All Write in Sin City
by 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.
Episodes
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Not All Dragons with David Ly
DAVID LY is the author of Mythical Man (Anstruther Books, 2020) and Dream of Me as Water (Anstruther Books, 2022), both short-listed for ReLit Poetry Awards. David was also the winner of the inaugural Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence from The Ex-Puritan in 2021. With Daniel Zomparelli,...
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The Reading List: Staging Blackface in Canada with Cheryl Thompson
This episode is an excerpt from a longer podcast with Dr. Cheryl Thompson, a reading from her book, Staging Blackface in Canada. The following show notes are from the complete episode, available on this channel. Recently, the Amherstburg Freedom Museum hosted a virtual book launch for Cheryl...
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The Reading List: A Quilting of Scars with Lucy E.M. Black
Lucy E.M. Black joins us today to talk about her novel, A Quilting of Scars. The timeless narrative brings to life a story of forbidden love, abuse and murder. Pulsing with repressed sexuality and guilt, Larkin Beattie reveals the many secrets he has kept hidden throughout his lonely life. The...
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The Reading List: Battle Axes with Sean Kelly
Sean Kelly—who has performed with artists including Dee Snider (Twisted Sister), Nelly Furtado, Lee Aaron, Coney Hatch, Helix, Gilby Clarke, Rough Trade, Glass Tiger’s Alan Frew, Harlequin, Honeymoon Suite, and Crash Kelly—brings an insider’s perspective to the guitars, players, and culture that...
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The Reading List: Blood Bound, Historical Fiction with Marie-Josée Poisson
Marie-Joseé Poission joins us to talk about her novel, Blood Bound: Unlacing Secret Ties, published by Guernica Editions. In the novel, successful Montreal communications executive Lou Ashby travels to Paris to trace her ancestry. There, she meets Geoffrey, an academic with a national museum, who...
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Those Are Pearls with André Narbonne
André Narbonne is a scholar, a poet, the author of four books, and also the publisher of Conspiracy Press, based in Windsor, Ontario. His short fiction has been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories, won the FreeFall Literary Contest, the David Adams Richards Prize, and the Atlantic Writing...
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The Reading List: Shoebox with Sean Paul Bedell
In this episode of The Reading List, Canadian author Sean Paul Bedell shares his inspiration drawn his paramedic life and a short excerpt from his novel The Shoebox. Author Sean Paul Bedell's second book, Shoebox, is published by Now or Never Publishing. In this gritty, emotional novel, Steve...
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The Tinder Sonnets with Jennifer LoveGrove
JENNIFER LOVEGROVE is the author of the Giller Prize–longlisted novel Watch How We Walk, as well as three poetry collections: Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes (longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award), I Should Never Have Fired the Sentinel, and The Dagger Between Her Teeth. Her latest poetry...
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The Reading List with Don Gillmor
Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of five novels, Cherry Beach, Breaking and Entering, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata; a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History; and nine books for children,...
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The Reading List with Fartumo Kusow
Fartumo Kusow is a high school English teacher, novelist, podcaster, activist, and mother of five who lives in Windsor, Ontario. Born in Somalia, Fartumo immigrated to Canada in 1991, at the start of the civil war, with fluency in Somali and Arabic but not English, and went on to earn two…
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The Reading List with Jim Johnstone
This episode is an excerpt of a longer interview with Jim Johnstone. Jim Johnstone is a Toronto-based poet, editor, and critic. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Chemical Life, which was shortlisted for the 2018 ReLit Award. Johnstone has also won several awards,...
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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...
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The Reading List: Precarious with Marcello DiCintio
This podcast is an excerpt of a longer episode featuring an author interview with Marcello DiCintio. Marcello Di Cintio is the prize-winning author of six books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense, and Driven: The Secret Lives...
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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...
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The Reading List: The Unraveling of Ou with Hollay Ghadery
This podcast is an excerpt of a longer episode also featuring an interview with Hollay Ghadery. Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her acclaimed memoir of mixed-race identity and mental illness, was published…
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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...
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How About This ...? with Michael Mirolla
Featured Guest: Michael Mirolla About our guest: MICHAEL MIROLLA’s awards for novella, short fiction, novels, and poetry include the 2020 Hamilton Literary Award for fiction, as well as three Bressani Prizes. He has been awarded writers’ residencies at Vancouver’s Historic Joy Kogawa House, in...
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519 Celebrates Canada Day 159 with Early Canadian Poetry
Happy Canada Day! To celebrate Canada’s 159th birthday, we’re offering up a few selections from early Canadian poets. Enjoy these short readings from our country’s literary history. Poems read in this episode include: The Old Red Shirt by Rebecca Gibbs Marshlands by E. Pauline Johnson...
