All invited to listen to guild members swap stories or bring their own to tell.
Shutta Crum is an author, lecturer, teacher, and retired librarian, all in the field of children s books. Among her most popular titles are Thunder-Boomer (Clarion), which received four starred reviews, was nominated for a Cybil Award, and was an SLJ Best Book, a Smithsonian Magazine Notable Book, and an ALA Notable Book, and Mine (Knopf), which also received four starred reviews. She lives in Michigan. Learn more at www.shutta.com.
Kristin Bartley Lenz is a writer and social worker whose career has taken her through rural Appalachia, the California Bay Area, and inner-city Detroit. She is the coeditor of the Michigan Chapter blog for the Society of Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators. She lives in Royal Oak, Michigan.
Literati is delighted to welcome Margaret Lazarus Dean and Christopher Hebert back to Ann Arbor, in celebration of their recent (staff-favorite!) works.
Christopher Hebert is the author of the novels Angels of Detroit and The Boiling Season, winner of the 2013 Friends of American Writers award. He is also co-editor of Stories of Nation: Fictions, Politics, and the American Experience (forthcoming from UT Press). His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such publications as FiveChapters, Cimarron Review, Narrative, Interview, and the Millions. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and is editor-at-large for the University of Michigan Press. Currently he lives in Knoxville, TN, where he is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Tennessee.
Margaret Lazarus Dean received a BA in anthropology from Wellesley College and an MFA from the University of Michigan. She is the author of the novel The Time It Takes to Fall and the recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the Tennessee Arts Commission. She is an associate professor of English at the University of Tennessee.
Author’s Forum Event hosted by Evans Young. I will talk about my book Sharp Blue Search of Flame with Lolita Hernandez, author of Making Callaloo in Detroit.
Zilka Joseph has been nominated twice for a Pushcart prize and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Mantis, Kenyon Review Online, Quiddity, Review Americana, Gatronomica, Cutthroat, Rattle, The MacGuffin, The Paterson Literary Review, pacificREVIEW, Cheers To Muses: An Anthology of Contemporary Works by Asian American Women, and Uncommon Core: Poems for Living and Learning, a Neutral Zone Anthology. She has won several honors including a Hopwood award, the Elsie Choy Lee Scholarship from the Center for Education of Women, and a Zell Fellowship from the University of Michigan. Her poems have won contests, or been finalists, and received honorable mentions.
Her first chapbook Lands I Live In (Mayapple Press, 2007) was nominated for a PEN America Beyond Margins award, and her second chapbook What Dread (2011) which was a semi finalist in Finishing Line Press’ New Women’s Voices contest, was nominated for a Pushcart. Her full-length collection of poems Sharp Blue Search of Flame was published by Wayne State University Press in April 2016.
She has collaborated with other artists on interdisciplinary projects which culminated in exhibitions, performances and readings at the University of Michigan, and in art galleries and cultural centers in several cities in the US. Her poems were published along with her collaborators’ work, in India: A Light Within, and Wisdom of the Lotus. In addition, her work had been selected several times by the jurors of Asian American Woman Writers Artists Association (San Francisco, CA) for curated art and culture exhibitions and for their anthology.
The University of Michigan WCBN Radio’s Living Writers Series recorded two interviews with her, (most recently on 4/20/2016) and her work has appeared in The Living Room, Michigan Radio/NPR, an episode about diaspora, and also Art in the Air.
Her 27 years of teaching experience cover higher education to elementary levels, and a wide range of populations–senior citizens, immigrant, international and diverse groups. She has taught and/or worked at the University of Michigan, Washtenaw Community College and Oakland Community College, been a Writer in Residence at InsideOut Detroit, a teacher at the Roeper School, an ESL instructor at the Utica Adult Education Center in Michigan, a volunteer instructor at the Indo American Center and Nettelhorst School in Chicago, and a high school English teacher at St. James’ School for Boys, Calcutta. She has a BA in English and a BEd–a post-graduate teaching degree, from the University of Calcutta, India, an MA in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India, and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Currently, she teaches workshops in Ann Arbor, Metro-Detroit, and in other cities in the US, works as a manuscript coach and editor, and mentors writers in the Ann Arbor community.
The Author’s Forum is a collaboration between the U-M Institute for the Humanities, University Library, & Ann Arbor Book Festival. Additional support for this event provided by the Department of English Language and Literature.
Literati is pleased to welcome Chuck Collins in support of Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good.
As inequality grabs headlines, steals the show in presidential debates, and drives deep divides between the haves and have nots in America, class war brews. On one side, the wealthy wield power and advantage, wittingly or not, to keep the system operating in their favor—all while retreating into enclaves that separate them further and further from the poor and working class. On the other side, those who find it increasingly difficult to keep up or get ahead lash out—waging a rhetorical war against the rich and letting anger and resentment, however justifiable, keep us from seeing new potential solutions.
But can we suspend both class wars long enough to consider a new way forward? Is it really good for anyone that most of society’s wealth is pooling at the very top of the wealth ladder? Does anyone, including the one percent, really want to live in a society plagued by economic apartheid? It is time to think differently, says longtime inequality expert and activist Chuck Collins. Born into the one percent, Collins gave away his inheritance at 26 and spent the next three decades mobilizing against inequality. He uses his perspective from both sides of the divide to deliver a new narrative. Collins calls for a ceasefire and invites the wealthy to come back home, investing themselves and their wealth in struggling communities. And he asks the non-wealthy to build alliances with the one percent and others at the top of the wealth ladder.
