Pamela Reynolds, Professor Emerita at Johns Hopkins University, is RC Visiting Scholar. She reads from her recent book, War in Worcester: Youth in the Apartheid State. She has received the NOMA Literary Prize.
Literati is proud to be the bookseller for the 2016 Jill Harris Memorial Lecture, presented by the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities.
Laila Lalami is the author of the novels Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award; Secret Son, which was on the Orange Prize longlist, and The Moor’s Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab American Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and was on the Man Booker Prize longlist. The Moor’s Account was also a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, the Guardian, the New York Times, and in many anthologies. She is the recipient of a British Council Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship and is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside.
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.
Michigan Notable Book Author Mardi Jo Link will discuss her memoirs, Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm and The Drummond Girls, as well as some of her new projects and the craft of writing.
Mardi’s memoir, “Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass On a Northern Michigan Farm” was an Indie Next pick, was given the 2013 Booksellers Choice Award from the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association, an Elle magazine’s Reader’s Prize, the Housatonic Book Award for Nonfiction, and was named a Michigan Notable Book. Film rights have been sold to Academy Award-winning actress, Rachel Weisz.
She has also written the true crime books, When Evil Came to Good Hart, Isadore’s Secret:Sin, Murder, and Confession in a Northern Michigan Town, and Wicked Takes the Witness Stand:A Tale of Murder and Twisted Deceit in Northern Michigan, which were each Heartland bestsellers. Her essays have appeared in Bellingham Review, Bear River Review, Creative Nonfiction, the Detroit Free Press, Publishers Weekly, Terrain, and Traverse Magazine, among other places.
Mardi Jo Link was born in Detroit and grew up in Bay City and studied journalism and agriculture at Michigan State University. She was a founder of the magazine, ForeWord Reviews, in Traverse City, Michigan, and earned her master’s degree in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte, in North Carolina.
She is the mother of three grown sons and lives in Traverse City, Michigan, with her husband, Pete, and their dog, Gretchen.
Detroit children’s book writer Jean Alicia Elster, author the African American coming-of-age tale The Colored Car, discusses the art of writing and presents awards to the winners of the AADL short story contest for 3rd-5th graders. Refreshments.
2-3 p.m., AADL multipurpose room
Awards for the Winter Term writing contests administered by the Hopwood Awards Program will be announced. A lecture by Susan Choi will follow the announcement of the awards. Susan Choi’s first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, and her second novel, American Women, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. With David Remnick she co-edited the anthology Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. Her third novel, A Person of Interest, was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2010 she was named the inaugural recipient of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award. Her latest novel is My Education (2013).
RC Alumni, current students, faculty and staff – join together for a day of sharing information to connect, renew, discover and celebrate our community.
Local writer Gregory Fournier discusses his new true crime book about John Norman Collins and the Washtenaw County coed killings of the late 1960s for which he was convicted.
3-5 p.m., Brewed Awakenings, 7025 E. Michigan Ave., suite M, Saline. Free. 681-0078.
Ten Years Later…
The 10th Annual Spring Celebration of the Made in Michigan Writers Series featuring series co-editors Michael Delp and M. L. Liebler, along with authors Desiree Cooper, Zilka Joseph, and L. E. Kimball
Complimentary light appetizers | Cash bar
Commercial parking lots available across the street for $6/vehicle. Some street parking also available.
Large selection of MMWS and regional titles available for purchase and signing
Join us as we celebrate a decade of the Made in Michigan Writers Series! Since 2006, this series has been devoted to highlighting the works of both up-and-coming and well-known Michigan writers, showcasing the state’s diverse voices. After ten wonderful years, the series has published forty-five titles of short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction and has amassed a library of over 200 authors, editors, and contributors. We are so excited for the next ten years, and we commend those who have helped us to build this house.
We will be honoring this season’s authors, as well as those who have collaborated with us over the past decade, at one of Wayne State University’s most treasured landmarks, The Hilberry Theatre. On stage, the authors will converse about literature in the Midwest, followed by a reception where authors will be available for mingling and book signings. It will be an unforgettable evening to commemorate a pinnacle celebration of our Made in Michigan Writers Series.
Ray Robertson is the author of Lives of the Poets (with Guitars): Thirteen Outsiders Who Changed Modern Music, and the novels Home Movies, Heroes, Moody Food, Gently Down the Stream, What Happened Later, and David, as well as a collection of non-fiction, Mental Hygiene: Essays on Writers and Writing. He is a contributing book reviewer to the Globe and Mail.
A twenty-year editor for Guitar Player and the founding editor of Pure Guitar magazine, Jas Obrecht has been writing about music since the mid 1970s. His current book is Early Blues: The First Stars of Blues Guitar. He wrote the first nationally published cover stories on Eddie Van Halen, Eric Johnson, Steve Lukather, Steve Morse, Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, and Joe Satriani. His other Guitar Player cover stories include Mick Ralphs, Pat Travers, Jeff Beck, Jeff Baxter, Billy Gibbons, Duane Allman, Craig Chaquico, Charlie Christian, Steve Morse, Andy Summers, Randy Rhoads, Brian May, Muddy Waters, Brian Setzer, Jimi Hendrix, Angus Young, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Neil Young, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Ry Cooder, Keith Richards, Albert Collins, and John Lennon. He written for all of the major blues magazines, as well as for scholarly journals, fanzines, and websites. His books include Masters of Heavy Metal, Blues Guitar: The Men Who Made the Music, Rollin’ & Tumblin’: The Postwar Blues Guitarists, and My Son Jimi, co-authored with James A. Hendrix. He wrote the liners for Robert Johnson’s King of Delta Blues, Blind Willie Johnson’s Dark Was the Night, and John Lee Hooker’s 50 Years: John Lee Hooker Anthology, and produced DVDs and CDs for Buckethead. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and can be reached at jasobr@earthlink.net .
