Remembering Elmore Leonard, a prolific Detroit storyteller
(This is part one of a two-part article on the legendary Elmore Leonard. Next week, I will interview his biographer.) How cool is cool? Well, Detroit crime writer Elmore Leonard was …
By BILL CASTANIER's Latest Articles
Decades later, Terri Jewell’s work lives on at MSU
Almost 30 years ago, Terri L. Jewell, a Lansing Black lesbian poet and author, committed suicide at the age of 41. Her life is still memorialized in the Stephen O. Murray Keelung Hong Special …
Public Art of the Week
Ben Rathbun, CEO of Rathbun Insurance on Saginaw and Pine streets in Lansing, said at a recent event celebrating his company’s 70th anniversary that the agency was fortunate to …
Upcoming MSU Libraries exhibit examines school’s role in Vietnam War
In the early to mid-‘60s, most young men couldn’t find Vietnam on a map, despite the ramped-up coverage of the war on the nightly network news. The vast majority of males paraded to …
Spring brings worthy new publishing entries, local and otherwise
Being weighed down by books can be a good thing. This is a season when publishers start sending me review copies. “Forging Identity: The Story of Carlos Nielbock’s Detroit,” by …
Public Art of the Week
In 1943, while their brothers and fathers were overseas fighting in WWII, students at the massive and elegant Sexton High School began their first day of classes in the brand-new building. It …
Library of Michigan exhibit spotlights global stories of trauma
Author Anne-Marie Oomen and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Taro Yamasaki have resurrected the art of pairing poetry and images for the dramatic Library of Michigan exhibit “Innocents in …
New novel shows just how ‘moral’ 19th-century psychiatry was
“Moral Treatment,” by Stephanie Carpenter, an assistant professor of creative writing at Michigan Technological University, is a mystifying historical novel set at the former Northern Michigan Asylum in Traverse City during the latter part of the 19th century.
Public Art of the Week
The Historical Society of Greater Lansing has received a bust of actor John Peakes in his role of King Lear that will be displayed at the society’s new headquarters in the Rogers-Carrier House at Lansing Community College.
Recommendations for reading your way through the Vietnam War
Today, April 30, is a monumental day in American history: the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, 20 years after it officially started.