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Staging Blackface in Canada with Cheryl Thompson
Recently, the Amherstburg Freedom Museum hosted a virtual book launch for Cheryl Thompson’s latest work, Staging Blackface in Canada, which was published in April 2026 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. We’re sharing a portion of that very interesting discussion. Cheryl Thompson lives in…
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Cherry Beach with Don Gillmor feat. John Schlarbaum
Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of five novels, Cherry Beach, Breaking and Entering, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata; a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History; and nine books for children,...
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Winter of My Spring: Author, Activist, and Educator Fartumo Kusow
Fartumo Kusow is a high school English teacher, novelist, podcaster, activist, and mother of five who lives in Windsor, Ontario. Born in Somalia, Fartumo immigrated to Canada in 1991, at the start of the civil war, with fluency in Somali and Arabic but not English, and went on to earn two…
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Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: Curtis Chin Book Event
Curtis Chin is the author of the award-winning memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant. The restaurant of the title was a popular downtown Detroit eatery owned by his family for generations. Chin was recently in Windsor, kicking off his five-stop Canadian book tour. A...
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Jim Johnstone: Bait and Switch
Jim Johnstone is a Toronto-based poet, editor, and critic. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Chemical Life, which was shortlisted for the 2018 ReLit Award. Johnstone has also won several awards, including the Bliss Carman Poetry Award, a CBC Literary Award, the Ralph...
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The Poet's Cookbook - Special Guest Episode
In this episode, we are delighted to welcome students from the University of Windsor’s 2026 Publishing Practicum course. Together with some stand-out Canadian Poets, including Rosemary Sullivan, Molly Peacock, Dan MacDonald, and G.A. Grisenthwaite, the students talk about their unique new book of...
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Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers with Marcello Di Cintio
Marcello Di Cintio is the prize-winning author of six books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense, and Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers. He has also written for the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The International New York...
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Stories of the Underground Railroad with 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...
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The Unraveling of Ou with Hollay Ghadery
Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her acclaimed memoir of mixed-race identity and mental illness, was published by Guernica Editions’ MiroLand imprint in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for...
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Mad Dog and the Sea Dragon with Lisa de Nikolits
Lisa de Nikolits is the award-winning author of twelve published novels. She has appeared on recommended reading lists for Open Book Toronto, 49th Shelf, Chatelaine, Canadian Living, Hello! Canada, the Quill & Quire, and most recently, the CBC’s 65 works of Canadian fiction to watch for in Fall...
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The Roots Run Deep with CM Forest
C. M. Forest, also known as Christian Laforet, is the author of multiple projects including the 2023 Benjamin Franklin silver award winning novel Infested (Eerie River Publishing), and the novella, We All Fall Before the Harvest (Timber Ghost Press.) and the upcoming (Sept. 2024) short story...
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A Town With No Noise featuring Karen Smythe
Karen Smythe’s previous books include the novel This Side of Sad (Goose Lane Editions, 2017), the story collection Stubborn Bones (Polestar/Raincoast, 2001), and the critical study Figuring Grief: Gallant, Munro, and the Poetics of Elegy (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992). Her family...
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Black Cake, Turtle Soup with Gloria Blizzard
Gloria Blizzard is an award-winning writer and poet, and a Black Canadian woman of multiple heritages. She holds an MFA from the University of King’s College. Her work explores spaces where music, dance, spirit, and culture collide. Her work has won the Malahat Review Creative Nonfiction Prize…
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Weighted Down: The Complicated Life of Skip Spence with Cam Cobb
Skip Spence's life started in Windsor, but he became a poster boy for the 1960s, playing with groups like Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape. His time in the spotlight lasted only three years, but he left a lasting impression on rock and roll. Cam Cobb is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at...
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When Detroit Played the Numbers, with Felicia B. George
Felicia B. George is a native Detroiter who loves Detroit history and culture. She earned her doctorate in anthropology from Wayne State University, where she is now an adjunct professor. Her recent book, When Detroit Played the Numbers: Gambling’s History and Cultural Impact on the Motor City…
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Limbo Moon with Peter Hrastovec
Born and raised in Windsor, Ontario, Peter Hrastovec is the author of three books of poetry, In Lieu of Flowers, Sidelines and There Will Be Fish, which we covered on a podcast episode in May of 2022. Peter is the current Poet Laureate of Windsor, and he has contributed to several anthologies…
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Marty Gervais THE SKY ABOVE
Marty Gervais is perhaps the most well-known figure in the Windsor writing community. He is an award-winning Canadian journalist, poet, playwright, historian photographer and editor. He won Toronto’s Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian letters and to emerging writers…
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Dearborn with Ghassan Zeineddine
Ghassan Zeineddine was born in Washington, DC, and raised in the Middle East. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College, and co-editor of the creative nonfiction anthology Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging. He lives with his wife and two...
