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.
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including Rwandan fiction writer Clarisse Baleja Saidi, who writes about homes and faithfulness, and Academy of American Poets Prize winner Courtney Faye Taylor.
The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends – a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.
Historian and author, Andy Robertshaw will examine the nature of trench warfare on the Western Front using the example of the trenches around Ypres, Belgium, in early 1917. His research is based on a reconstruction of trenches near Railway Wood which he built in 2012 as research for his book 24 Hour Trench. Andy will begin the evening with a meet and greet, which will then segway into his presentation on trench warfare, followed by a book signing. During the book signing you’ll be able to spend more time getting to know the author.
This event begins at 7:00pm, doors open at 6:30pm.
Admission: Members are $5/Non-members $10
Tickets are on sale now!
Yankee Air Museum, 47884 D Street, Belleville. $5. 734-483-4030.megan.dziekan@yankeeairmuseum.org http://yankeeairmuseum.org/events/ [map]
Nick Offerman is a man of many talents: actor on stage and screen, humorist, author of two New York Times bestsellers: Paddle Your Own Canoe and Gumption, and a woodworker. This fall, he is releasing the humorous how-to guide GOOD CLEAN FUN: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop (scheduled for release on October 18), featuring how-to, mirth, fashion tips, recipes, odes to wood, and assorted tomfoolery. He will be stopping by the Michigan Theater as part of an exclusive 12-stop tour in honor of the book’s release.
Lovers of all things crafty are invited to join him for a good ol’ fashioned discussion & book signing, where you will get to know more about the craftsman side of Offerman as well as the entire Offerman Woodshop team. In the words of Offerman himself, “you will find that making things with your hands brings you solace (when you’re not cussing out a visible glue seam) and better hand-eye coordination.”
Click here to purchase tickets
http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/080050FCD7B25BF5
Tickets $39.50 and $49.50; limited Gold Circle seating also available. Ticketholders will receive a copy of Good Clean Fun, available for pickup the night of the event in the theater lobby.
Presented in partnership with Nicola’s Books.
Nestled among the glitz and glitter of Tinseltown is a testament to American elbow grease and an honest-to-god hard day’s work: Offerman Woodshop. Captained by hirsute woodworker, actor, comedian, and writer Nick Offerman, the shop produces not only fine handcrafted furniture, but also fun stuff kazoos, baseball bats, ukuleles, even mustache combs.
Now Nick and his ragtag crew of champions want to share their experiencesof working atthe Woodshop, tell you all about their passion for the discipline of woodworking, and teach you how to make a handful of their most popular projects along the way. This book will take readers behind the scenes of the woodshop, both inspiring and teaching them to make their own projects and besotting them with the infectious spirit behind the shop and itscomplement of dusty wood-elves.
In these pages you will find a variety of projects for every skill level, with personal, accessible instructions by the OWS woodworkers themselves; and, what’s more, this tutelage will be augmented by mouth-watering color photos (Nick calls it “wood porn”). You will also find writings by Nick, offering recipes for both comestibles and mirth, humorous essays, odes to his own woodworking heroes, insights into the ethos of woodworking in modern America, and other assorted tomfoolery.
Whether you ve been working in your own shop for years, or if holding this stack of compressed wood pulp is as close as you ve ever come to milling lumber, or even if you just love Nick Offerman’s brand of bucolic yet worldly wisdom, you ll find”Good Clean Fun”full of useful, illuminating, and entertaining information.
L.E. Kimball has her MFA in creative writing from Northern Michigan University. She is an associate editor for Passages North literary journal. She is also the author of A Good High Place and has been published in journals such as Alaska Quarterly Review and Gray’s Sporting Journal. Most of the year she lives off the grid on a trout stream with her son, Josh, and her English shepherd, Maggie.
All invited to listen to guild members swap stories or bring their own to tell.
Kirsten Pagacz, former 20-year OCD sufferer, felt a real sense of responsibility to share what she learned about OCD with other OCD sufferers and their families. That’s exactly why she wrote the self-help book, “Leaving the OCD Circus,” published by Red Wheel, Weiser, Conari Press who are located in Newburyport, Mass. Kirsten knew pitching her book idea was a long shot, especially as a first time author, but at one time, getting out of the clutches of OCD and living a joyful, healthy, well-balanced life was a long shot, too!
