Anne and Anna

Unfortunately, the two writers, Anna Clark of Detroit and Anne-Marie Oomen of Empire, will be holding court at competing Schuler Books locations. It would have been fun to put these two Michigan authors together for a session.

Clark, a freelance magazine and newspaper writer, curated “A Detroit Anthology,” a 2015 Michigan Notable Book Award winner.

“A Detroit Anthology” is an illuminating collection of work, ranging from poetry to essays to photographs to short stories by Detroiters who loved to tell their stories “over late nights at the pub and long afternoons on the porch,” Clark writes.

Clark spoke with City Pulse just as she was leaving her former hometown of St. Joseph near the Indiana border. The book comprises work from more than 60 contributors, she said, including native Detroiters, recent transplants and former Detroit residents. The collection is published by Belt Publishing, a Cleveland-based outfit specializing in what it calls “rust belt chic.”

Clark, who is a University of Michigan graduate, can aptly be described as a literary cheerleader for Detroit, where she has lived the last eight years.

“We are a city moving through the fire of transformation. We are afire,” she writes in the introduction to the book. “There is no place I’d rather be.”

The selections in the book include pieces by venerable urban historian Thomas J. Sugrue and a thoughtful essay by Grace Lee Boggs. At 99, Boggs has seen Detroit go through many transformations and she continues to be a voice of conscience and activism in the city. Poets such as Wayne State University’s M.L. Liebler and Terry Blackhawk, founder of Detroit’s InsideOut Literary Arts project, grace this complex  collection that not only praises Detroit, but can also be decidedly critical. As Clark points out in her introduction, “This is a city made of many voices, and so, too, is this book.”

Guessing that Clark may have saved the best for last, I turned to the end of the book to read Marsha Music’s “The Kidnapped Children of Detroit,” which journals the mass exodus from Detroit in the 1960s. Music relates how her friends were seemingly kidnapped, “snatched away from their homes, often under the cover of night or in rushed moves that split friends apart a lifetime.”

At the other end of the experiential spectrum, Oomen has chronicled her own teenage years growing up on a farm in rural Hart, Mich. This is not new ground for Oomen, who has touched on her rural upbringing in previous books. Her new memoir, “Love, Sex and 4-H,” takes her writing closer to her heart — the heart of a teenager growing up in the 1960s, one of the most conflicted and confusing decades in America’s history.

Oomen seemed destined to pursue a religious vocation, but lasted only a short time with an order of Dominican nuns at Marywood Dominican Center just outside of Grand Rapids. Returning home, Oomen experienced a time of upheaval, both culturally and in her own life. During the time she was away at the convent, everyone had made their own friends. It was “awkward and uncomfortable,” she said.

In the book, she credits a friend, who she has lost touch with, with saving her.

“She made space for me in her little group,” Oomen said.

Oomen had grown up sewing straight seams for her 4-H Club (she made her own prom dress) and rising early to say devotions. Returning home, Oomen found a world of short skirts, short relationships and challenges to her traditional values.

“The ´60s stand out for the clash of cultures which you felt all the time,” Oomen said. “There was a huge cloud bearing down on the country.”

City Pulse caught up with Oomen as she was driving to her hometown for a reading at the Hart Library.

She admitted going home was “kind of scary.”

“Sure, things were hard, bad things happened, but the real message of the book is coming through that time with all the contradictions and tragedies of Vietnam,” she said. “It was a rich time to draw upon and I want baby boomers to feel what it was like when we were young.”

Oomen will be at Schuler Books’ Eastwood location for the Independent Bookstore Day: Girl’s Night Out at 4 p.m. Saturday. Earlier in the day, (2 p.m.) the Eastwood Towne Center location will host three young adult writers.

Clark will join three other 2015 Michigan Notable Book authors at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Meridian Mall Schuler Books location. Details for the Independent Bookstore Day events are at schulerbooks.com/events.

Girls’ Night Out Featuring Anne-Marie

Oomen 4 p.m. Saturday, May 2 FREE Schuler Books, Eastwood Towne Center 2820 Towne Center Blvd., Lansing (517) 316-7495, schulerbooks.com Michigan Notable

Panel Featuring Anna

Clark, Diane Decillis, Barbara Rylko-Bauer and Stephen Terry 3 p.m. Saturday, May 2 FREE Schuler Books, Meridian Mall 1982 W. Grand River Ave., Okemos (517) 349-8840, schulerbooks.com