Literati celebrates its third birthday!
As on our previous anniversary parties, In the spirit of donating and giving back, all book sales throughout the day will benefit SafeHouse Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending domestic violence and sexual assault in Washtenaw County, Michigan.
Additionally, we’ll be hosting a reading from friends & family, featuring the work of former Literati booksellers Russ Brakefield and Tom McCartan, current Literati booksellers John Ganiard, Mairead Small Staid, Sam Krowchenko, and Gina Balibrera, and our dear friend Ray McDaniel.
This event is free and open to the public.
Gina Balibrera is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program and was a Zell Postgraduate Fellow in Prose at the University of Michigan in 2013-2014. Gina lives in Ann Arbor, where she works at a bookstore, teaches writing at the University of Michigan, and is finishing a novel set in 1930s El Salvador and France.
Russell Brakefield received his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He lives in Ann Arbor where he teaches writing at the University of Michigan and works as the managing editor for Canarium Books. His most recent work appears in The Southern Indiana Review, Hobart, and Language Lessons: An Anthology by Third Man Records. He is currently an artist in residence with the University Musical Society.
John M. Ganiard lives and works in Ann Arbor (Michigan, USA).
Sam Krowchenko’s writing has appeared in Salon, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Full Stop.
Tom McCartan used to work at LIterati. He’s had stories published in Unsaid,Hobart, and some other places. He also used to work at Melville House. Once he even at a music show at Literati, to which he brought a case of beer.
Mairead Small Staid is a poet and essayist whose work can be found in AGNI, The Believer, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Narrative, Ninth Letter, andPloughshares, as well as online at The Awl, The Hairpin, Jezebel, and The Point.
Raymond McDaniel is the author of Special Powers and Abilities, Saltwater Empire and Murder (a violet), a National Poetry Series selection. His writing appears in many magazines and in the anthology American Poets in the 21st Century. Born in Florida, McDaniel now lives in Ann Arbor, teaches at the University of Michigan, and writes for The Constant Critic.
Literati is pleased to welcome James Stevens and Ralph Nelson for a discussion of their book Digital Vernacular: Architectural Principles, Tools, and Processes.
Digital Vernacular addresses the why and how of digital fabrication in hundreds of step-by-step color images, illuminating a set of working principles and techniques that join theory with practice. Authors James Stevens and Ralph Nelson reconcile local traditions and innovations with globally accessible methods and digital toolsets. By combining ethics with hardware, the book will root you in the origins of making, ensuring a lasting and relevant reference for your studio practice.
The book opens with the origins and principles of the digital vernacular, then outlines digital vernacular tools including computer numerically controlled (CNC) mills, laser cutters, and 3D printers. You’ll even learn to create your own digital fabrication tools out of inexpensive materials. The book concludes with the processes of the digital vernacular, including techniques for removing, joining, forming, and adding.
A companion website at make-Lab.org hosts additional step-by-step processes and project outcomes.
James Stevens is an Associate Professor and the Director of makeLab, a digital fabrication studio in the College of Architecture and Design at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan, USA.
Ralph Nelson is an Associate Professor in the College of Architecture and Design at Lawrence Technological University and Principal of Loom, a collaborative design practice, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.
Calling all trivia enthusiasts and book lovers!
We’re hosting a fun, prize-filled evening of book trivia. Bring your own teams (no larger than 6 people per team) or come and we’ll pair you with new bookish friends.
The team who wins receives $25 gift cards for each person; 2nd place gets $10 gift cards. Free, sign up when you arrive (and start thinking of those creative, book-themed team names!)
Also, we’ll have a tournament at the end of the year with the winning teams. (Still TBD.)
Rule #1: The first rule of Trivia Night is that you can’t talk about Trivia Night (kidding!).
Rule #2: Teams can be up to 6 players. Come with a team or recruit one when you arrive.
Rule #3: No cell phones or any other devices can be used.
Teams work together to answer questions on paper. Scores will be announced after every round. There is no limit to the number of teams. There will be adult and children’s book clues.
You will be required to have a team name, and creativity is encouraged. Past teams have been: Little Random House on the Prairie, Bookslingers on Ice, Poets “R” We, well, you get the drift.
Grand Prize– Bragging rights and Literati Gift Cards.
Consolation Prize: There is no such thing as consolation in the cut-throat world of Trivia Night!
And may the odds be ever in your favor!
Literati is pleased to present a roundtable discussion, in conjunction with the Jean & Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, to mark the publication of Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant.
Although Anne (Chana) Kleiman—who died in 2011 at the age of 101—was the first American-born Jewish woman to publish poems in Hebrew, and Annabelle (Chana) Farmelant—who is still living and occasionally publishing—wrote a substantial body of Hebrew verse from the 1940s to the 1960s, their work is virtually unknown today, even to those familiar with Hebrew literature in America. The roundtable will discuss the singular voices of these women, introduce their captivating and wide–ranging poetry and place it in its historical, literary, and cultural contexts. The rountable will feature editor Shachar Pinsker, the translator Adriana Jacobs, Adina Kleiman (the daughter of the poet Anne Kleiman), and faculty from the Frankel Center who are experts on American Jewish Literature.
Storytellers Guild members present a program of old tales and personal stories for grownups. Free; donations accepted.annarborstorytelling.org, facebook.com/annarborstorytellers. 665-2757.
