All writers welcome to share and discuss their poetry and short fiction. Sign up for new participants begins at 6:45 p.m.
Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for the Zell Visiting Writers Series at the University of Michigan. More information about the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, including a full calendar of visiting writers, can be found here.
Laura Kasischke was raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, 2012, for Space, in Chains. She has published nine novels, one short story collection, and eight books of poetry, most recently The Infinitesimals. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several Pushcart Prizes and numerous poetry awards and her writing has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Harper’s and The New Republic. She has a son and step-daughter and lives with her family and husband in Chelsea, Michigan. She is Allan Seager Colleagiate Professor of English Language & Literature at the University of Michigan.
Storytellers Guild members present a program of old tales and personal stories for grownups.
Free; donations accepted.annarborstorytelling.org, facebook.com/annarborstorytellers.
U-M drama lecturer Kate Mendeloff directs RC students in scenes from Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Tony Kushner’s celebrated 2-play series exploring the apocalyptic fears at the heart of contemporary culture, and ‘Night Mother, Marsha Norman’s controversial 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about a divorced woman, living with her mother, who chooses suicide in an effort to take control of her own life.
U-M drama lecturer Kate Mendeloff directs RC students in scenes from several contemporary plays on race in America.
All invited to read and discuss their poetry or short stories. Bring about 6 copies of your work to share. Hosted by local poets and former college English teachers Joe Kelty and Ed Morin.
Literati is delighted to be the bookseller for Margot Lee Shetterly’s visit to Ann Arbor in support of her book, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. Margot will speak at Rackham Auditorium (915 E. State Street) at 4pm, and then participate in a fireside chat at Stamps Auditorium on North Campus at 6:30pm, with a signing to follow.
Audiences of all backgrounds will be captivated by the phenomenal true story of the black “human computers” who used math to change their own lives—and their country’s future. Set against the rich backdrop of World War II, the Space Race, the Civil Rights Era, and the burgeoning fight for gender equality, this talk brings to life the stories of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, who worked as mathematicians at NASA during the golden age of space travel. Teaching math at segregated schools in the South, they were called into service during the WWII labor shortages. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had jobs worthy of their skills at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, in Hampton, Virginia. Even as Jim Crow laws segregated them from their white counterparts, the women of this all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. They were part of a group of hundreds of black and white women who, over the decades, contributed to some of NASA’s greatest successes.
In this keynote, Margot Lee Shetterly talks about race, gender, science, the history of technology, and much else. She shows us the surprising ways that women and people of color have contributed to American innovation while pursuing the American Dream. In sweeping, dramatic detail, she sheds light on a forgotten but key chapter in our history, and instills in us a sense of wonder, and possibility.
Margot Lee Shetterly grew up in Hampton, Virginia, where she knew many of the women in her book Hidden Figures. She is an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow and the recipient of a Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grant for her research on women in computing. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Readings by WSU English professor Caroline Maun, a widely published poet whose collections include The Sleeping and What Remains, and Cruel Garters journal editor Glen Armstrong, an Oakland University writing professor who has published several chapbooks. Followed by a poetry and short fiction open mike.
Feb. 3 & 4. RC students direct and perform this popular semiannual 90-minute program of short scenes on a variety of topics and in a variety of styles, many written by RC students.
