Like so many who love this area, Jenny Robertson and Anne-Marie Oomen claim a kinship of place with Leelanau County and the Glen Arbor area—no matter where they happen to be living. In addition, both have entered literary spaces with great passion and dedication. The two authors are teaming up for a celebratory launch of their latest books at the open yard of Lake Street Studios in Glen Arbor on Thursday, August 24, at 7 pm.
For more than 10 years, Wildsam has published books about great American places. The series delves into big cities, small towns, iconic American regions and cozier places better known to locals. Wildsam also hopes their field guides light up culture and history in ways that ring true in the places they cover. The series aims to celebrate landscapes that might surprise a few people with their cultural vitality and depth of heritage. Northern Michigan is Wildsam’s newest field guide. Contributors to this book include Glen Arbor Sun editor Jacob Wheeler and frequent writers, Anne-Marie Oomen and Mae Stier.
Now is the time to cozy up by the fire and read a good book. Here’s our roundup of local books, or books written by local authors, that were published in late 2021 and 2022. Please find them at Leelanau County’s locally-owned, independent bookstores
The next event in local writer Anne-Marie Oomen’s prolific career of creating history plays, poems, essays, and creative nonfiction will be the launch of her new memoir As Long As I Know You, The Mom Book on Oct. 6 at Kirkbride Hall in Traverse City at Building 50 from 5:30-7:30 pm. It is also a fundraiser for Michigan Writers Scholarships, and “Everyone’s invited!” The book is dedicated “To my mother, Ruth Jean Oomen, April 28, 1921–November 16, 2020, and to all of those ‘in the homes’.”
Prolific local poet, memoirist, essayist and playwright Anne-Marie Oomen creates an enduring sense of place and history. From her memoirs about growing up in Oceana County (100 miles south of Leelanau), to poems that capture the magic of the Sleeping Bear Dunes and the western Michigan lakeshore, to history plays that re-create local characters and bygone times, Oomen’s work is always infused with images of the hills and the forests, the barns and the orchards, and the dirt and the compost of her native land. This summer two of Oomen’s history pieces will be performed as part of the Port Oneida Fair, sponsored by Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear and the Port Oneida Fair Committee with a grant from the Michigan Humanities Council.
Empire writer Anne-Marie Oomen read the following poem this morning—September 11, 2021—at the annual September 11 ceremony of remembrance at the Glen Lake Fire Department. Her poem, “Morning at the Monument” (a roughshod sonnet) was inspired by this 20th anniversary and a study of the monument, a shard of one of the Twin Towers that is memorialized in Glen Arbor.
The light and inviting new Glen Lake Community Library, which opened in Empire in September 2020 during the height of the COVID pandemic, will host its first public exhibit and opening reception on Tuesday, June 29, from 6-7 p.m. for a show called “On the Precipice” which pairs 10 pastel paintings and 10 poems written in response to those paintings. The painter is Glen Arbor resident Linda Alice Dewey, and the poet is Empire resident Anne-Marie Oomen.
Linda Dewey’s painting “Saying Goodbye” is a collaboration with Anne-Marie Oomen’s poem, “Leaving (Saying Goodbye)”
By Anne-Marie Oomen Inspired first by the raw photo, and then revised after seeing Linda Dewey’s beautiful painting of the photo, “On the Precipice” One does not at first see the roots reaching into air and toward the river, tentacled fingers of maple undergrowth, exposed as muscle without its skin. One does not at first […]
We’re home. We’re self-quarantining ourselves. We’re practicing social distancing. The restaurants and bars are closed. Crowds no longer gather. What better way to spend these pandemic days than to read books newly published by Leelanau authors? Here’s a roundup of local books, or books by local authors, in 2020: