If you take a stroll past the Ferris Wheel building on Saturday, September 14th, from noon to 4 p.m. you might hear a literary commotion coming from the first floor. The third annual Flint Festival of Writers Book Fair is our biggest yet!
Come meet and mingle with the seventeen authors, publishers, and organizations selling books and sharing resources with all of our guests.
Our vendors at the book fair include:
Art and Design (UM – Flint)
J.L. Carey, Jr.
April Cook-Hawkins
Porsha Deun
Patricia Duffy
East Village Magazine
Gary Flinn
Flint Festival of Writers
Flint Public Library
M.L. Kennedy
John McClane
Qua Magazine
Gerald Dean Rice
Kerenza Ryan
Susan Sage
Anitriss Smith
Marianne Waddill Wieland
Please continue reading for profiles on each of our vendors.
Art and Design (UM – Flint) will be showcasing explorations in print media by design students from the Department of Art and Art History.
J. L. Carey, Jr. is a writer and an artist living in Michigan with his wife and three children. He is an Instructor at SVSU and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from National University and a BA in English from the University of Michigan – Flint with a concentration in writing. He is also a journalist at East Village Magazine and has various stories and poems published in both print and online journals.
April Cook-Hawkins is a gifted encourager by nature. She is an Author, Life Strategist, Motivational Speaker, First Lady of Prince of Peace Missionary Baptist Church, Community Organizer, and founder of Alternative Solutions for Women, a non-profit designed to empower young girls and women ages 8-24. She is a woman concerned about the well-being of people and has become an inspirational role model to many. In her book she highlights her experience working for the Genesee County Health Department during the Flint Water Crisis and how she decided to take matters into her own hands.
Born and raised in Flint, Michigan, Porsha Deun (pronounced like Dion) began to take her writing seriously in 2015. She started with Love Lost while unemployed after graduating from Davenport University with a B.B.A. in Accounting. Three years and two accounting jobs later, her debut novel, Love Lost, was published.
Love Lost was nominated for AAMBC’s 2019 Urban Book of the Year Award. Since publishing Love Lost, she has continued to write, publishing Love Lost Forever, the second book in the erotic Love Lost Series, in June 2019. Her third book, Love Lost Revenge is expected to be released by the end of 2019.
Patricia Duffy writes: “As a long-time English teacher from Grand Blanc, Michigan, I practice what I encourage of my students: discover possibilities. Since childhood, when traveling the Grand Canyon listening to my parents call from the front seat, “Get your nose out of that book,” I don’t consider a day satisfying unless I’m reading, scribbling or slinging ink that could later become something more. In homage to beloved authors such as Ian McEwan, Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, and Kurt Vonnegut, my current novel-in-progress about a surprise guest at a 100th birthday party mines everyday lives to explore big questions.
East Village Magazine, one of the oldest nonprofit community journalism publications in the country, has been delivering news and analysis aimed at Flint-based neighborhood preservation, collective action, politics and education since 1976. Reported and written by all local writers launched by EVM’s journalism training program, the free magazine, known for its distinctive black and white covers and hyperlocal focus, is delivered door-to-door in five neighborhoods and widely around the city. It additionally maintains a lively, much-used website at eastvillagemagazine.org.
Gary Flinn is a product of the Flint Community Schools and a graduate of Mott Community College and Michigan State University who has lived in the Flint area for most of his life. His earliest writings were for the Flint Central High School publications the Tribal Times and the Arrow Head. Besides Broadside, he also contributed articles for the Uncommon Sense, Your Magazine, the Flint Journal and Downtown Flint Revival magazine. He presently lives on Flint’s west side. He is currently working on his third book for the History Press to be titled Lost Flint.
The Flint Festival of Writers – formerly the Flint Literary Festival – is an annual, free event in partnership with Gothic Funk Press, East Village Magazine, and The University of Michigan — Flint English Department.
We support the literary tradition and writing done in and about Flint and cultivate dynamic resources and experiences for Flint writers and readers.
