Wheeling Poetry Series presents Jim Daniels

March 10, 2026
12:00pm - 1:00pm

Jim Daniels is the recipient of the 2025-26 Michigan Author Award for lifetime achievement from the Library of Michigan and the Michigan Center for the Book.

His new book, "Late Invocation for Magic: New and Selected Poems," was published in January. He has authored over thirty collections of poetry, seven collections of fiction, four produced screenplays, and one collection of essays, "An Ignorance of Trees," published in 2025, recently named a Michigan Notable Book. He has also edited many anthologies, including "RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music."

He is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Other writing awards include the Brittingham Prize, the Blue Lynx Prize, the Tillie Olsen Creative Writing Award, the Milton Kessler Award, five Michigan Notable Book Awards, and three Gold Medals in the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and his films have won awards in film festivals around the world.

His work has been published in "The Best American Poetry" and Pushcart Prize volumes. He has read his poetry on Garrison Keillor's “Prairie Home Companion,” and his poems were frequently featured on Keillor’s "Writer's Almanac." Poet laureates Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, and Tracy K. Smith all showcased his writing as part of their work to bring poetry to average Americans. During his long career, he has warmed up for singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, read poems at a Jamestown Jammers AA baseball game, had his poem "Factory Love" displayed on a race car, and sent poetry into space as part of the Moon Arts Project.

A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh, where he is the Thomas Stockham Baker University Professor Emeritus of English at Carnegie Mellon University. He currently teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA Program.

The Wheeling Poetry Series is curated and hosted by West Virginia Poet Laureate, Marc Harshman.