Novelist Loren Estleman is well-known to fans of two popular genres. Mystery readers know him as the author of the Amos Walker series, featuring a hard-boiled private investigator in Detroit's underworld, while those who prefer Westerns will have enjoyed the recent Aces and Eights and The Hider.

The prolific Estleman has written more than 40 books since his first novel, The Oklahoma Punk, was published in 1976. An author profile, a complete list of works by series, and excepts from book reviews are available on Loren Estleman's official web site.

Academia is the target for mystery writer Lev Raphael, author of the popular Nick Hoffman series. In Let's Get Criminal, The Edith Wharton Murders, and The Death of a Constant Lover, Raphael offers a witty exposé of university life at the fictional "State University of Michigan."

"Who says academia isn't the real world?" asks Raphael on his website, The LEV Page. "It's got the vanity of professional sports; the hypocrisy of politics; the cruelty of big business; and the inhumanity of organized crime. A perfect setting for murder and satire!"

Laura Kasischke's poetry and prose have won critical acclaim in the world of literature. Her work has been recognized with numerous honors, including the Pushcart Prize, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, and the Alice Fay DiCastagnola Award. She has also been the recipient of fellowships awarded by the Ragdale Foundation, the MacDowell Colony and the National Endowment for the Arts. Kasischke holds an MFA from the University of Michigan and teaches creative writing at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor.

"...intricately constructed, beautifully written... In less skillful hands Leila's would be just a depressing story about a very troubled young woman. Kasischke's writing endows it with universality and elevates it to tragedy. It's an amazing first novel."
-- from the Boston Globe review of Suspicious River

Poet and novelist Gordon Henry is an enrolled member of the White Earth Chippewa Tribe of Minnesota and an associate professor of English at Michigan State University. He has a master's degree from Michigan State University and a PhD from the University of North Dakota. His poetry and fiction have been included in numerous anthologies of American Indian literature, and his first novel, The Light People, was nominated for a National Book Award in 1994 and won an American Book Award in 1995.

"For me storytelling is important because it has the capacity to change, or turn, the consciousness of both the storyteller and the listener." --Gordon Henry, in a North Dakota Quarterly interview.

Linda Nemec Foster's poetry has been translated, produced for the stage, and exhibited in art galleries in Michigan and New York. Her work has been widely published in national literary journals, including The Georgia Review, Mid-America Review, Quarterly West, Indiana Review, Nimrod, and River Styx, and in major anthologies from Penguin, Virago, Macmillan and other publishers. Foster's full-length collection of poetry, Living in the Fire Nest, was a finalist for the Bluestem Poetry Award and the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize.

Foster received her MFA in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont, and currently lives in Grand Rapids. She served as director of the literature program for the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts and teaches poetry workshops for young people through Creative Writers in Schools, a project of ArtServe Michigan. Visit her web site at: www.lindanemecfoster.com

Canadian-born Keith Taylor now lives and writes in Michigan, and his poetry and prose are graced with frequent observations about the state's wildlife and landscapes. Taylor's recent works include:

Everything I Need, March Street Press, 1996
Life Science and Other Stories, Hanging Loose Press, 1995
Detail from the Garden of Delights, Limited Mailing Press, 1993
Dream of the Black Wolf: Notes from Isle Royale, Ridgeway Press, 1993
Weather Report, Ridgeway Press, 1988
Michigan Broadsides (edited by Pat Smith and Keith Taylor), Other Wind Press, 1987
Learning to Dance: Poems, Falling Water Press, 1985

Minty's first book, Lake Songs and Other Fears, received the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum in 1973. Since then she has published three other full-length collections of poetry and three chapbooks. Her work has been recognized with numerous honors, including the Villa Montalvo Award for Excellence in Poetry and the Eunice Tietjens Award from Poetry magazine.

A sense of place is one of the recurring themes in Judith Minty's poetry. Born in Michigan, she grew up spending the school year in Detroit and summers camping in the North Woods with her family. After earning an MFA at Western Michigan University in 1973, she taught at universities in Michigan and the west coast, and was director of the Creative Writing Program at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California from 1982 to 1993. She now lives in western Michigan near the Lake Michigan shoreline, and spends part of each year at a cabin on the Yellow Dog River in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

"...the clear and white world created by a winter's storm, the dramatic changes of the seasons, and the presence, in history and legend, of Indians. [Judith Minty's] poems give a physical sense of life in the Midwest."
--Helen Collier, in Woman Poet: The Midwest.