Zell Writers’ Program Alum Mo Daviau reads from her debut novel, Every Anxious Wave.
A wild romp of a love story across time, interweaving astrophysics and indie rock.
Karl Bender exclusively uses his Chicago apartment’s wormhole to send people back to rock concerts until his best friend cannot be talked out of trying to save John Lennon. Alas, Karl accidentally leaves off the “1” in “1980,” sending Wayne back to 980, Mannahatta. Though he receives Wayne’s texts extolling the quality of life, and especially the quality of the fish, Karl can’t figure out how to bring him back.
Enter brilliant, prickly, overweight astrophysicist Lena Geduldig. Karl and Lena’s connection is immediate. While they work on getting Wayne back, Karl’s future self emails him from Seattle, imploring him: don’t lose Lena. Karl visits Seattle, now waterlogged, and meets his future stepdaughter. Unable to resist meddling with the past, Karl and Lena bounce around time in Boston, Portland, Chicago, Montana, Seattle, and Mannahatta. When Lena ultimately prevents her own long-ago rape, she alters the course of her life. She no longer knows Karl, who must figure out how to get her back without erasing the stepdaughter to whom he’s grown close.
“Every Anxious Wave gives us the intelligent irreverence of Nick Hornby, the honest romance of Gary Shteyngart, and the swoon-worthy charm of a John Cusack movie, all within a riveting story of lost love, bent time, and rock stars. A delightful, innovative debut.” –Rebecca Dinerstein, author of The Sunlit Night
“An absolute kick in the pants to read–if you love rock, bodies, and time travel, this is your ride.”
–Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Small Backs of Children
Mo Daviau was born in 1976 to a very unusual couple in a widely disliked city in California. A graduate of Smith College and the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, she now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her stuffed crocodile.
This event will be recorded
In the webcomic and graphic novel Mom’s Cancer, Brian Fies told the story of his mother’s diagnosis and treatment for cancer, and its effect on his family. “Mom’s Cancer” began as a serialized Internet comic, with new installments added throughout 2004. Readership grew by word-of-mouth. People who needed the story found it and told their friends about it. The story won the comics industry’s Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic, the Harvey Award, and the German Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (Youth Literature Prize) and became a pioneering work in the new field of “graphic medicine.”
Brian will talk about why and how he created “Mom’s Cancer,” and the wider social communities he’s entered as a result. The event includes a book signing and books will be for sale courtesy of Bookbound Bookstore.
This event is co-sponsored by the following U-M Departments in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts: The Department of American Culture; Instructional Support Services; Office of Undergraduate Education; and the Program in Biology.
Reading by Fire Historical and Cultural Arts Collaborative (Kalamazoo) cofounder Denise Miller, author of the recent CORE, a collection of poems based on the stories of African American sharecroppers of the Great Migration.
Literati welcomes young-adult author and Ann Arbor native Gavriel Savit in support of Anna and the Swallow Man: a stunning, literary, and wholly original debut novel set in Poland during the Second World War, perfect for readers of The Book Thief.
About the book: Kraków, 1939. A million marching soldiers and a thousand barking dogs. This is no place to grow up. Anna Łania is just seven years old when the Germans take her father, a linguistics professor, during their purge of intellectuals in Poland. She’s alone. And then Anna meets the Swallow Man. He is a mystery, strange and tall, a skilled deceiver with more than a little magic up his sleeve. And when the soldiers in the streets look at him, they see what he wants them to see. The Swallow Man is not Anna’s father—she knows that very well—but she also knows that, like her father, he’s in danger of being taken, and like her father, he has a gift for languages: Polish, Russian, German, Yiddish, even Bird. When he summons a bright, beautiful swallow down to his hand to stop her from crying, Anna is entranced. She follows him into the wilderness. Over the course of their travels together, Anna and the Swallow Man will dodge bombs, tame soldiers, and even, despite their better judgment, make a friend. But in a world gone mad, everything can prove dangerous. Even the Swallow Man. Destined to become a classic, Gavriel Savit’s stunning debut reveals life’s hardest lessons while celebrating its miraculous possibilities.
About the author: Gavriel Savit holds a BFA in musical theater from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he grew up. As an actor and singer, Gavriel has performed on three continents, from New York to Brussels to Tokyo. He lives in Brooklyn. This is his first novel.
RC Creative Writing alumna Carrie Smith and three-time Hopwood winner discusses her debut crime novel, Silent City, a police procedural whose lead character, an NYPD detective, is cancer survivor returning to work.
Angela Flournoy is the author of The Turner House, a finalist for the National Book Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. The novel was a Summer 2015 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and a New York Times Sunday Book Review Editors’ Choice. She is a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree. Her fiction has appeared inThe Paris Review, and she has written for The New York Times, The New Republic, and The Los Angeles Times. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the University of Iowa and The Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn.
RC Creative Writing alumna Carrie Smith will read from Silent City, her new crime novel. Carrie won three Hopwood Awards (one in 1977 and two in 1979), and a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She has been a finalist in Nimrod Magazine’s Katherine Anne Porter prize for fiction, and is the author of a literary first novel, Forget Harry published by Simon & Schuster. Carrie moved to New York City in 1981. By day, she is Senior Vice President and Publisher of Benchmark Education Company. By night, she thinks about murder. She lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her partner and sixteen year old twins.
One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. Tonight: Francis Santana and Cab Tran.
Kristen Remenar is a children’s librarian, writer, teacher, and national speaker on literacy. She is married to author/illustrator Matt Faulkner. This is her first picture book
A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, Matt Faulkner has written and illustrated a number of children’s books. His work has won wide praise for its humor, exuberance and sensitivity. In addition, he is a contributing illustrator to such national periodicals as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes. Matt is married to author and children’s librarian, Kristen Remenar. They live with their 3 kids and 3 cats on the lower right corner of the Michigan mitten. He teaches illustration at the Art Academy University in San Francisco.
U-M drama students in Kate Mendeloff’s play production seminar direct and perform renowned English playwright Caryl Churchill’s acclaimed 2012 play about relationships in the digital age presented as an evolving mosaic
