EMU Today

YPSILANTI – The Journal of Narrative Theory (JNT), an international academic journal run out of the Literature Program at Eastern Michigan University, is hosting its 2021

Dialogue event, "Detroit as a Narrative Space", from 6:30-8:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 18.

The 2021 JNT Dialogue will center on the theme of Detroit. It will look at how the City serves as a site that inspires narrative and gives rise to literary, artistic, and activist communities that shape its story. Detroit-based authors Desiree Cooper and kim d. hunter will serve as the keynote speakers, discussing how their creative and activist work is shaped by their hometown. 

Cooper is a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, poet, fiction writer, former attorney, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and community activist. She is invested in the themes of racial and gender equality, reproductive freedom, family-positive public policy and the welfare of women and girls. Her award-winning collection of flash fiction, Know the Mother (WSU Press, 2016), which dives into the intersections of racism and sexism, was published by Wayne State University Press in 2016. She has also contributed an essay to the recently published collection Detroit 1967: Origins, Impacts, Legacies (2017).

kim d. hunter is a 2012 Kresge Artist Fellow, poet, and fiction writer, currently employed as a Social Justice Coordinator at Engage Michigan, which supports progressive movements. He has served as Poet-in-Residence in several Detroit public schools through the InsideOut Literary Arts Project, and he co-directs the Woodward Line Poetry Series. He has published poetry, music reviews, cultural articles, and the award-winning work of fiction, The Official Report on Human Activity (WSU Press, 2018)—a collection of surreal stories that are linked by themes of racial, gender, and class discrimination in a society “in which media technology and capitalism have run amok.

During the event, the winner of the JNT creative writing contest will be announced. The contest, which was hosted in February 2021, asked those who live or work in the city of Detroit to enter nonfiction submissions inspired by a specific Detroit location. Entrants composed short stories of 250 words or less about what it was like in Detroit in the year 2020, using a particular location in the city as the story’s setting. The winner will receive a $250 award and be published on JNT websites and social media. Top entries will also be featured here as an archive of Detroit in the year 2020.

The event also serves as the kick off of a year of events put on by EMU's College of Arts and Sciences that will focus on the city of Detroit.

The online JNT Dialogue event is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required and can be completed through the event homepage.

This initiative is LBC approved, and sponsored by the Journal of Narrative Theory and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. 

About Eastern Michigan University

Founded in 1849, Eastern is the second oldest public university in Michigan. It currently serves more than 16,000 students pursuing undergraduate, graduate, specialist, doctoral and certificate degrees in the arts, sciences and professions. In all, more than 300 majors, minors and concentrations are delivered through the University's Colleges of Arts and Sciences; Business; Education; Engineering and Technology; Health and Human Services; and, its graduate school. EMU is regularly recognized by national publications for its excellence, diversity, and commitment to applied education. For more information about Eastern Michigan University, visit the University's website.