2018

The schedule for the 2018 Author Reading room is complete!

Writers from Flint and farther afield will host a series of readings and discussions of their work.

Please see the schedule below and scroll further to read the bios of individual authors.  All readings will take place in Room 205 on the second floor of the Flint Public Library, 1026 E. Kearsley Street.

11:00-11:30 Susan Sage and Patty Duffy
11:30-12:00 Jeffery Carey
1:00-1:30 Gary Flinn
2:00-2:30 DeQuindra Renea
3:00-3:30 Gemma Cooper-Novack
3:30-4:00 Connor Coyne
4:00-4:30 Jan Worth-Nelson and Ted Nelson

11:00-11:30

Susan Sage is a fiction writer and poet. Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1956, she is the youngest of three sisters. Susan received an English degree from Wayne State University. During her college years, she began publishing her poetry, and was a recipient of WSU’s Tompkins Award in Creative Writing.

After moving to the Flint area, she became a certified teacher in Language Arts, and also completed graduate coursework at the University of Michigan-Flint. An educator for twenty-three years, Susan wore many hats: an adult education teacher, educational coordinator, as well as an academic interventionist at both the elementary and secondary levels. During her years at Carman-Ainsworth High School, she served as both sponsor of the creative writing club, as well as editor of its annual magazine. She has also been active in a group of local authors, Writers as Instructors.

Her work has appeared in 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, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Rockhurst Review, Passages North, Metis, Qua, Diceybrown, The Mochila Review, Beyond Doggerel, The Wire, and Corridors. Her first novel, Insominy, was published in 2010 (Virtualbookworm). A Mentor and Her Muse, her second novel, was published by Open Books in December, 2017. It is a psychological novel focusing on women’s issues.

Susan enjoys travelling and stargazing. She lives in Flushing, Michigan, with her husband, Tom, and two cats. They have a daughter, Sarah.

11:30-12:00

In addition to his work at East Village Magazine, Jeffery L. Carey is an author living in Michigan with his wife and three children. He has various stories and poems published in print and online journals. His books include, Turning Pages, poems;  Callous, In Spring, Selected Poems:  Repressions, poems;  Songs of Epigenesis, poems; The Reflection of Elias Dumont, novel and Astilla, short fiction. More information about his work is available at http://jlcareyjr.wixsite.com/black-madonna-press

Carey also is an instructor of English and Art and holds an MFA in creative writing from National University in La Jolla, CA and a BA in English from the University of Michigan-Flint.

1:00-1:30

Gary Flinn is the author of two books about Flint, Remembering Flint, Michigan–Stories from the Vehicle City published in 2010 and Hidden History of Flint published in 2017.  He is currently working on a ‘semi-novel’ about one Flint neighborhood’s experience with the water crisis.

2:00-2:30

DeQuindra Renea was born and raised in Flint, Michigan in the 90’s. During the time of popular R&B music, boy bands, Nintendo, and MTV, DeQuindra could be found with her nose stuck in a book. It was in middle school that she found her voice as a writer and started penning her own stories. This was the birth of DeQuindra as a writer, although being an author wouldn’t come for many years later.
In high school, DeQuindra always had a notebook in her hands, which contained whichever story she was writing at the time. Receiving feedback from family and friends, she knew it was not only something she truly enjoyed, but that entertained others. Even then, she did not consider a career in writing and when she graduated in 2008, she went to college to pursue a degree in Human Resource Management, a career that matched closest with her outgoing personality. After turning in a short story to an English professor who encouraged her to finish it, she decided writing should be something done more than just for fun.
In 2015, DeQuindra published Blazing Deception, her first novel and it sold well over 1000 copies and counting. She has also recently published a second novel Distrust, as well as co-wrote a play, Appointments: An Account of the Flint Water Crisis, with two other Flint authors that raises awareness about The Flint Water Crisis, a situation that has affected her and her family tremendously. She graduated from the University of Michigan-Flint in December of 2016 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Human Resource Management.
Besides being an author and recent graduate, DeQuindra is a mother to a beautiful 5-year-old little girl, an avid reader, blogger and self-proclaimed karaoke star. She enjoys cooking, eating, listening to music, talking, and traveling.

3:00-3:30

Gemma Cooper-Novack’s debut poetry collection We Might As Well Be Underwater, a finalist for the Central New York Book Award, was published by Unsolicited Press in 2017. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in more than twenty journals and been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net Awards. Her plays have been produced in Chicago, Boston, and New York. Gemma was a runner-up for the 2016 James Jones First Novel Fellowship; she has been awarded artist’s residencies from Catalonia to Virginia and a grant from the Barbara Deming Fund. She is a doctoral student in Literacy Education at Syracuse University.

3:30-4:00