Calendar

We are thrilled to welcome acclaimed journalist and author Peter Kornbluh, who accompanied President Obama on his historic visit to Cuba, to Literati Bookstore. Peter will be joined in conversation by the University of Michigan’s Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof. Refreshments will be provided thanks to UM’s Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, generous co-sponsors of this event.

About Back Channel to Cuba:

History is being made in U.S.-Cuban relations. Updated to tell the real story behind the stunning December 17, 2014 announcement by President Obama and President Castro of their move to restore full diplomatic relations, this powerful book is essential to understanding ongoing efforts toward normalization in a new era of engagement. Challenging the conventional wisdom of perpetual conflict and aggression between the United States and Cuba since 1959, Back Channel to Cuba chronicles a surprising, untold history of bilateral efforts toward rapprochement and reconciliation. William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh here present a remarkably new and relevant account, describing how, despite the intense political clamor surrounding efforts to improve relations with Havana, negotiations have been conducted by every presidential administration since Eisenhower’s through secret, back-channel diplomacy. From John F. Kennedy’s offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger’s top secret quest for normalization, to Barack Obama’s promise of a new approach, LeoGrande and Kornbluh uncovered hundreds of formerly secret U.S. documents and conducted interviews with dozens of negotiators, intermediaries, and policy makers, including Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter. They reveal a fifty-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, that provides the historical foundation for the dramatic breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba ties.

Peter Kornbluh directs the Cuba Documentation Project and the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive in Washington, DC, and is co-author, with William M. LeoGrande, of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana. Kornbluh is also the author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountabilityand Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba. He writes regularly for The Nation.

Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof is Associate Professor of History, American Culture, and Latina/o Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and New York After 1950.

We are delighted to welcome Nathan Hill in support of The Nix, a 2016 BEA buzz pick and a staff pick here at Literati.

A Nix can take many forms. In Norwegian folklore, it is a spirit who sometimes appears as a white horse that steals children away. In Nathan Hill’s remarkable first novel, a Nix is anything you love that one day disappears, taking with it a piece of your heart. It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson—college professor, stalled writer—has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn’t seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s reappeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl, who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she’s facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel’s help.

To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that take him across generations and countries, and stretch all the way back to Norway, the original home of the mysterious Nix. In doing so, Samuel will not only confront Faye’s losses, but also his own lost love, and relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself. From the suburban Midwest to New York City to the 1968 riots that rocked Chicago, and beyond, The Nix explores—with sharp humor and a fierce tenderness—the resilience of love and home, even in times of radical change

“The Nix is a mother-son psychodrama with ghosts and politics, but it’s also a tragicomedy about anger and sanctimony in America. Even the minor characters go to extremes—among them, a Home Ec teacher from Hell and an unrepentant plagiarist with presidential aspirations. ‘A maestro of being awful,’ the son calls his mom. ‘Every memory is really a scar,’ she tells him. For this mother and son, disappointment is ‘the price of hope’—a cost they will both bear. Nathan Hill is a maestro of being terrific.” — John Irving

“Pay attention. This is what a Great American Novel looks like. The Nix is culturally relevant, politically charged, historically sweeping, sad, full of yearning, sometimes dark but mostly hilarious. Nathan Hill is a literary powerhouse who will deservedly earn many comparisons to John Irving and Jonathan Franzen.” — Benjamin Percy

“Once in a while a novel arrives at the perfect moment to reflect, skewer, and provide context for the world as we know it. This—now—is that novel.” — Christina Baker Kline

Nathan Hill‘s short stories have appeared in The Iowa Review, AGNI, Gulf Coast, The Denver Quarterly, Fugue, The Gettysburg Review, and many other journals. He was the winner of the annual Fiction Prize from the journal Fiction, a finalist for the Donald Barthelme Prize in Short Prose, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of an Artist Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Literati is thrilled to launch Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein.

Children of the New World introduces readers to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and frighteningly intuitive robots. Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster. Children of the New World grapples with our unease in this modern world and how our ever-growing dependence on new technologies has changed the shape of our society. Alexander Weinstein is a visionary new voice in speculative fiction for all of us who are fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.

