M.L. Liebler Presents Detroit Tonight Live @ Aretha's Jazz Cafe Downtown
Across from Comerica and Gem Theater

Quincy Troupe (NYC)
Born July 22, 1939, in St. Louis, Missouri, Quincy Troupe is an awarding-winning author of 12 volumes of poetry, three children’s books, and six non-fiction works. In 2010 Troupe received the American Book Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement.
Among Troupe's best-selling works are Miles: The Autobiography of Miles Davis and his memoir, Miles & Me, soon to become a major motion picture. Other notable works are: The Pursuit of Happyness, an autobiography with written with Chris Gardner that was a New York Times bestseller for over 40 weeks and a major motion picture starring Will Smith; The Architecture of Language (poems), that won the 2007 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement; and Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems, selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best books of poetry in 2002 and winner of the 2003 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. Quincy Troupe is professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego, formerly editor Code magazine and Black Renaissance Noire, a literary journal of the Institute of Africana Studies at New York University, and poetry editor of A Gathering of the Tribes online magazine.Melba Joyce Boyd, a native Detroiter, is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit, and an Adjunct Professor in Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. An award-winning author of nine books of poetry, two biographies, editor of two poetry anthologies, and over 100 essays. She is producer of two documentary films. Boyd’s poetry, essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in anthologies, academic journals, cultural periodicals and newspapers in the United States and Europe. Her latest collection, Death Dance of a Butterfly, received the 2013 Library of Michigan Notable Books Award for Poetry. She is the poet laureate of Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, and her poem, “This Museum Was Once a Dream,” appears in bronze on the dedication plaque on the museum wall. “Maple Red,” for Ed Clark, appears next the painting in the Detroit Institute of Arts, and lines from her poem, “We Want Our City Back,” appear in the sculpture, Michigan’s Tribute to Labor, in Hart Plaza, in downtown Detroit. Her book, Song for Maya, was translated into German, Lied fur Maya, and two collections, Thirteen Frozen Flamingos and Blues Music Sky of Mourning: The German Poems, contains poems in German and English. Currently, selected and new poems are being translated into French at the University of Bordeaux for a bilingual publication.Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall received the 2010 Independent Publishers Award, the 2010 Library of Michigan Notable Books Award for Poetry, and was a Finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the ForeWord Award for Poetry. Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press received the 2004 Honor for Nonfiction from The Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her first book of poetry, Cat Eyes and Deadwood (1978) was awarded a publication grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. Boyd’s critically acclaimed and widely reviewed, Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825-1911, (1994). She served at the assistant editor to Dudley Randall’s Broadside Press (1972-76) and is the executor of the Dudley Randall Literary Estate. She is currently the editor of the African American Series at Wayne State University Press. She served on the Michigan Humanities Board, and as an advisor to the Charles H. Wright Museum and the Virgil Carr Center for African American Culture and the Arts in Detroit. She received awards for community service from the Wright Museum, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, and the Sojourner Truth Award from the National Association of Negro Women’s Professional and Business Association.She was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bremen in Germany (1983-4), and a Visiting Professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, Republic of China (2009). She has held professorial positions at the University of Iowa, Ohio State University, and served at the Director of African American Studies Program at the University of Michigan—Flint; and was the Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Wayne State University for 16 years. She has a Doctor of Arts in English from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and a M.A. and a B.A. degree in English from Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo.Marion Hayden
Born in Detroit, MI, a crucible of jazz, Marion Hayden is one of the nation’s finest proponents of the acoustic bass. Mentored by master trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, Hayden began performing jazz at the age of 15. She has performed with such diverse luminaries as Bobby McFerrin, Nancy Wilson, Geri Allen, Regina Carter, Steve Turre, Lester Bowie, David Allen Grier, James Carter, Dorothy Donegan, Joe Williams, Lionel Hampton, Frank Morgan, Jon Hendricks, Hank Jones, Bobby Hutcherson, Larry Willis, Vanessa Rubin, Sheila Jordan, Mulgrew Miller, Annie Ross and many others. She is a co-founder of the touring jazz ensemble Straight Ahead- the first all woman jazz ensemble signed to Atlantic Records. She is a member of the Detroit International Jazz Festival All-Star Ambassadors touring ensemble.Geoffrey Jacques (CA)
Geoffrey Jacques is a poet, essayist, critic, and editor. His newest collection of poems, The Orchestra of Wind Chimes, is forthcoming from Wayne State University Press. He has published essays on modern literature, film, jazz, the visual arts, social movements, and politics. Poems, essays, and reviews of his can be found in many journals, including Askew, NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art, Cineaste, Journal of Modern Hellenism, Cover: Arts New York, Black Renaissance Noire, Artforum, Tidal Basin Review, Miramar, Killens Review of Arts & Letters, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Against the Current, Race and Reason, Hambone, Detroit Jazz Festival Program Book, Radical Teacher, Black Scholar, as well as several books and newspapers. His published work on visual artists can also be found in several art exhibition catalogues. Other books include the poetry collection Just for a Thrill (2005), and the critical study A Change in the Weather: Modernist Imagination, African American Imaginary (2009). He has taught college courses in literature and humanities in Southern California and New York City.