PUBLICATIONS, INTERVIEWS, PRESENTATIONS, 2013-2018 and SELECTED CV/BIO NOTE
2019
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Elegy for Ebbets Baseball On and Off the Diamond 2019
I wanted to let you know that Pint Size Publications just published my latest collection Elegy For Ebbets: Baseball on and off the Diamond. The press also publishes the journal Sport Literate.
This is a book I've been working on for many years. It uses baseball in one form or another as a lens to look at larger life issues. It contains seven essay/memoirs--three previously published works and four new ones. The pieces focus on the influence baseball has had in helping to shape the teacher, writer, and adult self I've subsequently become. The collection includes works about childhood, adolescence, college, marriage, teaching, aging, and writing.
The book's price is $12.50 and you can order copies through Pint Size Publications
http://www.pintsizepublications.com/orders/# or Amazon Prime https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733325409?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
Another Chicago Magazine has published my personal essay/memoir "State Diner, 1957". It's accompanied by artwork from Carole Steinberg Berk and a few photos from that period. You can find it at State Diner, 1957
2018
-- In December, Talking Writing published my short personal essay/memoir, "Living in Michigan, Writing New York," It's accompanied by Carole's Steinberg Berk's painting "Northport Reverie."
Click on talkingwriting.com "Current Issue" at the top of the page and scroll down to "Personal Stories."
---"From Manhattan to Leelanau: How Place Shapes our Sense of Self" from Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Nonfiction, Wayne State University Press, November, 2018
--Word Painting: Whimsies, Dreams, and Playful Fantasies, Poems by Michael Steinberg, artwork by Carole Steinberg Berk, Carmike Press, July, 2018
RECENT EVENTS:
Panels,Workshops, Contests judged
November
--Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Nonfiction, 11/15, book launch reading, Glen Arbor ArtGallery, Glen Arbor, MI
--Nonfiction Now Conference, Phoenix, 1/1-4, panel on Alternate Lives and interview for the documentary film, "How Do You Know What You Believe?"
July
--Writer in Residence-- Solstice MFA Program, Pine Manor College, Boston, July 7-9--workshop, reading, and individual conferences
--Visiting writer--Suzanne Strumpet Shea's creative nonfiction workshop-- Stonecoast MFA Program, Freeport, Maine, July 13.
--Judge for the Sport Literate creative nonfiction essay contest. $500 goes to the winner. Deadline is July 19, 2018.
For more information, here's the link www.sportliterate.org then click on Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest.
--AWP National Convention, TAMPA, March 7-10
--Panel "Beyond the 'I' : How Research Enlarges Personal Narratives"
-- AWP Award Series Book Prizes:
Introduction (contest judge), 2018 Prize in Literary Nonfiction, Winner, Paisely Rekdal: THE BROKEN COUNTRY: ON TRAUMA. A CRIME, AND THE CONTINUING LEGACY OF VIETNAM
2017
PUBLICATIONS:
--In late August, Carmike Books released LIVING IN MICHIGAN, DREAMING MANHATTAN, a collection of selected personal essay/memoirs on/about childhood, baseball, place, aging, travel, teaching, and writing.
--In November, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies published "When Writers Repeat Themselves: New Disguises or Fresh Approaches?" a craft essa
-- “Confronting Demons, Staring Down Fears: Transforming Our Deepest Misfortunes into in Literary Works” Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, /16, Assay Journal. Jan 3, 2017
--Book Review: " A Craft He Would, Thankfully, Never Learn," a review of Donald Murray's memoir My Twice-Lived Life" River Teeth (online), January 9, 2017).
EVENTS:
--Associated Writing Programs (AWP) National Convention.
-- Panel: "What's In A Name? Using Real and Made up Names in Memoir."
March 6, 2017,
--Panel: "The 'Vein of Jade': " What a Single Detail Can Reveal in Literary Nonfiction."
March 8, 2017
--Panel NonfictionNOW International Conference, Reykjavik, Iceland, June 1-4 2017
"When Writers Repeat Themselves: New Disguises or Fresh Approaches? "
INTERVIEWS
--Sport Literate: Honest Reflections on Life's Leisurely Diversions , Sport Literate
--Talking Creative Nonfiction with Michael Steinberg," Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, Summer issue The Solstice Literary Magazine
CONTEST JUDGE:
--2018 AWP Wrier's Award Series: Winner, Paisely Rekdal: THE BROKEN COUNTRY: ON TRAUMA. A CRIME, AND THE CONTINUING LEGACY OF VIETNAM
2016
READINGS, WORKSHOPS, PANELS:
--Reading: From "Living in New York, Dreaming Manhattan," Literati Book Store, Ann Arbor, MI, January 7
--Reading: From "Living in New York, Dreaming Manhattan," Leelanau County Library Northport, MI, June 25
--Panel: AWP National Convention, "Old Neighborhoods, New Locales: How Place Shapes Our Writing and our Literary Identities " with Phillip Lopate, Mimi Schwarta, Renee D’Aoust, and Karen Babine, April 1, 2o16, , Los Angeles, CA
--Panel: On Repeating Ourselves in Our Writing, (with Pat Madden, Ana Maria Spagna, and Hope Edelman) River Teeth Writer's Conference Ashland, Ohio, June 2-5
VISITING WRITER/RESIDENCIES
-- Writer-in-Residence,:Solstice/Pine Manor College MFA Summer Residency, Reading and Workshop (on/about personae/unreliable narrators) Boston, MA July 11-13.
--Visiting Writer: Riverside City College: Reading, Craft Talk, and class visit. Riverside, CA: April 5,
--Visiting Writer: Pomona College, Class Visit and Q and A,. Clarmont, CA, April 6
CONTEST JUDGED:
--2017, Solstice Literary Journal: Winner/Literary Nonfiction, "In Remembrance" by Melanie Brooks
2015
PUBLICATIONS:
--Sport Literate,” Maybe, Just Maybe, This Time…" Two short shorts, Fall, 2015
--Great Lakes Review, “Living in Michigan, Dreaming Manhattan: A Meditation on Memory and Place, " Summer/Fall, 2015
"Living in Michigan was chosen as a "Notable Essay" in the The Best American Essays annual anthology (2016). It was also nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize.
-- Essay Daily, “ Thoughts On/About Best American Essays, 1991” December 24 , 2015
Essay Daily
--SolLit Selects: Writings From the First Five Years,"One Story, Two Narrators: Reflection’s Role In Writing and Teaching Personal Narratives" "Summer, 2015 Solsticelitmag.org
--TriQuarterly, "A Sometimes (But Not Always) Autobiographical l" Spring, 2015 Triquarterly
TEACHING AWARD:
-- Associated Writing Programs In the Spotlight Award, July, 2015 AWP Spotlight Award
WORKSHOPS, PRESENTATIONS:
--NonFictionNow Conference, University of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff AZ, October 30-Nov 1, 2015.
--Two panels--"Looking for Real-life Humberts: Fashioning Unreliable Narrators in
Creative Nonfiction" and "The I Or The Eye: The Narrator's Role in Literary
Nonfiction"
-- Northwestern Writer’s Conference, Chicago, July 30 - August 1
Workshop: Two Narrators, One Story: The Role of Reflection in Personal Narratives
Panel: Creative Nonfiction: Where It’s Been, Where It’s Going
-- Solstice/Pine Manor MFA Residency, Chestnut Hill, MA, July 12-15
Workshop Writing Backward, Moving Forward: Using Pointed Flashbacks in Memoirs and Fictional Narratives" and a Reading with Sandra Schofield and Laure-Anne Bosselar
-- AWP Minneapolis. Two panels--Fashioning a Text: Discovering Form
and Shape in Literary Nonfiction and Confronting Our Fears: Turning Adversity into
Art, April 9, 2015,
--Visiting Writer, Warren Community College, Washington NJ, master class and
readingFeb 26
2014
PUBLICATIONS:
--TriQuarterly, Planning For Surprise: Writing and Teaching the Personal EssayTriquarterly
--Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, "One Story, Two Narrators: Reflection’s Role In Writing and Teaching Personal Narratives" Solstice
Different versions have appeared on my blog # 3, Finding the Inner Story in Literary Nonfiction and # 19 and 20, Expecting the Unexpected: The Role of Discovery and Surprise in Literary Nonfiction. You can find both in the Archives blog
PRESENTATIONS AND APPEARANCES
-- Solstice/ Pine Manor MFA residency-- reading, individual conferences, and craft talk, July 13-16 2014, Boston, MA,"One Story"Two Voices: The Reflective Narrator in Personal Essays and Memoir Solstice MFA
-- Craft talk, Composition Faculty, Santa Barbara CA, City College, Santa Barbara, CA March 10, 2014,
--AWP Convention, Seattle, WA. Two panels: "The Eye or the 'I'" and "Planning For Surprise." February 26-March 2, 2014
2013
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
--Dzanc Books publishedStill Pitching as an ebook reprint, July, 2013
Still Pitching on www.dzancbooks.org, www.amazon.com, Kobo Books and Barnes and Noble
--TriQuarterly, "Did It Really Happen That Way?: The Memoirist As Unreliable Narrator," adapted from an AWP panel talk in March, 2013.
--TriQuarterly, "The Unreliable Narrator in Creative Nonfiction"
(href="http://www.triquarterly.org./views/did-it-really-happen-way-memoirist-unreliable-narrator">Triquarterly .
PRESENTATIONS AND APPEARANCES
--AWP Boston, Panel: "Looking for Real-life Humberts: The Unreliable Narrator
in Creative Nonfiction"Feb 2013 6-9
--River Teeth Writer's Conference, Ashland University, Ashland Ohio May 17-19, 2013,
Panel on Structure in Memoir with Joe Mackall and Jill Christman and individual manuscript conferences
--Sanibel Island Writer's Conference, craft talk on double voice narratives , a reading, and individual manuscript workshops, November 7-10, 2013 Sanibel
.--Visiting Writer, University of Central Florida.,November 4 and 5, 2013, A series of class visits, a craft talk on voice and persona, and a reading
SELECTED CV/BIO NOTE, 1990-2017
PUBLICATIONS:
In addition to founding the award-winning journal Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, Michael Steinberg has written and edited six books and a stage play.
BOOKS:
Greatest Hits and Some That Weren’t: Selected Personal Essays and Memoirs, 1990-2015, Carmike Press/Seahorse Books, (July, 2017)
Still Pitching: A Memoir (e-book) , Dzanc Books, 2013
Still Pitching: A Memoir, winner, the ForeWord Magazine/Independent Press Memoir of the Year. Michigan State University Press, 2003
Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs From Michigan, Finalist, 2000 ForeWord Magazine/Independent Press, and the Great Lakes Book Sellers Anthology of the Year, Michigan State University Press, 2000
An anthology of Michigan writers and writing.
The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction (with Robert Root,) six editions, Simon and Schuster/Allyn and Bacon, Longman/Pierson 1998-2016
Now in a sixth edition, The Fourth Genre is a standard classroom text in a number of Creative Writing and advanced Composition courses.
Those Who Do, Can: Teachers Writing, Writers Teaching, National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), 1996. Also co-authored with Robert Root
Those Who Do, Can is a sourcebook on/about writing and teaching
The Writer’s Way: A Process to-Product Approach to Writing (With Clinton S. Burhans Jr), Spring Press, eight editions; 1979-1987
The Writer’s Way is one of the first textbooks to use a process approach to teaching writing.
STAGE PLAY:
I'm Almost Famous, (with Bob Baldori). Produced at Apollo Theater in Chicago August/September, 1984 with earlier productions at the Boarshead Theater, Lansing, Mi; The Wharton Center For Performing Arts East Lansing MI; and Les Idees, Grand Rapids, MI
SELECTED PERSONAL ESSAYS AND MEMOIRS:
From 1990 to the present, Steinberg has published numerous personal essays and memoirs, as well as craft essays and interviews in dozens of literary journals--Missouri Review, New Letters, Florida Review, AWP Writer’s Chronicle, among many others. His personal essays and memoirs have won several national awards, including The Missouri Review Editor's Prize, The National Harness Racing Writers of America Award for Feature Writing, a Writing Self Award, and a Roberts Writing Award. Several of his shorter works have been cited as "Notable Essays” in Best American Essays and Best American Sports Writing. Others have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
(For titles and publications, See MY WORKS: SELECTED SHORTER WORKS)
He has also 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 Sunday Magazine.
LITERARY JOURNAL:
In 1998, Steinberg founded the award-winning journal Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction--one of three literary journals that exclusively publish works of creative/literary nonfiction.
STAGE PLAYS DIRECTED:
From 1984-1993, Steinberg directed ten contemporary plays (Sam Shepard's True West" and Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles" among them). All were staged in mid-Michigan theaters. Eight plays won a Lansing State Journal "Thesbie"award for directing, acting, and/or best drama.
TEACHING:
Steinberg was a professor of literature and writing at Michigan State University for some 30-plus years. Currently, he’s the nonfiction writer-in residence and a member of the founding faculty of the Solstice/Pine Manor College low residency MFA program in Boston
In July, 2015, the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) chose him for a Spotlight Award, a career prize for distinguished teaching in creative writing. AWP also chose him to participate in the Writer-to-Writer program, a service that matches volunteering mentors with aspiring writers.
Steinberg has also been a visiting writer at many colleges and universities. In June of 2007, he was the Distinguished Nonfiction Writer-in-Residence at the NYU Summer Writing Intensive. In addition, he’s presented workshops, craft talks, and seminars
at a number of national and international writers' conferences: the Prague Summer Writing Program, the Paris Writer's Conference, the Geneva (Switzerland) Writer's Conference, the Kachemak Bay Writer’s Conference (Alaska,) the California State University Summer Arts Festival, the Chautauqua Summer Writer’s Conference, and the Sanibel Island Writer’s Conference—among others
In 1986, he co-founded and co-coordinated (with Bob Root) the Traverse Bay Summer Writing Workshops for Teachers (1986-1993), and the Michigan State University Overseas Writing Program (1990-1993). He has also been on the faculty of three low-residency MFA programs: Vermont College, Stonecoast/University of Southern Maine, and currently, the Solstice/Pine Manor College program in Boston.
EDUCATION:
Steinberg has a PhD and MA in American Literature from Michigan State University, a MFA in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University, and a BA in English/Theater Arts from Hofstra University.
He and his wife, visual artist Carole Steinberg Berk, divide their time between Lansing and Northport, Michigan
ABOUT MICHAEL STEINBERG
I was born in New York, in Rockaway Beach, Queens, and I came of age in the 1950s. When I became a mid-life memoirist, I found that my richest work invariably resulted from my having mined my most vivid and powerful childhood and adolescent memories. In writing the memoir, Still Pitching, I discovered that almost everything important that shaped my adult identity--my passion for baseball, my love of books, theater, rock and roll, jazz and travel, as well as my stubborn tenacity and persistence, my sense of myself as an outsider, and my predilection for kvetching--all grew out of my New York upbringing. I left New York when I was twenty-five and came to Michigan State in the mid-60s to get an M.A. and Ph.D. in English.
Since I was a child, I've loved books and writing. In fact, I'd always harbored dreams becoming a writer. But I didn't seriously pursue that impulse until I was in my mid-forties--the reason being that I was not a very good poet or fiction writer--the two legitimate literary forms at the time. And because I'd read and taught so much "great" literature, I'd virtually talked myself into believing that my own writing would never measure up. For many years then, I was a writing/composition teacher, a journalist, an occasional playwright, and a director of plays. Early on in my teaching career, however, I'd become enamored of the personal essay. I continued to write, write about, and teach the essay for almost two decades. In the early-90s, when literary/creative nonfiction became more prominent, I began sending my work out to literary journals. At the same time, I wrote several essays about the form. In 1992, I went back to school, and in 1994, I got my M.F.A. in Creative Writing. In the last several years, literary/creative nonfiction has become widely recognized as a legitimate form of literary writing. I've been writing, teaching, and writing about the genre ever since.