“Taken together, these stories present a fully-imagined vision of the future which will disturb you, provoke you, and make you feel alive. Weinstein is brilliant, incisive and fearless.” —Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

“In each of the gripping stories in Children of the New World, Alexander Weinstein offers a glimpse into an unnerving, not-so-distant, and all-too-possible future. Weinstein explores what-ifs with both wit and sensitivity, and his cautionary tales demand to be read (before it’s too late).” —Judy Budnitz, author of Nice Big American Baby

Alexander Weinstein is the Director of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and the author of the short story collection Children of the New World (Picador 2016). His fiction and translations have appeared in Cream City Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Notre-Dame Review, Pleiades, PRISM International, World Literature Today, and other journals. He is the recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and his fiction has been awarded the Lamar York, Gail Crump, Hamlin Garland, and New Millennium Prize. His stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and appear in the anthologies 2013 New Stories from the Midwest, and the 2014 & 2015 Lascaux Prize Stories. He is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and a freelance editor, and leads fiction workshops in the United States and Europe.

Literati Bookstore is thrilled to welcome Olympic gold medalist Anthony Ervin and author Constantine Markides to discuss Ervin’s memoir, Chasing Water. More event details to come, stay tuned.

Chasing Water tells the dramatic, surprising, and sometimes provocative path that Anthony Ervin has taken to become one of those captivating Olympic heroes. Not your typical sports memoir, Chasing Water also contains arresting black-and-white drawings and a graphic story extra, as well as an inventive and mercurial narrative style that morphs chapter by chapter to reflect Ervin’s restless, multifaceted life. Ervin won a gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games at the age of nineteen. He is an athlete branded with a slew of titles including being the first US Olympic swimmer of African American descent, along with Jewish heritage, who also grew up with Tourette’s syndrome. He shocked the sporting world by retiring soon after claiming two world titles following the 2000 Olympics. Auctioning off his gold medal for charity, he set off on a part spiritual quest, part self-destructive bender that involved Zen temples, fast motorcycles, tattoo parlors, and rock ’n’ roll bands. Then Ervin resurfaced in 2012 to not only make the US Olympic team twelve years after his first appearance, but to continue his career by swimming faster than ever before, and faster than anyone else. He is currently training for the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

“Here Ervin and swim trainer and journalist Markides combine talents to create a biography that is part first-hand narrative by Ervin, with Markides filling in the details and providing context. The formula works, pulling readers into Ervin’s experience of the thrill of victory and search for meaning….Featuring more depth, breadth, truth, and the effects of reckless choices than found in traditional athlete biographies, this gripping account is just in time for the gear up to the Rio 2016 Olympics. Readers will understand the psyche and life of elite athletes as never before, then cheer Ervin on in his attempt to make another Olympic team.”-–Library Journal

“A celebrated Olympian recounts how he rose to the top of his sport, crashed, and found redemption….This book, which tells his story through a narrative that interweaves the former gold medalist’s memories with commentary by his friend and colleague Markides, reveals the extreme highs and lows that characterized Ervin’s remarkable life and career….The author never flinches at revealing his less-than-perfect past, and the humility he demonstrates at coming to terms with his own egotism and personal shortcomings makes the book frequently compelling. A provocative and refreshingly honest redemption memoir.”–Kirkus Reviews

“Markides smartly combines his own journalistic account with a parallel narrative in which Ervin…explains his life and style. Some talents simply defy explanation, however, and Ervin may be in that category….The story of his comeback at 31 (ancient for a swimmer) is rendered more amazing by the contrast with what went before.”–Booklist

“Most memoirs from Olympians are puff pieces, ghost-written so blandly you fall asleep trying to make it to the end of the first chapter. Chasing Water is the opposite of that, an intimate, visceral experience you will appreciate.”–SwimSwam

“A refreshingly unexpected athlete biography void of eye-rolling, cliched, self help propaganda bullshit.”–Gary Hall, Jr., swimmer, ten-time Olympic medalist

 
Anthony Ervin is an American Olympian who resides in Los Angeles, where he continues to pursue his career as a professional swimmer, speaker, and coach. As the oldest competitor at the 2014 national championships, he won the title in the men’s 50-meter freestyle. He is currently training for the 2016 Olympic team.