All Write in Sin City

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, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism ...

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 degrees. Fartumo Kusow first appeared on this podcast in 2020, chatting about her second novel which was her debut novel in English, Tale of a Bo...

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, including the Bliss Carman Poetry Award, a CBC Literary Award, the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, the Robin Blaser Award, and Poetry's Edi...

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 fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His books have won four Michigan Nota...

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 of Taxi Drivers. He has also written for the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The International New York Times, and Canadian Geographic...

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 towards a creative writing project, focusing on Underground Railroad journeys to the Detroit River Borderlands and especially ...

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 by Guernica Editions’ MiroLand imprint in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Since the...

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 ages recount the struggles and triumph of staking their claim to public spaces. Ranging from poetry to essay, creative nonfiction to comi...

Featured Guest: Michael Mirolla

About our guest:  MICHAEL MIROLLA’s awards for novella, short fiction, novels, and poetry includethe 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 Olot, Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, and most recently, the Regina Public Library from 2025-2026 and a virtual Writer in...

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 (Tekahionwake)
• Women's Rights by Anna Louisa Walker
• At Niagara (1911 version) by R. Nathaniel Dett
• The Blue Flower by Helen M. Merri...

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 Toronto and is the author of Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 1812–1897, Uncle: Ra...

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, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism ...

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 degrees. Fartumo Kusow first appeared on this podcast in 2020, chatting about her second novel which was her debut novel in English, Tale of a Bo...

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 co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City, Curtis Chin served as the nonprofit's first Executive Director. He w...

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 Gustafson Poetry Prize, the Robin Blaser Award, and Poetry's Editors Prize for Book Reviewing. Currently, he curates the Anstruther Books ...

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 poems and recipes, The Poet’s Cookbook published by Conspiracy Press. 

In this episode, the announcer who introduces and ...

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 Times, and Canadian Geographic, among others. He lives in Calgary. His latest work for Windsor’s Biblioasis Press is Precarious: The...

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 River Borderlands and especially to Canadian communities in the region. Vida is a blues poet, a two-time Pushcart nominee, a Carl Sandburg...

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 Nonfiction/Memoir. Since then, she’s produced a collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, a short-fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, a...