Jeff Vande Zande & Ken Meisel

BCLS is excited to host local author Jeff Vande Zande along with special guest poet Ken Meisel. Each will read selections from their works relating to the NEA Big Read Great Lakes Bay's "neighborhoods" theme.

Jeff Vande Zande teaches fiction writing, screenwriting, and film production at Delta College. His award-winning short films have been accepted over 200 times in national and international film festivals. His novels include Into the Desperate Country (March Street Press), Landscape with Fragmented Figures (Bottom Dog Press), American Poet (Bottom Dog Press) and Detroit Muscle (Whistling Shade Press). In 2012, American Poet won a Michigan Notable Book Award from the Library of Michigan. In 2020, Whistling Shade Press released his new collection, The Neighborhood Division: Stories, and in 2022, Montag Press will release his new dystopian novel, Falling Sky. He maintains a blog at www.authorjeffvandezande.blogspot.com

Ken Meisel is a Detroit area poet and psychotherapist, a 2012 Kresge Arts Literary Fellow, a Pushcart Prize nominee and author of eight books of poetry. He has been published in over 100 different magazines, and was a featured artist in the 2019 film, Detroit: Tough Luck Stories.