A year-round book festival dedicated to great conversations with today's best writers.

Michael Zadoorian

Michael Zadoorian was born in Detroit, Michigan, and has lived in the area for his entire life. He attended the public schools in Detroit, then went on to graduate from Wayne State University with a Liberal Arts degree. In the mid-eighties, Zadoorian discovered the work of Raymond Carver, which inspired him to start writing fiction. After a few years of working on his own, he decided to return to Wayne State to study Creative Writing. While working toward his MA in English, he was the recipient of the Loughead Eldridge Creative Writing Scholarship and three Tompkins Awards for his fiction and essays.

During this time, Zadoorian continued to work at his day job, writing advertising copy for used car dealers, processed meats, banks, and pizza chains, but kept working on his stories. Though it took a while to shake off the influence of Carver, he soon started to develop his own voice and a style that reflected his own sensibilities. More and more, he found himself writing about his hometown of Detroit and the people he knew there. Before long, his work started to appear in various literary magazines and journals, including The North American Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, The Literary Review, American Short Fiction, Detroit Noir, and the European journals Panurge and Paris Transcontinental.

Zadoorian’s first novel, Second Hand (W.W. Norton), about a Detroit junk-store owner was released in 2000. The New York Times Book Review wrote that Second Hand “may be a gift from the (Tiki) gods” and called it “a romantic adventure that explores what Yeats called ‘the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.’” Second Hand was selected for Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Program and as an American Booksellers Association Book Sense pick; it also received the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s prestigious New Writers Award. Recently translated into Italian, it continues to be a cult favorite, still popping up on blogs and “favorite book” lists nine years after publication. Zadoorian’s short story collection, The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit (WSU Press), features published and new work .

Zadoorian still works as a copywriter in the Detroit area. He has also worked as a journalist, a magazine feature writer, a voice-over talent, a shipping-room clerk, and a plant guard for Chrysler. He lives with his wife, Rita Simmons, a librarian, in an old house filled with things that used to be in the houses of other people. He still loves Detroit, no matter what anyone says (from Harpers Collins).

At this special NWS and WSU Press partner event on April 28, 2011, Campbell shared the stage with nationally acclaimed Michigan authors Michael Delp (“As If We Were Prey”), Michael Zadoorian (“The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit”) and Jack Driscoll (“How Like an Angel”) for an exciting conversation on writing, creative collaboration and the life of the artist. This event was supported by the MICHIGAN COUNCIL FOR ARTS AND CULTURAL AFFAIRS and the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS.

Wayne State University Press’ “Made in Michigan Writers Series” is devoted to showcasing distinguished writers and their diverse voices. The series publishes poetry, creative nonfiction, short fiction and essays by Michigan writers with the aim of encouraging the recognition of the state’s artistic and cultural heritage throughout Michigan, the Midwest and the nation.