Gary Erwin
Gary Erwin
Associate Vice President, Marketing & Communications
Degrees
- Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Western Michigan University
- Bachelor's of Science in English, Grand Valley State University
Biography
Gary J. Erwin graduated from Detroit Catholic High School and earned his bachelor’s degree from Grand Valley State University (GVSU). At GVSU, he was a member of the university hockey team, served as fiction editor of the school literary journal, Amaranthus, and was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.
He earned his Master of Fine Arts in English and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University in 1994, where he studied under author Stuart Dybek, Jaime Gordon and Nancy Eimers.
Since 1991, he has held many diverse positions in the corporate and academic fields, and began his career as a communications specialist for a military contractor during the first Persian Gulf War. From 1995-2000, he served as fiction editor and contributing editor of The MacGuffin. From 1999 to 2010, he was director of Publications and lecturer of Communications and Literature at Kettering University. From 2010 to 2017, he was executive director of Marketing & Communications for Henry Ford College, where he led the launch of the institution's new brand, name and website. He has taught creative writing, technical writing, business communications, marketing communications, journalism, corporate communications and American literature at Kettering University, Baker College, Oakland Community College and Mott Community College. He has presented at a number of national professional conferences and consulted for Fortune 500 companies and non-profit organizations, for which he has raised more than $130 million in grant funding over the past 20 years.
His stories, essays, research and science journalism have appeared in numerous journals, reviews, conference proceedings, media outlets and magazines, including Red Cedar Review, The Sun, Pebble Lake Review, The MacGuffin, Sante Fe Literary Review, Driftwood Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, 3288 Review, Technology Century, Society of Technical Communications Global Communications Conference Proceedings, and National Commission for Cooperative Education, among others. His work has also earned two Pushcart Prize nominations and has been anthologized in The PrePress Awards Volume II: Michigan Voices. His book of short stories, Trail Crossing Sixteen Counties, was published in 2019. He is currently working on a new novel titled Cut River Redemption. Excerpts from this work have appeared in Pebble Lake Review and Adelaide Literary Magazine.
He lives with his family and an assortment of critters in Clarkston, Michigan, and believes that Detroit Mercy offers an education unrivaled by other institutions because of the University's focus on social concerns and application of the school's rigorous education on issues of conscience.
-
Research Topic Areas
- Corporate Communication and impact of digital/electronic communications on the writing and communication skills of undergraduate students.
- Marketing communications campaign development.
- Crisis Communications Management and role of media in determining message development and execution, and impact on primary and secondary audiences.
- American Literature, with specific emphasis on modern and contemporary writers: Hemingway, Salinger, Carver.
- Creative Writing: Author of Trail Crossing Sixteen Counties, a book of thematically-linked short stories published by Adelaide Books in the fall 2019.