Geraldine Markel, PhD, a board certified executive coach, enhances leadership and workplace productivity. As principal of Managing Your Mind Coaching & Seminars, Geri provides systematic processes to enhance business performance and profits. Geri helps leaders, entrepreneurs and business owners cut to core issues and apply practical strategies to move from good intentions to cost-effective actions. Her style of providing feedback using compassionate candor leads to accelerated learning and change.
Dr. Markel is an educational psychologist and served as faculty in the School of Education and as seminar leader of the Instructional Design Workshop at the Executive Education Center, School of Business, University of Michigan. For over 15 years, she helped develop instructor-led and self-directed learning materials to enhance performance, productivity and effectiveness for corporate, governmental and educational organizations. As a consultant and trainer, Geri worked with companies such as Ford Motor Company, Disney Corporation, and Department of Agriculture. As a speaker, she has worked at corporate offices of VIACOM, Time Warner, Merrill Lynch, and TIAA-CREF; educational institutions such as University of Michigan, Wayne State University and Michigan State University; and law firms such as Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Kelly, Drye & Warren.
She is an award winning author; her most recent books are:
Actions Against Distractions: Managing Your Scattered, Distracted and Forgetful Mind
Defeating the 8 Demons of Distraction: Proven Strategies to Increase Productivity and Reduce Stress
Finding Happiness with Aristotle as Your Guide: Action Strategies Based on 10 Timeless Ideas
Finding Your Focus: Practical Strategies for the Everyday Problems Facing Adults with ADD
On October 21st, Literati is thrilled to welcome Margaret Atwood to Ann Arbor (at Rackham Auditorium) in celebration of her most recent novel, Hag-Seed, part of the Hogarth Shakespeare project. Click the button below to purchase a ticket.
About Hag-Seed
Hag-Seed is a re-visiting of Shakespeare’s play of magic and illusion, The Tempest, and will be the fourth novel in the Hogarth Shakespeare series.
In Margaret Atwood’s novel take on Shakespeare’s original, theater director Felix has been unceremoniously ousted from his role as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Festival. When he lands a job teaching theater in a prison, the possibility of revenge presents itself–and his cast find themselves taking part in an interactive and illusion-ridden version of The Tempest that will change their lives forever.
There is a lot of Shakespearean swearing in this new Tempest adventure–but also a mischief, curiosity and vigor that is entirely Atwood.
About Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her latest book of short stories is Stone Mattress: Nine Tales (2014). Her MaddAddam trilogy–the Giller and Booker prize-nominated Oryx and Crake (2003),The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013)–is currently being adapted for HBO. The Door is her latest volume of poetry (2007). Her most recent non-fiction books are Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (2008) and In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (2011). Her novels include The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; and The Robber Bride, Cat’s Eye, The Handmaid’s Tale–coming soon as a TV series with MGM and Hulu–and The Penelopiad. Her new novel, The Heart Goes Last, was published in September 2015. Forthcoming in 2016 are Hag-Seed, a novel revisitation of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, for the Hogarth Shakespeare Project, and Angel Catbird–with a cat-bird superhero–a graphic novel with co-creator Johnnie Christmas (Dark Horse.) Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.
About the Event
This event will take place at Rackham Auditorium on the campus of The University of Michigan on October 21st, 2016, at 7pm. Doors for seating will open at 6:15. Tickets are $30, and include a hardcover copy of the novel to be picked up at the venue the day of the event. Other titles by Margaret Atwood will be available to purchase in the lobby. Ticket holders may also have books signed. Due to venue time constraints, the signing will be limited. Those wishing to have more than 3 titles signed are asked to wait until the end of the signing. Books may be personalized.
Elizabeth Diller is a founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), an interdisciplinary design studio that works at the intersection of architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts. With Ricardo Scofidio, Diller was the first in the field of architecture to receive the “genius” award from the MacArthur Foundation, which stated “their work explores how space functions in our culture and illustrates that architecture, when understood as the physical manifestation of social relationships, is everywhere, not just in buildings.”
DS+R established its identity through independent, theoretical, and self-generated projects before coming to international prominence with two of the most important planning initiatives in New York: the High Line, and the redesign of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts campus. In addition to the recently openend Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center at Columbia University, and The Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles, Diller is Principal-in-Charge of The Shed, a new center for artistic invention, and the renovation and expansion of MoMA, both in New York. Diller graduated from the Cooper Union School of Architecture in 1979, and taught at the school from 1981-1990. She is a Professor of Architecture at Princeton University.
