Poets & Pies

Join Us for a Fall Poets & Pies at The Detroit Public Library-Main3rd Floor - Literature Room. FREE and Open to All.

Hosted by M. L. Liebler

Kelly FordonKelly Fordon’s second poetry collection, What Trammels the Heart, was published by SFAPress in June 2025. Her short story collection, I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020), was chosen as a Midwest Book Award Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. Her 2016 Michigan Notable Book, Garden for the Blind (WSUP), was an INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, an Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist. Her first full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press, 2019), was an Eyelands International Prize Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. It was later adapted into a play by Robin Martin and published in The Kenyon Review Online. She runs a fiction podcast called “Let’s Deconstruct a Story” athttps://letsdeconstructastory.substack.com/ and a poetry blog at https://kellyfordon.substack.com/. She lives in Detroit.

Maureen AitkenMaureen Aitken’s short-story collection, The Patron Saint of Lost Girls will be reissued in September 2025 by Wayne State University Press. The collection received a Kirkus star, the Nilsen Prize, and the Foreword Review INDIE Gold Prize for General Fiction. Her stories have earned a Minnesota State Arts Board’s Artist Initiative Grant, a Loft Mentor Award, an award from Ireland’s Fish Short Story Prize, and two Pushcart Prize nominations. It was also nominated for a Minnesota Book Award. Her stories have been published in Prairie Schooner and New Letters, among others. Her latest story, out in September, will be the second published in the The Missouri Review’s Blast section.

Isaac PickellIsaac Pickell is a Black and Jewish poet, PhD candidate, and adjunct instructor. A Cave Canem Fellow, he is the author of "It's not over once you figure it out" (Black Ocean, 2023), "The Smallest Mistake We Call Human" (Black Lawrence Press, 2026), and chapbooks from Black Lawrence Press and Dead Mall Press. His poetry is splashed around the internet if you want to check it out.

Stephanie GlazierStephanie Glazier’s manuscript Of Fish & Country has been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, at Tupelo, Milkweed and Changes Press, among others. Her poems have appeared in The Southern Review, and Alaska and Michigan Quarterly Reviews and newly in the Sundress anthology DELICATE MACHINERY. She is currently at work on a second collection and on an interfaith queer arts event series. She lives and works in Detroit. You can learn more about her at stephanieglazier.com.

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