JACK DEMPSEY & BRIAN JAMES EGEN will read from their book, MICHIGAN AT ANTIETAM: THE WOLVERINE STATE’S SACRIFICE ON AMERICA ‘S BLOODIEST DAY
Jack Dempsey
Jack Dempsey is a lawyer and Michigan native. He co-founded and is the president of the Michigan Civil War Association, which is dedicated to erecting a Michigan monument at the Antietam National Battlefield. Jack is president of the Michigan Historical Commission, board member of the Michigan History Foundation and a member of the Michigan Historic Preservation Network, the Abraham Lincoln Civil War Roundtable, the Civil War Trust, Preservation Detroit, and runs the Michigan Civil War Blog.
Brian James Egen
Brian James Egen is executive producer at the Henry Ford and a Michigan native. He is a co-founder of the Michigan Civil War Association, chairman of the Michigan Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee and member of the Michigan Historical Commission, Monroe County Historical Commission and Commission on the Environment, City of Monroe. Brian is an award-winning director for an independent short film and has worked on several National Park Service and historic site Civil War documentaries.
Fiction and poetry reading by this New York Times best-selling writer, a 4-time Hopwood winner and author of the novels Gone to Soldier, Braided Lives, The Longings of Women, and Woman on the Edge of Time, as well as 18 volumes of poetry and the critically acclaimed memoir Sleeping with Cats. Preceded by awards presentations to U-M undergrad poets and prose writers.
John F. Buckley has published the poetry collection Sky Sandwiches and chapbooksBreach Birth and Leading an Aquamarine Shoat by Its Tail. He collaborated with Martin Ott on two additional books of poetry. His poems appear in The Carolina Quarterly, Narrative, and ZYZZYVA. He holds an MFA in creative writing from The University of Michigan
Kim D. Hunter works for social justice groups and in Detroit schools through Inside Out Literary Arts. His poems have appeared in What I Say, Rainbow Darkness, and Abandon Automobile. His books include borne on slow knives andedge of the time zone. His short fiction, The Official Report on Human Activity, earned a Kresge Literary Arts Fellowship.
Joshua Cohen will present from the title A Field Guide to the Natural Communities of Michigan.
The culmination of three decades of work, this field guide provides readers with an accessible introduction to Michigan’s natural community classification and is meant to serve as a tool for those seeking to understand, describe, document, conserve, and restore the diversity of ecosystems native to Michigan. In the course of an ecological tour of Michigan, Joshua will discuss the methods behind the creation of this book and its critical components that include dichotomous keys, natural community distribution maps and descriptions, plant lists, and places to visit the communities.
Joshua Cohen has worked for the past sixteen years as an ecologist with Michigan Natural Features Inventory (MNFI), Michigan’s natural heritage program. His primary duties as the lead ecologist with MNFI involve refining and revising the natural community classification through ecological inventory and sampling, literature research, and data analysis. He is also responsible for classifying conservation targets and prioritizing areas for conservation and restoration; creating and delivering training sessions for resource professionals on biodiversity and ecosystem management; and designing and conducting vegetative sampling, ecological mapping and modeling, monitoring, and surveys for natural communities and threatened and endangered species.
Readings by John F. Buckley, a recent U-M creative writing MFA who has published 2 chapbooks and the collection Sky Sandwiches, and Kim D. Hunter, a veteran Detroit poet known for what he calls the “social surrealism” of his gritty post-industrial city-scapes. Followed by a poetry and short fiction open mike.
R.J. Fox is author of Love and Vodka: My Surreal Adventures in Ukraine. He is also tthe award-winning writer of several short stories, plays, poems, and fifteen feature-length screenplays. He is also the writer and director of several award-winning short films. In addition his writing and filmmaking exploits—not to mention his talents as a saxophonist—Fox teaches English and Video Production in the Ann Arbor Public Schools where he uses his own dream of making movies to inspire his students to follow their own dreams. Fox has also worked in public relations at Ford Motor Company and as a newspaper reporter. He resides in Ann Arbor, MI. Visit www.foxplots.com or follow him on Twitter @foxwriter7.
In Elephants and Kings, Trautmann traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the west—where elephants took part in some of the greatest wars of antiquity—and Southeast Asia. He shows that because elephants eat such massive quantities of food, it was uneconomic to raise them from birth. Rather, in a unique form of domestication, Indian kings captured wild adults and trained them, one by one, through millennia. Kings were thus compelled to protect wild elephants from hunters and elephant forests from being cut down. By taking a wide-angle view of human-elephant relations, Trautmann throws into relief the structure of India’s environmental history and the reasons for the persistence of wild elephants in its forests. Thomas Trautmann is professor emeritus of history and anthropology at the University of Michigan. Andrew Shryock is is chair and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.
Ana Fernandez teaches art courses at the University of Michigan’s Residential College in drawing and printmaking. Her artwork includes elements of drawing, printmaking, fibers and collage. It reflects a tactile sensibility and an affinity for layering, patterning and ornamentation. Thematically, it focuses on the interaction between fashion, representations of the female body and notions of femininity.
Paul Lisicky will read from his memoir The Narrow Door.
In The Narrow Door, Paul Lisicky creates a compelling collage of scenes and images drawn from two long-term relationships, one with a woman novelist and the other with his ex-husband, a poet. The contours of these relationships shift constantly. Denise and Paul, stretched by the demands of their writing lives, drift apart, and Paul’s romance begins to falter. And the world around them is frail: environmental catastrophes like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti, and local disturbances make an unsettling backdrop to the pressing concerns of Denise’s cancer diagnosis and Paul’s impending breakup. Lisicky’s compassionate heart and resilience seem all the stronger in the face of such searing losses. His survival—hard-won, unsentimental, authentic—proves that in turning toward loss, we embrace life.
This event will be recorded
From Ernest Hemingway’s rural adventures to the gritty fiction of Joyce Carol Oates, the landscape of the “Third Coast” has inspired generations of the nation’s greatest storytellers.
Join Michigan Notable Author Anna Clark to unveil Michigan’s extraordinary written culture as she discusses Michigan authors and her new book, Michigan Literary Luminaries: From Elmore Leonard to Robert Hayden. The event includes a book signing and books will be for sale.
This fascinating book is a shines a spotlight on this rich heritage of the Great Lakes State with a mixture of history, literary criticism, and original reporting. Discover how Saginaw greenhouses shaped the life of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Theodore Roethke. Compare the common traits of Detroit crime writers like Elmore Leonard and Donald Goines. Learn how Dudley Randall revolutionized American literature by doing for poets what Motown Records did for musicians.
RC Creative Writing alumna Anna Clark is a freelance journalist in Detroit. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The American Prospect, Grantland, Vanity Fair, the Columbia Journalism Review, Next City, and other publications. She is the director of applications for Write A House and founder of Literary Detroit. Anna also edited A Detroit Anthology, a 2015 Michigan Notable Book.
