Gail Griffin (author of Omena Bay Testament, Two Sylvias Press, 2023)
Winner of the 2021 Two Sylvias Press Wilder Poetry Book Prize
Born in Detroit, Gail Griffin grew up in the ‘burbs and fell into a lifelong romance with the woods and waters of northern Michigan during the summers. After college and grad school, she returned to Michigan to begin a 36-year career at Kalamazoo College, teaching literature, writing, and women’s studies. She won both college awards for teaching and for creative work/scholarship, and in 1995 she was named Michigan Professor of the Year. In the larger community Gail became involved in anti-racist work, offering workshops on the nature and implications of whiteness. She also leads occasional community workshops in memoir writing.
Through her work and relationships at the college Gail discovered creative nonfiction, which became her professional focus, and poetry, which has taken second place until recently. She is the author of four books of nonfiction, including “The Events of October”: Murder-Suicide on a Small Campus (2010) and Grief’s Country: A Memoir in Pieces (2020). Her essays, flash nonfiction, and poems have won Pushcart nominations, “Notable” designations in Best American Essays, and genre awards in journals. As her first poetry chapbook, Virginals, was appearing in 2021, Gail was sifting through 30 years of poems and found Omena Bay Testament, her first full-length collection. Though it looks mystical on the cover, Omena Bay is real. It curves into the Leelanau Peninsula, Michigan’s “little finger.”
Click here for purchasing information for Omena Bay Testament
Through her work and relationships at the college Gail discovered creative nonfiction, which became her professional focus, and poetry, which has taken second place until recently. She is the author of four books of nonfiction, including “The Events of October”: Murder-Suicide on a Small Campus (2010) and Grief’s Country: A Memoir in Pieces (2020). Her essays, flash nonfiction, and poems have won Pushcart nominations, “Notable” designations in Best American Essays, and genre awards in journals. As her first poetry chapbook, Virginals, was appearing in 2021, Gail was sifting through 30 years of poems and found Omena Bay Testament, her first full-length collection. Though it looks mystical on the cover, Omena Bay is real. It curves into the Leelanau Peninsula, Michigan’s “little finger.”
Click here for purchasing information for Omena Bay Testament
