Detroit 20/20: Narratives of Detroit

Every year The Journal of Narrative Theory (JNT), a refereed, international journal published three times a year by the Department of English at Eastern Michigan University, hosts a speaker series, the JNT Dialogue, which invites two renowned scholars and writers to discuss topics at the forefront of narrative theory. Past dialogues have explored narrative in relation to theoretical discourses ranging from ecocriticism, cognitive theory, indigenous and migrant studies, to queer theory. The 2021 JNT Dialogue featuring Detroit-based authors Desiree Cooper and kim d. hunter centered on the theme of "Detroit as a Narrative Space," taking a look at how the city serves as a site that inspires narrative and gives rise to literary, artistic, and activist communities that shape its story. In conjunction with the talk, JNT was inspired by Desiree Cooper's flash fiction to invite Detroiters to tell their own stories.

We thought that it would be valuable to document the remarkable year that we were living through, in which Detroit experienced a pandemic, emerged as a key scene in the national Black Lives Matter movement, and played a critical role in historic national elections. As the Detroit Narrative Agency points out, all too often the stories that circulate about Detroit or that use it as a setting have traded in cliches that ignore the complexity of the city and its citizens. This competition was a chance for Detroiters to shape the narrative of Detroit in 2020, to determine what stories needed to be told.

The Detroit 20/20 Flash Nonfiction Competition invited submissions of flash creative nonfiction, very short stories (no more than 250 words) inspired by real experiences linked to a particular location in the city of Detroit. The winner of the competition was David Joez Villaverde for "M-10." The choice was a difficult one, though, because we got a wonderful assortment of stories that captured many different moments and facets of life in Detroit in the year 2020.

You can check out the top entries from the competition on JNT's Detroit 20/20 Flash Nonfiction Narratives webpage.