Pagacz says, her motivation to get up at 5am every morning to write content for her book, before starting her long work day at Retro-a-go-go!, was always to help other sufferers get onto the path of their big happy life, faster than she did.
Literati is pleased to partner with our friends at the Children’s Literacy Network for Bookplates, an event with beloved children’s author Alfred Slote; journalist and author of Endzone, John U. Bacon; and Emmy Award-winning producer, director, writer, and editor Jonathan Hock.
To puchase tickets, or for any questions about this event, please reach out to the Children’s Literacy Network here. The mission of CLN is to give all children in Washtenaw County an equal opportunity to develop a love of reading and books. Their programs include the following, which have provided over 200,000 books to children and families: Staying in Closer Touch, Uniting incarcerated parents and their children through reading; Mothers and Babies, It’s never too early to start reading; Read to Kids, Parents and their pre-schooler earn books for the family; Summer Book Program, Summertime reading to help narrow the achievement gap; and Summer Bookmobile, Bringing books to under-resourced neighborhoods.
Literati is pleased to be the bookseller for Susan Stellin and Graham MacIndoe’s visit to Ann Arbor. Susan and Graham will discuss their book Chancers: Addiction, Prison, Recovery, Love at the University of Michigan, sponsored by the Crime and Justice Minor Program.
In this powerful dual memoir, a reporter and a photographer tell their gripping story of falling in love, the heroin habit that drove them apart, and the unlikely way a criminal conviction brought them back together.
From their harrowing portrayal of the ravages of addiction to the stunning chain of events that led to Graham’s arrest and imprisonment at Rikers Island, Chancersunfolds in alternating chapters that offer two perspectives on a relationship that ultimately endures against long odds. Susan, a tenacious reporter, follows Graham down the rabbit hole of the American criminal justice system, determined to keep him from becoming another casualty of the war on drugs. Graham gives a stark, riveting description of his slide from brownstone Brooklyn to a prison cell, his gut-wrenching efforts to get clean, and his fight to avoid getting exiled far away from his son and the life he built over twenty years.
Beautifully written, brutally honest, yet filled with suspense and hope, Chancerswill resonate with anyone who has been touched by the heartache of addiction, the nightmare of incarceration, or the tough choice of leaving or staying with someone who is struggling on the road to recovery.
Literati is thrilled to welcome artist Michele Oka Doner in support of her most recent work, Into the Mysterium, a book that reveals the wondrous marine creatures deep in the heart of the endangered oceans that cover most of our planet.
With the oceans covering over 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, our planet can be called a marine planet. Beneath the waves are millions of remarkable creatures—beautiful big whales, dangerous jellyfish, legions of phytoplankton—but also, perhaps least known, are the marine invertebrates who make up an essential part of marine life. At the University of Miami, Florida, one museum is devoted to the study of Atlantic and Eastern Pacific marine invertebrates—over 93,000 specimens. Many of them were pulled from the Gulf of Panama, throughout the Caribbean, the Florida Keys, and the eastern Pacific over the last fifty years. They represent creatures that may never be seen again as the oceans grow ever more polluted and as global warming wreaks havoc on these ecosystems. Here, in lavishly beautifully photographs, nearly 100 of the rarest, most wondrous, mystifying, and entrancing specimens are brought into the light. From rare seahorses to now extinct corals, these invertebrates leave one gasping again at the extraordinary beauty and mystery of our world.
Michele Oka Doner is an internationally renowned artist whose career spans four decades. The breadth of her artistic production encompasses sculpture, furniture, jewelry, public art, functional objects, video, as well as costume and set design. She is well-known for creating numerous public art installations throughout the United States, including Radiant Site at New York’s Herald Square subway, Flight at Washington’s Reagan International Airport, and A Walk on the Beach at the Miami International Airport. Her artwork can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Louvre, the Yale Art Gallery, the Princeton University Art Museum, and many others. (Author photo: Bruce Weber.)