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The Forest King's Daughter with Elly Blake
Elly Blake is the New York Times bestselling author of the Frostblood Saga. After earning a BA in English literature, she has worked as a project manager, customs clerk, graphic designer, reporter for a local business magazine, and library assistant. She lives in Southwestern Ontario with her...
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Hello, Horse with Richard Kelly Kemick
Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. His limited series podcast, Natural Life, is an intimate and unexpectedly honest documentary on his cousin, who is serving a life sentence without parole in Michigan. Richard is also the author of I Am Herod, which…
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2024 Year-End Wrap from the All Write Podcasters!
Join us for a special minisode in which we reflect briefly on five(!) lovely years of podcasting, and on 2024 in particular. Irene, Kim, and Sarah have selected a few works each that struck us in different ways, but don't get us wrong, we have had a blast chatting with each author this year, and...
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Lost on Gilligan’s Island with Walter Metz
Walter Metz is a Full Professor in the School of Media Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He earned a Ph.D. in Radio/Television/Film at the University of Texas at Austin in 1996, and holds an S.B. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT (1989). He is the author of three...
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The Widow's Crayon Box with Molly Peacock
Molly Peacock is the author of eight volumes of poetry. Earlier titles include The Analyst: Poems and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems. She joins us today to talk about her latest collection, The Widow’s Crayon Box. She also recently wrote a non-fiction book about a half-century friendship, A...
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The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits with Ben German Ghan
Ben Berman Ghan is a writer and editor from Toronto whose prose and poetry have been published in Clarkesworld magazine, Strange Horizons, the Blasted Tree Publishing Co., the tƐmz Review and others. His previous works include the short story collection What We See in the Smoke. He now lives and...
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BookFest/Festival du Livre Windsor 2024 News Bulletin!
Here is a special short with Literary Arts Windsor President Wesley Foster talking about the exciting lineup for Windsor's annual literary festival BookFest/Festival du Livre Windsor 2024. This year, it's all virtual, so accessible from anywhere, and the theme is Bridging Communities. Here's our...
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Zan with Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh
Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh was born in Washington, D.C. to an Iranian father and an American mother. She moved to Iran at age 5 and grew up in Tehran under the Shah. She returned to the U.S. to attend Stanford University, and when the Islamic Revolution started brewing shortly after she graduated, she...
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[non]disclosure with Renée D. Bondy
Renée D. Bondy taught in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Windsor, where she facilitated courses on queer activism, women and religion, and the history of women’s movements. Her writing has appeared in Herizons, Bitch, Bearings Online, and the Humber Literary Review. She is a...
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On Comics and Grief with Dale Jacobs
Dale Jacobs is the author of Graphic Encounters: Comics and the Sponsorship of Multimodal Literacy (2013) and the co-author (with Heidi LM Jacobs) of 100 Miles of Baseball: Fifty Games, One Summer (2021). His essays have appeared in journals including but not limited to Inks: The Journal of the...
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Making History Move with Kim Nelson
Kim Nelson is an Associate Professor of Film at the University of Windsor, and also the Director of the Humanities Research Group and the Live Doc Project. Originally from Vancouver, she has been based in Windsor since 2005. She has a BA in Film from UBC and an MFA in Film from York University.…
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Precedented Parroting with Barbara Tran
Barbara Tran’s poetry and fiction have appeared in The Paris Review, The Malahat Review, and Conjunctions. Included in Barbara’s writing for the screen is the narration for Madame Pirate: Becoming a Legend, a short XR film, which was a 2022 Official Selection of SXSW and in competition at the...
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Enough to Lose with RS Deeren
A native "Thumbody," RS Deeren is an assistant professor of creative writing at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. His research interests include contemporary fiction, US working-class studies, and rural-urban dynamics. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in...
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Publishing Practicum with Marty Gervais and Andre Narbonne
Marty Gervais and André Narbonne About our guests: The Publishing Practicum is a different kind of University of Windsor English course. It’s like a year-long internship for a group of students who take one or two books per year through the steps of the publishing process from editing to book...
About this show
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.
Hosted by
Kim/Irene/Sarah