Stories told along the way explore the roots of advantage, show how taxpayers subsidize the wealthy, and reveal how charity, used incorrectly, can actually reinforce extreme inequality. Readers meet pioneers who are crossing the divide to work together in new ways, including residents in the author’s own Boston-area neighborhood who have launched some of the most interesting community transition efforts in the nation. In the end, Collins’s national and local solutions not only challenge inequality but also respond to climate change and offer an unexpected, fresh take on one of our most intransigent problems.
“I have never read a story remotely like the one Chuck Collins has to tell. Born to the one percent, in circumstances few of us can imagine, he grew an outsized conscience and gave up his inherited wealth for a life of fighting the vicious inequality that is destroying our country. Somewhere along the way, he came to understand that the rich can be part of the solution instead of the problem and started organizing them to join in the struggle for a fair economy. The result is an electrifying challenge to the affluent as well as the one percent. ‘Come out of your gated communities and gated hearts,’ he writes, because outside lies the warmth of human solidarity.”–Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed
Chuck Collins is a researcher, campaigner, storyteller, and writer based at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org. He has written extensively on wealth inequality in previous books like 99 to 1, Wealth and Our Commonwealth (with Bill Gates Sr.), and Economic Apartheid in America as well as in The Nation, The American Prospect, and numerous other magazines and news outlets. Collins grew up in the 1 percent as the great grandson of meatpacker Oscar Mayer, but at age 26 he gave away his inheritance. He has been working to reduce inequality and strengthen communities since 1982 and in the process has cofounded numerous initiatives, including Wealth for the Common Good (now merged with the Patriotic Millionaires), United for a Fair Economy, and Divest-Invest. He is also a leader in the transition movement, and a co-founder of the Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition and the Jamaica Plain Forum, both in the Boston-area community in which he lives.
Sept. 28:Readings by Leah Zazulyer, author of a recent collection of translations of Yiddish poems by Soviet refugee Israel Emiot, and Mitzi Alvin, a veteran Detroit poet whose poems have been described as “jewels of loss and renewal.” Followed by a poetry and short fiction open mike.
Literati is proud to be the bookseller for Sam Kean’s visit to Ann Arbor. Thanks toMiSciWriters and RELATE, this New York Times-bestselling author will be visiting the University of Michigan campus to talk about science writing. This event will take place in the Rackham Amphitheatre and is free and open to the public. You can RSVP to the Facebook event here.
Sam Kean spent years collecting mercury from broken thermometers as a kid, and now he’s a writer in Washington, D.C. His stories have appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Mental Floss, Slate, and Psychology Today, among other places, and his work has been featured on “Radiolab” and NPR’s “All Things Considered,” among other shows. His books The Disappearing Spoon and The Violinist’s Thumb were national bestsellers, and both were named an Amazon “Top 5” science books of the year. The Disappearing Spoon was nominated by the Royal Society for one of the top science books of 2010, while both The Violinist’s Thumb and The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons were nominated for PEN’s literary science writing award.
Literati is delighted to once again partner with our friends at One Pause Poetry for an event with Brenda Cardenas, Laurie Ann Guerrero, and Carmen Giminez Smith. This event will take place at the beautiful White Lotus Farms and is free and open to the public.Book-signing and reception to follow with White Lotus Farms pizza for sale! More information can be found here.
Literati is pleased to welcome poets Raymond McDaniel, Christina Quintana, Sarah Sala, and Keith Taylor for the latest installment of our Poetry at Literati reading series.
Raymond McDaniel is the author of Murder, Saltwater Empire, Special Powers & Abilities, and in 2017 The Cataracts, all from Coffee House Press.
Christina Quintana is a New York-based writer of plays, poetry, and fiction with Cuban and Louisiana roots. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Raspa Magazine, Saw Palm, and Nimrod International Journal, and her chapbook of poems, The Heart Wants, has been released by Finishing Line Press.
Sarah Sala is the former editor-in-chief of the University of Michigan’s literary magazine, Oleander Review. Her poem “Hydrogen” was recently featured in the “Elements” episode of NPR’s hit show Radio Lab in collaboration with Emotive Fruition. The Ghost Assembly Line, a chapbook of her selected poetry, has been published by Finishing Line Press. Her poems appear in Poetry Ireland Review, Atlas Review, and the Stockholm Review of Literature.
Keith Taylor‘s most recent books are Fidelities and The Ancient Murrelet (published by Alice Greene & Co.), Marginalia for a Natural History (published by Black Lawrence Press), and Ghost Writers: Us Haunting Them, co-edited with Laura Kasischke (published by Wayne State University Press).
Adam Rex has written several books for young readers, including the “New York Times” bestselling “Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich “and “The True Meaning of Smekday. “His first day of school was at Lookout Mountain Elementary in Phoenix. He lives now with his wife and son in Tucson.
Christian Robinson’s award-winning books for young readers include “Josephine, ” which was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book as well as a Sibert Honor Book and “Harlem’s Little Blackbird, “which was an NAACP Image Award nominee. His latest book “Last Stop on Market Street ” earned four starred reviews and was on the “New York Times” bestseller list. This is his first book for Roaring Brook Press.
