Poets and Pies

The Detroit Writers' Guild and The Detroit Public Library-MAL will present our National Poetry Month Poets & Pies at The DPL-Main

We are moving up to the third floor Music Room, so enter the big Cass Doors of DPL.

Free Admission, Free Pie and Free Parking in Employee Lot off Putnam.

This will be a good one and delcious too!!!!

Keith Taylor: Keith Taylor is originally from Western Canada, but has lived for the past 50 years in Michigan. He has authored or edited 20 books and chapbooks. In 2024 he published two books—All the Time You Want: Selected Poems, 1977 – 2017 with Dzanc Books, and What Can the Matter Be? with Wayne State University Press, which has been named a 2025 Michigan Notable Book by the Library of Michigan. His poems,stories, reviews, essays and translations have appeared widely in North America and in Europe. Seven years ago he retired from the University of Michigan, where he taught Creative Writing for 20 years. Taylor has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs.

Stephen Leggett: Steve Leggett grew up in Manistee on the shores of Lake Michigan, a region with a geography of snow, wind, and waves that has continually informed his writing. After earning a degree in Anthropology and Literature, he returned to his landscape in northern Michigan, living for many years in a remote cabin in the Udell Hills region of the Manistee National Forest. When he moved to southern Michigan, he worked in bookshops, music stores, and then for many years as a music reviewer. He has published several chapbooks of poetry, including The All-Forest (1979), The Form It Takes (1988), and Entropy in the New World (2016). His poems have appeared in The Nation, The Louisville Review, Passages North and many other magazines and journals. Also a songwriter and musician, he has released six albums with his band the Buzzrats, the most recent being Bright Shiny Life in 2011. Read more of Steve Leggett’s first poetry chapbook with Alice Greene & Co., For All Things in Motion.

Nancy J. Shattuck: Nancy Shattuck was inspired to write a historical fiction series when she discovered her direct ancestors had lived through King Philip’s Indian War in 1675-1676. Exploring their history, she was so impressed by the complexity of the colonial experience that each family member began to tell a different story. No longer a novel, the “chronicles” were born. Nancy earned a master’s degree in Comparative and Japanese Literature at Washington University (WU) in St. Louis and completed the classwork for two separate doctorates, in Comparative Literature at WU and American Literature at Wayne State University. Previous publications include a children’s fable, "The Fishers," and a travel memoir, "Travel Wings: An Adventure," in addition to short stories and poetry. She is the recipient of an American Academy of Poets award, Tompkins awards for poetry and fiction, a John Clare award for poetry, a Judith Siegel Pearson’s award for poetry, and a Heck-Rabbi award for drama. The second and third novels of The Watertown Chronicles were released in 2021 by the Ardent Writer Press.

Irene Wellman: Irene Wellman is a life-long poet who moved from England to the United States at the age of 15. Over the years, she has lived in various places, including New Hampshire, Virginia, and most recently, Michigan. Irene’s work has been featured in several journals, such as Rattle and Artemis and she has received awards from the Poetry Society of Virginia. In 2018 her chapbook entry was selected as a finalist in the Comstock Review Chapbook Contest. She has given numerous readings, including for the AAUW of Michigan, and the Vespers Poetry program for the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit. Additionally, Irene is the author of the middle-grade fantasy adventure, The Secret World of Yondhaven. Irene will be reading mostly from her latest published work, Into the Elements, a collection of lyrical poems that explore the five natural elements of earth, water, fire air, and space. Through this work, she delves into the transformative connection between nature and its spiritual influence on human experience.

Host or Publisher Main | Detroit Public Library