Amanda is a writer and community builder. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of Net, her work has been published and honored by The Rumpus, Glimmer Train, Belt Magazine, Detroit Metro Times, and The Nation. She is a recent graduate of the Tin House Fiction Workshop. Amanda has a Masters in English with an emphasis on fiction from Wayne State. She is a co-leader of the Detroit Writers Collective. Her stories center around place, family, and working class women.
Amanda co-founded Bamboo a statewide platform for Michigan’s startup and creative community. She started Bamboo with a $5,000 loan and scaled it to five locations. She has created community-led programs including accelerators and conferences to increase access to social and investment capital for underestimated founders. Bamboo’s impact has been recognized locally and nationally.
She lives in Detroit with her kids and husband. Subscribe to her substack “Midwest Humble”.
Books in progress
The Lie of Clara Jacobi is a literary book club novel that is inspired by the true story of Faith Hope Consolo, a famed real estate broker whose life was built on a lie. The book explores how women reinvent themselves to escape poverty and the cost of that reinvention.
Runaway Daughter is a linked short story collection set in the auto recession of Detroit, tackling themes of motherhood and generational trauma, with stories from across the generation including the grandmother, mother and grandson’s point of views as they rebuild their lives together and apart.
Stories
Motherhood: A lineage (essay), Spring/Summer edition of Mama Quarterly
Mantras for Motherhood & Revision (essay), March/April Edition of Literary Mama
The Pause (flash fiction), Metro Times Fiction Edition
Tom’s Photo (fiction) The Rumpus Original Fiction
From Macomb County to Detroit (essay) Belt Publishing, Red State Blues Anthology
Jac Sie Ma (fiction), Glimmer Train, Honorable Mention
Hadad Farms (essay), Belt Magazine
My Dad and the Disease of Blight (essay), Belt Magazine, Pushcart Prize nomination
By Both Eyes (fiction), Getting Old Anthology, KY Story
Christmas Lights (essay), Lumina Online Journal
Roadwork (essay), Museum of Americana, Best of Net Nomination
Christmas By Design (fiction), Niche Literary Magazine
My Grandma, The Urban Farmer (essay), Deadline Detroit
American (poetry), Wayne State Literary Review
My Grandmother’s Garden (poetry) and other selected poems, About Place Journal
Losing Ignition (essay), The Nation, First place essay contest winner
Articles
Entrepreneur Magazine (2015-2017), including a top read piece for the week
Michipreneur.com, wrote, edited, and published a blog focused on small business, startups, and entrepreneurship (2012-2017)
Crain’s Detroit articles, profiles, and commentary (2013-current), available here
Honors
Honorable Mention, Glimmer Train “Family Matters”
Pushcart Prize Nomination
Best of Net Nomination
The Nation, first place essay winner
Community
Tin House Winter Workshop
Five South, Fiction Reading Team
Co-leading Detroit Writers Collective
Member of the Room Project, Poets & Writers.
“It’s easy to feel that we’ve fallen out of connection with one another and with earth and with reason and with love. I mean: we have. But to read, to write, is to say that we still believe in, at least, the possibility of connection.”
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