M. L. Liebler (Spoken Label, May 2024)

Latest up from Spoken Label (Spoken Word / Poetry Podcast) features the wonderful M. L. Liebler. M. L. Liebler is an internationally known & widely published Detroit poet, university professor, literary arts activist and arts organizer.

He was named The 2017-2018 Murray E. Jackson Scholar in the Arts Award at Wayne State University. Liebler is the author of 15 books and chapbooks including the Award winning Wide Awake in Someone Else's Dream (Wayne State University Press 2008) featuring poems written in and about Russia, Israel, Germany, Alaska and Detroit. Wide Awake won both The Paterson Poetry Prize for Literary Excellenceand The American Indie Book Award for 2009.

In 2005, he was named St. Clair Shores (his hometown) first Poet Laureate. Liebler has read and performed his work in Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, Russia, China, France, UK, Macao, Italy, Germany, Spain, Finland and most of the 50 States.

M.L. Liebler has taught English, Creative Writing, American Studies, Labor Studies and World Literature at Wayne State University in Detroit since 1980, and he is the founding director of both The National Writer's Voice Project in Detroit and the Springfed Arts: Metro Detroit Writers Literary Arts Organization. He was selected as Best Detroit Poet by The Detroit Free Press & Detroit's Metro Time. Liebler became the Co-Editor In 2010, he received The Barnes & Noble Poets & Writers Writers for Writers Award with Maxine Hong Kingston & Junot Diaz.

In 2011, his groundbreaking anthology Working Words: Punching the Clock & Kicking Out the James (Coffee House Press) was given a 2011 Library of Michigan Notable Book Award. In 2017, Liebler received a total of 4 Library of Michigan Notable Book Awards for both his new collection of poems entitled I Want to Be Once (Wayne State University Press / Made in Michigan Series) and for Heaven Was Detroit: An Anthology of Detroit Music Essays from Jazz to Hiphop (The Wayne State University Press Painted Turtle Series) Editor. Bob Seger's House: An Anthology of Michigan Short Stories (Co-Editor with Mike Delp). Both Heaven Was Detroit and Bob Seger's House are Finalist for the prestigious Forward Book Awards.

2020 saw the release of RESPECT: Poets on Detroit Music edited by M. L. Liebler & Jim Daniels (Michigan State University Press 2020). RESPECT just received both a 2021 Tillie Olsen Award & 2021 Library of Michigan Notable Book Award. In September 2020, M. L. was awarded the Michigan Humanities Champion of the Year.

Liebler received a Wayne State University Distinguished Scholar Award for 2024-2026. He curretly directs The WSU Humanities Commons and The Detroit Writers' Guild.

M.L. Liebler can be contacted on his website https://www.mlliebler.com/