Diller is a recipient of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Design Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Design, and the Brunner Prize from the American Academy of the Arts and Letters. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 2013, Diller was awarded the Barnard Medal of Distinction, and DS+R was presented a Centennial Medal of Honor from the American Academy in Rome. Diller was selected by Time magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.”
The John Dinkeloo Memorial Lecture was established to recognize John Dinkeloo’s extraordinary contributions to architecture, to honor his distinguished professional work and to pay tribute to this highly respected alumnus of the Architecture Program at the University of Michigan.
Lecture by this nationally recognized advocate for people with disabilities, author ofWhat Matters: Reflections on Disability, Community and Love.
Noon, 100 Hatcher Grad Library Gallery, enter from the Diag. Free.
The book club offers an intimate, small-group discussion with RC alumnus Rick Petrie, Tuesday, January 17 at 6 pm. We will discuss The Drifter before Nick’s reading from his newest book, Burning Bright, at 7 pm.
Limited to 12 people. To participate, you must purchase the book discussion title from Nicola’s (at a 15 percent discount) and pre-order or purchase the new release title (at a 10 percent discount).
To sign up, contact the store directly at 734-662-0600.
Nick Petrie received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington, won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan Residential College, and his story At the Laundromat won the 2006 Short Story Contest in theThe Seattle Review, a national literary journal. A husband and father, he runs a home-inspection business in Milwaukee.
“Lots of characters get compared to my own Jack Reacher, but Petrie’s Peter Ash is the real deal.”–Lee Child.
In the new novel featuring war veteran Peter Ash, an action hero of the likes of Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne (Lincoln Journal-Star), Ash has a woman’s life in his hands and her mystery is stranger than he could ever imagine.
War veteran Peter Ash sought peace and quiet among the towering redwoods of northern California, but the trip isn’t quite the balm he’d hoped for. The dense forest and close fog cause his claustrophobia to buzz and spark, and then he stumbles upon a grizzly, long thought to have vanished from this part of the country. In a fight of man against bear, Peter doesn’t t favor his odds, so he makes a strategic retreat up a nearby sapling.
There, he finds something strange: a climbing rope, affixed to a distant branch above. It leads to another, and another, up through the giant tree canopy, and ending at a hanging platform. On the platform is a woman on the run. From below them come the sounds of men and gunshots.
Just days ago, investigative journalist June Cassidy escaped a kidnapping by the men who are still on her trail. She suspects they’re after something belonging to her mother, a prominent software designer who recently died in an accident. June needs time to figure out what’s going on, and help from someone with Peter’s particular set of skills.
Only one step ahead of their pursuers, Peter and June must race to unravel this peculiar mystery. What they find leads them to an eccentric recluse, a shadowy pseudo-military organization, and an extraordinary tool that may change the modern world forever.
Talk by this Maltese American cartoonist and journalist who’s best known for his graphic historical novel Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, a collection of oral histories from elderly Palestinians who witnessed a mass murder in the 1956 Suez War.
5 p.m., Michigan Theater. Free. 668-8463.
RC Creative Writing alumna Carrie Smith joins our book club to talk about and sign her new novel Forgotten City. Everyone is welcome.
Literati is pleased to continue our partnership with TEDxUofM as the on-site bookseller for the conference. The 8th annual TEDxUofM conference will be held on Wednesday, February 8th from 6-9pm at the Power Center for the Performing Arts. Join us for an evening filled with unique stories and revolutionary ideas as we celebrate “ideas worth spreading” from across the University of Michigan community.
Learn more and buy your ticket today at tedxuofm.com/attend. Student tickets are available for $12, non-student tickets are available for $20.
Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for staff-favorite Rebecca Solnit’s visit to Ann Arbor. Rebecca Solnit will deliver the Jill S. Harris memorial lecture related to her book Hope in the Dark, followed by a question and answer period with the audience. ASL interpretation will be provided.
In Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit has written about hope as not optimism, the belief that everything will be fine, but as uncertainty: as an uncertain future that leaves us room to act, as the possibility that we can shape that future in some way. Drawing from histories of popular power and civil society, of forgotten victories and remarkable campaigns, she has made the case for remembering our power, for using it, and for not assuming we know what will happen—the case against the certainty that underlie both optimism and pessimism. In her book A Paradise Built in Hell, she looked at how ordinary people are often resourceful, altruistic, and empathic in disaster, forming fleeting democracies and finding purpose and meaning. In this talk she’ll look at the state of hope in the present moment and what disasters like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina can tell us about political crises and civil society, drawing on both books and more recent political events.
Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of eighteen or so books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster, including a trilogy of atlases and the books Men Explain Things to Me; The Faraway Nearby; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Wanderlust: A History of Walking; and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at Harper’s.