Women Writers of Ann Arbor/Ypsi meet four times a year to read their works in all genres.
Visitors and new members welcome to our Spring Read on April 16. Ask for information, RSVP or signup as member atwwaaygroup@gmail.com Website: www.wwaay.com
SAVE THE DATE
WORKSHOPS AND PEER CRITIQUES OCTOBER 15, 2016
Check website for more details
3222 Angell Hall, 435 S. State Street. Donation. 734 545-0586.wwaaygroup@gmail.com www.wwaay.com
Readings by winners of the One Pause Poetry high school poetry contest.
7 p.m., Nicola’s Books, 2513 Jackson, Westgate shopping center. Free.info@onepausepoetry.com, 585-5567.
Literati is pleased to partner with One Pause Poetry in showcasing the work of Rickey Laurentiis, Gretchen Marquette, Airea Matthews, and Ladan Osman.
Rickey Laurentiis is the author of Boy with Thorn, selected by Terrance Hayes for the2014 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and named one of the Top 16 Best Poetry Books by Buzzfeed. The recipient of a 2013 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2012 Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, his other honors include fellowships from the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Cave Canem Foundation, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy.
Gretchen Marquette is the author of May Day, and has published poems in Harper’s, the Paris Review, and Tin House. She lives and teaches in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Airea D. Matthews is a 2015 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow and the executive editor of The Offing. She is currently the Assistant Director of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she earned her MFA. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2015, American Poet,The Missouri Review, The Baffler, Callaloo, Indiana Review, WSQ and elsewhere. Her performance work has been featured at the Cannes Lions Festival, PBS’ RoadTrip Nation and NPR.
Ladan Osman is the author of The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony. Her work has appeared in American Life in Poetry, Artful Dodge,Narrative Magazine, Prairie Schooner, RHINO, and Vinyl Poetry. Her chapbook, Ordinary Heaven, appears in Seven New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook boxed set. She lives in Chicago.
Literati is delighted to host the launch of Chris McCormick’s debut, Desert Boys.
A vivid and assured work of fiction from a major new voice, following the life of a young man growing up, leaving home, and coming back again, marked by the stark beauty of California’s Mojave Desert and the various fates of those who leave and those who stay behind. This series of powerful, intertwining stories illuminates Daley Kushner’s world–the family, friends and community that have both formed and constrained him, and his new lief in San Francisco. Back home, the desert preys on those who cannot conform: an alfalfa farmer on the outskirts of town; two young girls whose curiosity leads to danger; a black politician who once served as his school’s confederate mascot; Daley’s mother, an immigrant from Armenia; and Daley himself, introspective and queer. Meanwhile, in another desert on the other side of the world, war threatens to fracture Daley’s most meaningful–and most fraught–connection to home, his friendship with Robert Karinger. A luminous debut, Desert Boys traces the development of towns into cities, of boys into men, and the haunting effects produced when the two transformations overlap. Both a bildungsroman and a portrait of a changing place, the book mines the terrain between the desire to escape and the hunger to belong.
“This is a book about place, or really like so many books about place (Dubliners, Winesburg, Ohio) two places, in this case two Californias―San Francisco on the one hand; the less familiar but finely evoked small desert community from which the narrator originates on the other. But it’s also a book about shame, two shames, the shame of where we come from, and the shame of leaving it. Through a series of quietly intimate confessions we learn how torn the teller is between past and present, small town and big city, and McCormick captures this tension beautifully in the contrast between his laconic, but frankly feeling prose and his restless formal innovation. Wise and vulnerable by turns, this is a quietly stunning debut.”―Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl
Chris McCormick was raised in the Antelope Valley. He earned his B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.F.A. at the University of Michigan, where he was the recipient of two Hopwood Awards. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Nicola’s Books is an official Children’s Book Week store and we have put together a great Special Story Time for you. We will have local picture book authors Shanda Trent and Melanie Zwegers coming who will read their books and as a special treat The Library Mouse will also stop by for a visit! So bring you youngsters and have some fun.
Melanie M Zwegers is a writer and illustrator of children’s literature. She is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan and graduated with honors and two degrees from the University of Michigan. She now lives and works in Northville, Michigan with the support and encouragement of her wonderful husband, family, and friends.
Shanda Trent has worked with young children for 30 years. She has read thousands of picture books–to her own daughters, to small groups of toddlers and preschoolers, and classrooms of elementary children. She knows what kids love, and what brings them back to a beloved book again and again. Her first book was ‘Farmer’s Market Day’ and her newest is ‘Giddy-Up Buckaroo’.
Every child can be a writer—and Library Mouse shows them how! Beloved children’s books author and illustrator Daniel Kirk wonderfully brings to life the story of Sam, a library mouse. Sam’s home was in a little hole in the wall behind the children’s reference books, and he thought that life was very good indeed; for Sam loved to read. He read picture books and chapter books, biographies and poetry, and ghost stories and mysteries. Sam read so much that finally one day he decided to write books himself! Sam shared his books with other library visitors by placing them on a bookshelf at night…until there came the time that people wanted to meet this talented author. Whatever was Sam to do? The joy of reading, writing, and sharing is brought to life in this warmhearted tale.
