Library of Michigan Announces Anne-Marie Oomen as 2023-2024 Michigan Author Award Recipient

Date: December 11, 2023

LANSING – The Library of Michigan is pleased to announce Anne-Marie Oomen as the recipient of the 2023-2024 Michigan Author Award.

Anne-Marie Oomen is the founding editor of Dunes Review, former president of Michigan Writers, and instructor at Solstice MFA in Creative Writing at Lasell University in Massachusetts and at Interlochen College of Creative Arts. She appears at conferences throughout the country. After nearly 20 years teaching all levels of students from junior high to graduate school, Anne-Marie became writer-in-residence at Interlochen Arts Academy from 1997-99, and then chair of the Creative Writing Department from 1999-2008. She oversaw the program development of The Writing House, which was dedicated in April of 2003. She continued as instructor of creative writing (poetry, playwriting, and nonfiction) and supervising editor of Interlochen Review until 2014.

Anne-Marie’s 2022 memoir As Long as I Know, You, the Mom Book won AWP’s Sue William Silverman nonfiction award, a Michigan Notable Book Award in 2023, and a Silver IPPY. The Long Fields: Essays of Comfort and Home is her latest work. Other Michigan Notable Book selections authored by Anne-Marie include Pulling Down the BarnHouse of Fields, and The Lake Michigan Mermaid (with Linda Nemec Foster). Her edited work ELEMENTAL: A Collection of Michigan Nonfiction was also a Michigan Notable Book title. Additional works included American Map: EssaysUncoded Woman, and Love, Sex and 4-H. She has written seven plays, including award-winning Northern Belles (inspired by oral histories of women farmers), and Secrets of Luuce Talk Tavern, winner of the CTAM contest.

Having grown up in Oceana County, Anne-Marie and her husband, David Early, now live in their handmade home on wild acreage near Empire, Michigan.