The Library of Michigan (LM) has announced Empire resident Anne-Marie Oomen as the recipient of the 2023-2024 Michigan Author Award. Oomen is the founding editor of Dunes Review; former president of Michigan Writers, Inc.; and instructor at Solstice MFA in Creative Writing at Lasell University in Massachusetts and at Interlochen College of Creative Arts. She appears at conferences throughout the country.
Joyce Harrington began working as the late Jim Harrison’s aide-de-camp in 1979 following a handshake in the granary and writing studio behind the author’s house in Lake Leelanau. She was his literary assistant, business manager, and guardian, freeing Harrison to lead a prolific, international writer’s life that would produce hundreds of poems, novels, essays and screenplays. Efforts are underway to keep Harrison’s work alive and to share it with a new generation of readers, poets and writers—across the United States and the world.