A Detroit Anthology

Anna Clark

• Publisher: Belt Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780985944155
• Topic: Persönliche Entwicklung
• Subtopic: Reisen

A unique perspective of the Motor City, this anthology combines stories told by both longtime residents and newcomers from activists to teachers to artists to students. While Detroit has always been rich in stories, too often those stories are told back to the city by outsiders looking in, believing they can explain Detroit back to itself. As editor, Anna Clark writes in the introduction, "These are the stories we tell each other over late nights at the pub and long afternoons on the porch. We share them in coffee shops, at church social hours, in living rooms, and while waiting for the bus. These are stories full of nodding asides and knowing laughs. These are stories addressed to the rhetorical "you"—with the ratcheted up language that comes with it—and these are stories that took real legwork to investigate... You will not find 'positive' stories about Detroit in this collection, or 'negative' ones. But you will find true stories." Featuring essays, photographs, art, and poetry by Grace Lee Boggs, John Carlisle, Desiree Cooper, Dream Hampton, Steve Hughes, Jamaal May, Tracie McMillan, Marsha Music, Shaka Senghor, Thomas J. Sugrue, and many others.

Contributors

Terry Blackhawk (www.terrymblackhawk.com) is the author of six collections of poetry, including Escape Artist, winner of the John Ciardi Prize, and The Light Between (Wayne State University Press, 2012). Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies as well as online at Verse Daily, Poetry Daily, and The Collagist. She founded Detroit’s acclaimed writers-in-the-schools program, InsideOut Literary Arts Project, in 1995, shortly before retiring as a Creative Writing and English teacher from Detroit Public Schools. “Down in Detroit” appears in Poetry in Michigan / Michigan in Poetry (New Issues Press).

Grace Lee Boggs has been an activist for more than sixty years. She is the author of the autobiography Living for Change. “Planting Seeds of Hope” was first adapted for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions, from the book The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs with Scott Kurashige (University of California Press).

adrienne maree brown is a writer, facilitator, doula, and sci-fi scholar living in Detroit.

Michael Eugene Burdick is an illustrator and designer in Detroit. He graduated from the Illustration program at the College for Creative Studies in 2009 and quickly found work creating graphics and commissioned artwork for local businesses, organizations, and publications. There’s a conveniently loose nail on the east wall in his studio to hang his coat up.

Detroit native John Carlisle is the author of the book 313: Life in the Motor City, a collection of feature stories about people and places in Detroit, and is a columnist with the Detroit Free Press. Prior to that, he was a columnist for the Metro Times (where “Desolation Angel” and “The Fixer” first appeared, in slightly different form), and was named Journalist of the Year by the Detroit chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for his coverage of the Motor City.

Nichole Christian is a writer and Detroit native who began her career as a staff member for some of the nation’s top news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, the New York Times, and the Detroit Free Press. She is co-author of Canvas Detroit (Wayne State University Press). Her work also appears in the books Dear Dad: Reflections on Fatherhood and Portraits 9/11/01: The Collected “Portraits of Grief” from the New York Times. She holds a BA in journalism from Wayne State University’s Journalism Institute for Media Diversity and lives in suburban Detroit with her husband and daughter.

Anna Clark is an independent journalist living in Detroit. She has written for The New Republic, NBC News online, Pacific Standard, The American Prospect, and other publications. She is a former Fulbright fellow in Kenya, and in 2012, she founded Literary Detroit. She is a board member of Write A House and a writer-in-residence in Detroit high schools through the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. She graduated from the University of Michigan and from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers.

David Clements’ photography has been exhibited regionally and nationally. He is the author of Talking Shops: Detroit Commercial Folk Art and photographer of Art in Detroit Public Places (Wayne State University Press). He continues to produce and direct television productions for advertising, business communication, and documentaries. More information at davidclementsproductions.com.

Nandi Comer is currently the poetry editor of Indiana Review. She is pursuing a joint MFA/MA in Poetry and African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. She has received fellowships from Virginia Center for the Arts, Cave Canem, and Callaloo. She is the winner of Crab Orchard Review’s 2014 Richard Peterson Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Spoon River Poetry Review, Sycamore Review, and Third Coast.

Desiree Cooper has been a columnist for the Detroit Free Press and a frequent commentator for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” the BBC’s “Americana,” and PBS. She also co-hosted and served as senior correspondent for the American Public Media’s “Weekend America.” Currently the communications director for Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan, her fiction has been published in literary journals including Best African American Fiction 2010, Callaloo, and Tidal Basin Review. She was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for emerging black poets, and is currently a fellow of Kimbilio, a national fiction residency for African American writers. A booster for Detroit, she founded an apparel company, Detroit Snob, in 2010. “For the Long Haul” first appeared, in slightly different form, in Betwe...