10 Facts About Norbert Blei

Norbert George Blei was an American writer of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.

Norbert Blei attended Illinois State University, studying English, and graduated in 1956.

Norbert Blei taught high school English and subsequently worked at the City News Bureau of Chicago as a reporter.

In 1969, Norbert Blei left Chicago and moved to Door County, Wisconsin, a rural vacation destination for Midwesterners on the Door Peninsula in Lake Michigan.

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

Norbert Blei was an early adopter of the Internet as a means to distribute his own work and call attention to other writers.

Norbert Blei's Poetry Dispatch was a weekly enewsletter that featured a short selection of poems by a single, noteworthy poet, while Notes from the Underground was an irregular email that featured brief essays on current topics, literary and otherwise.

For over 30 years, Norbert Blei was writer-in-residence at The Clearing, a folk arts school founded in 1935 by landscape architect Jens Jensen.

Norbert Blei collaborated with the pseudonymous Monsieur K, located in France, who created an assortment of web sites for posting writings artists judged to abide by the spirit of "free jazz".

Norbert Blei fomented local controversy when he outlined a new vision for Door County, Wisconsin in an article in the area's weekly newspaper, The Door Reminder.