The Flint Public Library, located on the Flint Cultural Center Campus, is Flint’s go-to place to learn for life. We focus on early childhood literacy, digital learning, and serving as a community hub for Flint. We collect and curate the history of our community with a collection dating back more than a century. Flint residents and others in the area can become cardholders and take advantage of our books and materials, ebooks, downloadable audiobooks, streaming music, Lynda Library training, and much more. Our Children’s Learning Place is hopping, especially every Saturday. Visit fpl.info and check the calendar for great family activities.
M.L. Kennedy has contributed to Cherry Magazine, Culture Counter Magazine, DieHard GameFAN, Inside Pulse, Beyond the Threshold, The DVD Lounge, and various other online and paper periodicals. Currently, he runs the Indie City Writers group on the South Side of Chicago. Things You Leave Behind is his fourth book and is being released on September 13, 2019.
Written from the gritty perspective of a man who escaped the streets of Detroit by the grace of God, author John McClane has survived, to tell a necessary story — a story that many in the African-American community sense deep in their souls — a story that gets drowned out by the noise of ‘popular’ black culture…
In The Holocaust of Triggerization, McClane courageously dissects, piece-by-piece, the African-American syndrome that he calls, ‘triggerization,’ the syndrome that aborts the potential of millions of otherwise brilliant human beings.
Qua Magazine is a University of Michigan-Flint student-run publication that offers Flint and neighboring communities a place to have their creative works published. Qua has been a vital part of Flint’s artistic community for over 50 years. Qua strives to facilitate the inclusivity of fine arts and literature into the community by offering free submissions into the publication and allowing further growth of the fluid culture of creativity of artists across Michigan.
Gerald Dean Rice is the author of several short stories and novels. His most recent novella, Part-time Zombie, was published earlier this year by Melted Brain Books and his novel, Dead ’til Dawn, was selected by the Kindle Scout program to be published by Amazon in 2016. He also edited the anthology Anything but Zombies for a division of Simon & Schuster. He graduated from Mott Community College in 2002 with an AA in English and lives in Metro Detroit with his wife and kids.
Kerenza Ryan lives in Marlette, Michigan where she spends her time working at Tuscola Behavioral Health Center and writing. Her poetry and short stories have been published in multiple literary magazines, and she now has a poetry collection out about her personal experience with schizophrenia. She also has an upcoming novel about a young cancer researcher in the depths of psychosis and his fiance who loves him through it. Her books are both for those who want to feel understood and for those who want to understand. They are, in essence, for everyone.
Susan Sage writes, “I’m a fiction writer and poet. I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, but have lived most of my life near Flint. I received an undergraduate degree from Wayne State University, and took graduate coursework at University of Michigan — Flint. As an educator for over twenty years, I’ve worn many hats: an adult education teacher, educational coordinator and academic interventionist in grade schools and high schools. I’ve been active in a group of local authors, Writers as Instructors. My fiction and poetry have appeared in many journals, including: Five on the Fifth, Arlington Literary Journal (Issue #84), Illuminations, Twisted Vines Literary Journal, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Referential Magazine, Storyacious, E.T.A. Literary Journal, Digital Papercut, Black Denim Lit. I have published two novels: Insominy (2010) and A Mentor and Her Muse (2018).”
Anitriss Smith writes: “I am 40 years old living with, and have been fighting Crohn’s disease for 18 years. I am a woman of faith, and family. I’ve had many trials and challenges with this disease, and its effects. Now I am taking charge of my health, and future. My goal is to encourage others to unite, and in turn challenge others to do the same. Together we are UNDEFEATED!
Marianne Waddill Wieland has written several musicals and plays that have been performed in and around the Battle Creek, Michigan area for more than twenty years. She currently has two books out in her Mountain Mama series, My Heart for Jill and Gerard’s Descent. Her most recent book, Meeting Henry, will have another book out in that series later in the year. She also has a book of short stories available, Moments in Time…Stories of Romance. There will be another book of short stories later in the year featuring stories of suspense and dark comedy.