U-M English professor and renowned poet Mattawa and highly acclaimed Latino poet Espada discuss Espada’s work. In conjunction with Espada’s reading on Mar. 17.
Midwestern author Stuart Dybek will be keynote speaker at the second annual Voices of the Middle West festival on Saturday, March 21, 2015, at the University of Michigan Residential College, 721 E. University Ave. in Ann Arbor.
The free festival features panel discussions by authors and publishers, an open mic event, and an all-day bookfair showcasing literary journals and independent presses from all over the Midwest, with issues and books for sale.
Stuart Dybek, a lifelong Midwesterner and author of The Coast of Chicago, Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, and Paper Lantern, will give a keynote address at 5 pm. A public reception and book signing will follow.
The festival will bring together U-M students and faculty with writers and presses from all over the Midwest to showcase the rich, magnificent work being produced here in the Midwest, the stories that need to be told, the voices that need to be heard. Panel discussions on fables in Midwestern literature, gender parity in publishing, and other literary discussions will feature outstanding regional authors Laura Kasischke, CJ Hribal, Caitlin Horrocks, Anne Valente, Marcus Wicker, Matt Bell, and more. The festival’s authors will read at Literati Bookstore, 124 East Washington Street in Ann Arbor, on Friday, March 20th beginning at 6 PM.
More information at http://midwestgothic.com/voices/
This all-female a cappella ensemble performs a wide variety of popular songs, from love ballads to classic rock songs, to a new twist on a popular rap song.
8 p.m. (doors open at 7:30 p.m.), Free, but $5 donation encouraged.
Author’s Forum Presents: Making Callaloo in Detroit: A Conversation with the RC’s Lolita Hernandez and Laura Thomas
RC theater students present a program of short plays TBA.
Monthly open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit storytelling organization that also produces a weekly public radio show. Each month 10 storytellers are selected at random from among those who sign up to tell a 3-5 minute story on the monthly theme. The 3 judges are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Space limited, so it’s smart to arrive early. April theme: Delusions. $8. Doors open, and sign up start at 6.
Anna Clark’s new book, Michigan Literary Luminaries, will be published on May 4 by The History Press. Celebrate the release on Saturday, May 30 at Signal-Return (1345 Division Street, Suite 102), which is hosting this event. “Our agenda is simple: drink, food, music, laughter, joy.”
Monthly open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit storytelling organization that also produces a weekly public radio show. Each month 10 storytellers are selected at random from among those who sign up to tell a 3-5 minute story on the monthly theme. The 3 judges are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Space limited, so it’s smart to arrive early. August theme: Weddings. $8. Doors open, and sign up start at 6.
Poet Bob Clifford is an RC creative writing alum (’79) and is former associate director and coordinator of academic programs, where he designed and implemented an academic program for over 600 student-athletes and monitored compliance of Big Ten and NCAA regulations. He is currently the associate athletic director at Oregon State University. Clifford will be at Nicola’s Books for the release of his latest collection of poetry, Gasping for Air.
Kate Mendeloff and the RC Visiting Artists program welcome Alice Eve Cohen, playwright, author and actor, for a production of “Thin Walls” — a play about a microcosm of the urban landscape at a turbulent time in New York City’s history. Set in a century-old residential building, once elegant and now run-down, the darkly humorous and deeply moving play interweaves the stories of the building’s long-time residents, its recent arrivals and its ghosts, as the end of the 20th century approaches.
Alice Eve Cohen’s plays and solo pieces have been produced around the world. Ms. Cohen has also written for television, and her fiction has been published by Simon and Schuster and Heinenmann Press. She has received fellowships, grants and commissions from New York State Council on the ARts, Dance Theatre Workshop and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as an Emmy Award Commendation and numerous awards from Poets and Writers, Meet the Composer andASCAP. She received her BA from Princeton University and her MFA from the New School University, where she teaches solo theatre. She works with Lincoln Center Institute, and is the founding editor-in-chief of Theatre Development Fund’s educational theatre journal, Play by Play.
