Norbert Blei

Norbert Blei (August 23, 1935 – April 23, 2013) was an American writer of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. In 1994, he established Cross+Roads Press, dedicated to the publication of first chapbooks by poets, short story writers, novelists and artists.

Biography

Blei was born in an ethnic (primarily Czechoslovakian) neighborhood of western Chicago, Illinois known as Little Village. An only child, Blei and his parents moved to the near-western Chicago suburb of Cicero when he was in grade school.

Blei attended Illinois State University, studying English, and graduated in 1956. He taught high school English and subsequently worked at City News Bureau as a reporter. In 1969, Blei left Chicago and moved to Door County, Wisconsin, a rural vacation destination for Midwesterners on the Door Peninsula in Lake Michigan. For four decades, he has worked in a converted chicken coop in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin.

Blei's first book was The Hour of the Sunshine Now: Short Stories by Norbert Blei, published in 1978.