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.
Jennifer Burd has published lyric poetry and haiku in a variety of print and online journals. She is the author of a book of poems, Body and Echo, and a book of creative nonfiction, Daily Bread: A Portrait of Homeless Men & Women of Lenawee County, Michigan. She has co-written (with Laszlo Slomovits) a children’s play based on Patricia Polacco’s picture book I Can Hear the Sun, which was produced in 2015 by Ann Arbor’s Wild Swan Theater. Jennifer received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, and she teaches online courses through the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She works as an editor and writer for HighScope Educational Research Foundation in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
Laszlo Slomovits is one of the twin brothers in Ann Arbor’s nationally-known children’s folk music duo, Gemini (GeminiChildrensMusic.com). A fine singer and multi-instrumentalist, Laszlo has given concerts throughout the U.S. and a number of his award-winning songs are featured in songbooks music teachers use throughout the country. In addition to his music for children, Laszlo has set to music the work of many poets. His recordings of these song-settings include five CDs of the poetry of ancient Sufi mystics, Rumi and Hafiz as well as “White Picture” by the Holocaust-era Czech poet Jiri Orten and “Cry of Freedom,” the poetry of contemporary American poet Linda Nemec Foster.
Literati is pleased to welcome Nick Tobier in support of his book, written with Juliane Stiegele, Utopia Toolbox: An Incitement to Radical Creativity. Please note that this event will take place on our main floor.
Think of a hybrid between something like a how-to book and a theoretical framework that asks artists, designers, planners, architects and cultural producers to consider their actions in context. Utopia Toolbox contains an anthology of texts, quotations, interviews, documentation of art and design projects, and do-it-yourself actions and performances.
The contributions in practice and in text are from a broad array of disciplinary rubrics, including philosophy, art, science, technology, economics, and spirituality. They also provide perspectives from across the stages of life–from an 8 year-old child to octogenarian physicist Hans-Peter Duerr. In content and in proximity to one another, the wide-ranging contributions offer unexpected and fresh impulses, directions, estimations, suggestions and approaches to serve as a catalyst for creativity. The book encourages new and unknown combinations of thinking and also contains a number of empty pages for readers to sketch their own ideas and thinking processes.
Nick Tobier is an Associate Professor at the Stamps School of Art and Design and the Center for Entrepreneurship in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. His focus as an artist and designer is with the social lives of public places, both in built structures and events.
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.
Reading by InsideOut Literary Arts Project (Detroit) high school poetry teacherJohn Rybicki, a widely published poet, fiction writer, and essayist whose 2012 collection, When All the World Is Old, was written in response to the long illness and death of his wife. Followed by a poetry and short fiction open mike.
The five finalists in the contest for designation as the Ann Arbor youth poet laureate read from their poetry. The finalists were chosen from among the applicants by a panel of local poets-Scott Beal, Keith Taylor, Angel Nafis, Danez Smith, and Dee Matthews-some of whom are on hand tonight to select the winner. The winner receives a contract to have a debut collection of poems published by Penmanship Books in New York.
7-9 p.m., AADL multipurpose room, 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-8301.
Diana Wege is an artist. She has painted in all fifty states and in 2000 she published Land America Leaves Wild, a book of her paintings of 23 of those states. This is her first children’s book. Diane also grew up in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor and is a graduate of Greenhills School.
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.
Andy Griffiths is the “New York Times” bestselling author of “The Day My Butt Went Psycho!”, “Zombie Butts from Uranus!”, and “Butt Wars! The Final Conflict”, as well as “The Big Fat Cow That Goes Kapow” and “The Cat on the Mat Is Flat”. In 2007, he became the first Australian author to win six children s choice awards in one year for “Just Shocking!” He is passionate about inspiring a love of books in his young readers, and works as an ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Project, which provides books and literacy resources to remote indigenous communities around Australia. Andy is a big fan of Dr. Seuss and of cauliflower. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, and is Australia s most popular children s writer.
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.
