Dennis Hinrichsen's recent works include Cage of Water, a full-length collection of poems, which will appear from the University of Akron Press in August 2004, and a chapbook, Message To Be Spoken into the Left Ear of God, which was published by Mayapple Press last spring. His other collections of poetry are The Attraction of Heavenly Bodies (Wesleyan/1983), The Rain That Falls This Far (Galileo/1991) and Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights (University of Akron Press/2000), which won the 1999 Akron Poetry Prize. He has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and two grants from the state of Michigan. His poems have appeared in American Literary Review, Black Warrior Review, Crab Orchard Review, Field, Notre Dame Review, and Passages North, have been featured on the Poetry Daily and The Academy of American Poets websites, and have won awards from Carolina Quarterly and Poetry Northwest. He teaches at Lansing Community College.

“For Hinrichsen, paradox is a way of knowing. He enacts this philosophical stance in the quick yet attentive movement of his lines…Hinrichsen’s unhinged singing lets momentum have its way. Yet we are moved in the old sense-by empathy.” - Christine Hume, on Message To Be Spoken into the Left Ear of God

This event is being generously co-sponsored by Schuler Books & Music.

Gildner's 20 published books include: Blue Like the Heavens: New & Selected Poems, Somewhere Geese are Flying: New & Selected Stories, The Second Bridge (a novel), Warsaw Sparks and My Grandfather's Book (memoirs), and The Bunker in the Parsley Fields, which received the 1996 Iowa Poetry Prize. He has also received a National Magazine Award for Fiction, Pushcart Prizes in fiction and non-fiction, the Robert Frost Fellowship, the William Carlos Williams and Theodore Roethke poetry prizes, and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Gildner has been writer-in-residence at Reed College, Davidson College, Seattle University, and Michigan State University (his alma mater), and has been a Senior Fulbright Lecturer to Poland and to Czechoslovakia. He has given readings of his work at the Library of Congress, the Academy of American Poets, YM-YWHA (New York), Manhattan Theatre Club, and at some 300 colleges and schools in the U.S. and abroad.

“There’s such a good feeling about these stories-that the writer knows his people, the whole texture of their lives, in different lights, that he’ll take you a long way into them, and you’ll always be surprised and satisfied in the right way, never tricked or betrayed." - Alice Munro, on Somewhere Geese are Flying: New & Selected Stories (MSU Press, 2004)

This event is being generously co-sponsored by Schuler Books & Music.

Dave Galanter is a Michigan native who studied Journalism at MSU, and after college he authored the first of several Star Trek projects, among these the Voyager book, Battle Lines, and the Next Generation duology Maximum Warp. He has also written a few e-books, and, most recently, his short story, "Eleven Hours Out" was included in the Tales of the Dominion War anthology.

His not-so-secret Fortress of Solitude is in Owosso, from where he pretends to have a hand in managing the message board websites he co-owns: ComicBoards.com and TVShowBoards.com. He also edits and is the main contributor to his own website, a political blog, SnarkBait.com.

Dave spends his non-day-job time with family and friends, or burying himself in other writing projects, which at some point might actually see the light of day if he ever gets off his duff.

Robert VanderMolen has been publishing poems in such periodicals as Caliban, Salt Lick, Parnassus, Cincinnati Poetry Review, Epoch, Grand Street, and Sulfur since the mid-1960s. The 1995 recipient of an NEA Fellowship for poetry, he has authored a number of collections (The Pavilion, Along the River, Night Weather, Of Pines, The Lost Book, Variations, Peaches), the most recent of which is Breath (New Issues Press, 2000). An alumnus of Michigan State University ('71), VanderMolen earned an MFA from the University of Oregon ('73) and resides in Grand Rapids.

“VanderMolen’s poems are always kinetic, always on the move, and among the sexiest being written in America today. Read ‘Saturday’ if you want to experience VanderMolen at the top of his form. He has a knack for quoting real or imaginary dialogue that is both funny and very much to the point: ‘The older you get / The worse you look without money,’ for example. He splices with assurance; he jump-cuts with ease.” - Richard Tillinghast, on Breath

The Michigan Writers Series is co-sponsored by Schuler Books & Music.

Founder and director of Detroit's acclaimed InsideOut Literary Arts Project, Dr. Terry Blackhawk is author of Body & Field (MSU Press) and a chapbook, Trio: Voices from the Myths (Ridgeway Press). Her second full-length poetry collection, Escape Artist, received the 2002 John Ciardi Prize from BkMk Press. Her poems have appeared in Marlboro Review, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, Southern Poetry Review and Yankee among others. She received the 1990 Foley Poetry Award, nominations for two Pushcart Poetry Prizes, and was a finalist for the Marlboro Prize in 1997 and 1999. Terry conducts workshops on the connections between writing and art at the Detroit Institute of Arts and teaches graduate level writing classes for language arts teachers through Oakland University. She is recipient a National Endowment for the Humanities Teacher-Scholar Award, a Michigan Governors' Award in Arts Education, a United Black Artists Pioneering Teacher in the Arts Award, and a Michigan Council for the Arts artist-in-residence grant.

“Terry Blackhawk’s poems, crisp as the first apples of autumn, are tart, knowing, and full of the growth of summer. Poems like these can sustain you.” - Molly Peacock, 2002 Judge, the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry