The Made in Michigan Writers Series is a literary book series from Wayne State University Press, a distinctive publisher of exceptional books and journals based in and shaped by the city of Detroit. This series is devoted to highlighting Michigan’s diverse voices, with the aim of encouraging recognition of the state’s artistic and cultural heritage throughout the world.
We accept book-length works of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, either originally in English or in translation. Graphic narrative and multilingual (in English and one or more other languages) work is also welcome. Authors in the series must currently reside in or have spent formative years in the state of Michigan—but the work does not have to take place in or be about the state.
Submission Period
Our submission period is April 1–June 1. Writers may submit only once per reading period. Editors for the series may solicit work outside of this period.
Series Editors
Natalie Bakopoulos is the author of Scorpionfish (Tin House) and The Green Shore (Simon & Schuster). Her work has appeared in Tin House, VQR, The Iowa Review, The New York Times, Granta, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, MQR, The Mississippi Review, O. Henry Prize Stories, among others. In 2015, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Athens, Greece. She’s an associate professor at Wayne State University.
Nandi Comer is an award-winning poet and essayist and served as the 2023-2025 Poet Laureate of Michigan. She is the author of the award-winning poetry collections Tapping Out (Triquarterly) and American Family: A Syndrome (Finishing Line Press). Comer is a Cave Canem Fellow, a Callaloo Fellow, and a 2019 Kresge Artist Fellow. She is the codirector of Detroit Lit.
Desiree Cooper is a Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist, 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, community activist, and former attorney. She is the author of the award-winning books Nothing Special and Know the Mother (both Wayne State University Press). Cooper’s fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in The New York Times, 2023 Flash Fiction America, The Best Small Fictions 2018, Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, and many more.
Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is an award-winning poet, essayist, journalist, scholar, and artist focused on issues of Asian America, race, justice, and the arts. She is the author of You Cannot Resist Me When My Hair Is in Braids (Wayne State University Press). Her writing has appeared at Cha Asian Literary Journal, Kartika Review, Ricepaper, and Drunken Boat.
Kamelya Omayma Youssef is a text, performance, and education worker. She is the author of A book with a hole in it (Wendy's Subway, Carolyn Bush Award recipient). Her poems and essays have been published with 1080 Press, Poet Lore, Poem-a-Day, Sukoon, Gulf Coast, Mizna, AAWW’s The Margins, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Poetry Project, and Room Project, among others.
What to Expect
Submissions will be read from June 1 to September 1. Please check in if you haven’t heard from us by the end of October. The Made in Michigan Writers series editors along with Press editors will select manuscripts to move forward. Once we have contacted you with a notice of acceptance, our next step, as a university press, is to have the manuscript evaluated by outside peer reviewers. With two peer reviews that recommend publication and with approval to publish from the Wayne State University Press Editorial Board, we will offer a publishing contract. After completing revisions and submitting a final manuscript, the project then moves into copyediting, production, design, and marketing. Publication usually occurs about ten to twelve months after we receive the final manuscript.
A Note on Peer Review
Though reviewer identity will be anonymous, we welcome your thoughts on who to consider as a reader for your manuscript. Generally, peer reviewers will be published writers in the same genre as you. We value and prioritize calling on diverse perspectives during peer review. The process can take three to six months, and the goal is to receive constructive feedback that enables authors to strengthen their work. The reviewers may request revision in addition to changes asked for by series editors. In response to the reviews, you’ll craft a revision plan with guidance from your Press editor. While it’s not expected that you take every note or piece of feedback, we hope you engage substantively with the peer review process—one of the many unique benefits of publishing with a university press—and that the manuscript is stronger for it.
To submit, we ask for a proposal and your full manuscript. (Exceptions to a complete manuscript may be made for certain nonfiction projects such as graphic narrative.)
Your proposal should be a single document, including the following:
- up to a page summarizing the work and describing its focus and scope, its significance and the contribution it seeks to make, and the work’s intended audiences
- for nonfiction projects, include a detailed table of contents with chapter synopses
- CV or biographical author statement
- word count and the details of any special features you plan to include, such as number and type of illustrations
- a list of 2–4 comparable books, and how yours is similar and different
- acknowledgment of any previously published portions of the work
Let us know whether the manuscript has been simultaneously submitted to other publishers