Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs from Michigan

by Michael Steinberg

Overview

Peninsula is a collection of thirty-seven contemporary personal essays and memoirs about Michigan. In that regard, it is a regional anthology-a multi-voiced, multi-faceted evocation of place-and yet, each piece stands apart as a personal recollection, sometimes funny, sometimes moving. What inevitably ties these essays together is the deep association the writers have with Michigan. Several, like Jim Harrison, Kathleen Stocking, and Thomas Lynch, live there; others, like Max Apple, Toi Derricotte, and Philip Levine, were born there and left; and some like Jack Driscoll, Linda Nemec Foster, and Lev Raphael, moved to Michigan from other places. Clearly though, each contributor has a strong connection to the geography and landscape of the region. The selections are wide-ranging and diverse. There are pieces that look out on nature and the outdoors, evoking images of Leelanau County and the Upper Peninsula; there are essays and memoirs about living in Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Lansing; there are expatriate pieces, and there are essays and memoirs that mine memory and imagination and reflect the writer's inner landscape and geography. Peninsula gives a sense of the variety, flavor, and distinctiveness of Michigan's character as well as exploring the varying styles and unique personal histories of each contributing writer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780870135446
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	03/31/2000
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Michael Steinberg is New York native, has taught writing and creative writing for over twenty-five years at universities, has directed national writing workshops and conferences, and has been a contest judge for the Annie Dillard Award in Creative Nonfiction. He is the founding editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, an award-winning journal of creative nonfiction, as well as the editor of Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs from Michigan.
     Steinberg's own essays and memoirs have won several national awards: A FOREWORD MAGAZINE 2003 Gold Medal for his memoir, STILL PITCHING; two pieces have been cited as Notable Essays in Best American Essays (1995 and 1999), and one in Best American Sports Writing (1995). Four others have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
     Steinberg has written reviews for The New York Times Sunday Book Review, as well as many feature magazine articles for national and regional magazines. From 1974-1976, he wrote a bimonthly column for the Detroit Free Press Magazine.

 

Editorial Reviews

Literary journal editor Steinberg plays with the word "pen-insula" in introducing 38 contemporary writings by natives and adoptees of Michigan, "... a geographic anomaly, a peninsula in the center of a continent ...." (contributor Kathleen Stocking). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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