. Don’t believe that? Fine: David Blaine’s poetry, prose, interviews, reviews and essays have been published widely in print and online. David lives in rural Michigan where he works in the family’s hardware business with his wife and children. His most recent poetry collection Antisocial was published by OW Press.

Keith Taylor is a poet and writer who coordinates the undergraduate program in creative writing at the University of Michigan, directs the Bear River Writer’s Conference, and is the poetry editor for Michigan Quarterly Review. He has published thirteen volumes, including collections of poetry and short fiction, edited volumes, and translations. His work has appeared in such publications as Story, The Los Angeles Times, Alternative Press, The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, The Iowa Review, Witness, Chicago Tribune, and Hanging Loose. His most recent books are Marginalia for a Natural History published by Black Lawrence Press, and Ghost Writers, a collection of ghost stories co-edited with Laura Kasischke, published by Wayne State University Press.

Chris Tysh is a poet, playwright, and translator born and raised in Paris, where she studied American literature at the Sorbonne. She has been on the faculty of the English Department at Wayne State University since 1989, where she teaches creative writing and women’s studies. She has authored several poetry collections and completed a full screenplay based on a novel of Georges Bataille. Recently, her play, Night Scales, A Fable for Klara K was produced at the WSU Studio Theatre (April 22-May 1, 2010) in Detroit under the direction of Aku Kadogo and, later that year, was published by United Artists. She is a recipient of a 2003 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a 2010 Kresge Artist Fellowship. Her latest project, Hotel des Archives, features verse “transcreations” of Becket and Genet’s novels.

It may have been a blustery evening, but thanks to those who braved the weather to come out and listen to some fantastic readers. If you couldn’t make it out, we’ve posted some photos from the event on our photos page here.

Enjoy!

Matt Bell is the author of How They Were Found, a collection of fiction, and Cataclysm Baby, a novella. His fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Gulf Coast, Willow Springs, Unsaid, and American Short Fiction, and has been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories 2010, Best American Fantasy 2, and 30 Under 30: An Anthology of Innovative Younger Writers. He is the Senior Editor at Dzanc Books, where he also runs the literary magazine The Collagist.

Aaron Burch is the author of How to Predict the Weather and How to Take Yourself Apart, How to make Yourself Anew, which won PANK’s inaugural chapbook contest. He’s had stories in Unsaid, New York Tyrant, Barrelhouse, and Quick Fiction, and he edits HOBART: another literary journal.

Donora Hillard appears in Pedagogy, Monkeybicycle, Hint Fiction (W.W. Norton), Best of the Web (Dzanc Books), etc. and edits poetry for Midwestern Gothic. She teaches at Wayne State University in Detroit while pursuing a PhD emphasizing poetics and postpedagogy. Her first poetry collection is Theology of the Body (Gold Wake Press), and a second, Jeff Bridges, is in progress.

And if you couldn’t make it, we’d love to see you next month, October 26. More details to come soon!