Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit storytelling organization that also produces a weekly public radio show. Each month 10 storytellers are selected at random from among those who sign up to tell a 3-5 minute story on the monthly theme. The 3 judges are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Space limited, so it’s smart to arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), The Circus, 210 S. First. $10. 764-5118.
Literati is thrilled to bring Ambassador Omar Saif Ghobash to Ann Arbor in support of his book, Letters to a Young Muslim. This event will take place in the Rackham Amphitheater and is free and open to the public. Join us!
In a series of personal letters to his sons, Omar Saif Ghobash offers a short and highly readable manifesto that tackles our current global crisis with the training of an experienced diplomat and the personal responsibility of a father. Today’s young Muslims will be tomorrow’s leaders, and yet too many are vulnerable to extremist propaganda that seems omnipresent in our technological age. The burning question, Ghobash argues, is how moderate Muslims can unite to find a voice that is true to Islam while actively and productively engaging in the modern world. What does it mean to be a good Muslim?
What is the concept of a good life? And is it acceptable to stand up and openly condemn those who take the Islamic faith and twist it to suit their own misguided political agendas? In taking a hard look at these seemingly simple questions, Ghobash encourages his sons to face issues others insist are not relevant, not applicable, or may even be Islamophobic. These letters serve as a clear-eyed inspiration for the next generation of Muslims to understand how to be faithful to their religion and still navigate through the complexities of today’s world. They also reveal an intimate glimpse into a world many are unfamiliar with and offer to provide an understanding of the everyday struggles Muslims face around the globe.
Omar Saif Ghobash is the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to Russia. In addition to his post in Moscow, Ambassador Ghobash sponsors the Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation and founded the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in collaboration with the Booker Prize in London. Ambassador Ghobash studied law at Oxford and mathematics at the University of London.
On Jan. 9, local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal discuss how to book from rough draft to finished manuscript. For adult and teen (grade 6 & up) fiction and nonfiction writers. Also, Kourvo and Neal host an open house for writers to connect with one another and/or work on their projects at 7 p.m. on Jan. 23.
7-8:45 p.m., AADL Westgate Branch, Westgate shopping center, 2503 Jackson. Free. 327-8301.
Literati welcomes Bill Ayers to Ann Arbor as part of a national tour to celebrate the release of his latest book, Demand the Impossible!: A Radical Manifesto.
Demand the Impossible! is a manifesto for movement-makers. In an era defined by mass incarceration, endless war, economic crisis, catastrophic environmental destruction, and a political system offering more of the same, radical social transformation has never been more urgent. Demand the Impossible! urges us to imagine a world beyond what this rotten system would have us believe is possible. In critiquing the world around us, insurgent educator and activist Bill Ayers uncovers cracks in the system, raising our sights for radical change, and envisioning strategies for building a movement to create a more humane, balanced, and peaceful world.
“For Bill Ayers, it is the freedom of our collective imagination that links the contemporary world—ensconced as it is in pervasive militarism, racist violence, and environmental devastation—to the flourishing of our planet. This is a manifesto that should be read by everyone who wants to believe that “another world is possible.”—Angela Y. Davis, author of Abolition Democracy and Freedom is a Constant Struggle
“With huge numbers of us recognizing the need for transformative change, this ambitious and exuberant book perfectly matches its historical moment. Ayers fearlessly confronts the intersecting crises of our age—endless war, surging inequality, unchecked white supremacy and perilous planetary warming—while mapping emancipatory new possibilities. From the first page, his courage is contagious.”—Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine
“Demand the Impossible is more than a book, more than a manifesto. It is a torch. Bill Ayers’ vision for a humane future is incendiary—fire that incinerates old logics and illuminates new paths. If we do not end the violence of militarism, materialism, caging, dispossession, debt, want, ignorance, and global warming, our very survival is impossible. Read aloud.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams
Bill Ayers is a social justice activist, teacher, Distinguished Professor of Education (retired) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and author of two memoirs, Fugitive Days and Public Enemy.
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 thrilled to be the bookseller for this celebration of the University of Michigan’s 200th birthday, as the LSA bicentennial welcomes Colson Whitehead, the author, most recently, ofThe Underground Railroad.
From #1 New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad is a magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave’s adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.
Colson Whitehead is the New York Times bestselling author of The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and a recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in New York City.
This LSA Bicentennial Theme Semester event is presented with support from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and the University of Michigan Bicentennial Office. Additional support provided by: Department of History, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, Department of American Culture, Helen Zell Writers’ Program, Institute for the Humanities, Joseph A. Labadie Collection, LSA Honors Program, Native American Studies, Residential College.
Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for the Zell Visiting Writers Series, presented by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, which brings world-renowned poets and fiction writers to Helmut Stern Auditorium in the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
Mary Szybist, our Janey Lack poet this year (invited by the current second-year poets), is most recently the author of Incarnadine (Graywolf), winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. Her work has been awarded two Pushcart Prizes and has been supported by residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy. Her first book Granted won the 2004 GLCA New Writers Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A native of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, she now lives in Portland, Oregon where she teaches at Lewis & Clark College.
Storytellers Guild members present a program of old tales and personal stories for grownups.
Free; donations accepted. annarborstorytelling.org, facebook.com/annarborstorytellers. 665-2757.
August Smith is a poet. He grew up in the Upper Peninsula, resides in Boston, runs Cool Skull Press, and has published six chapbooks to date. His work has appeared in theNewerYork, Reality Beach, Dirty Chai, Banango Street, and other places. You can read some of his work here: http://august.mostlymidwest.com/.
Dylan Lancaster grew up in Northern Michigan. He started taking poetry seriously while studying at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. He now lives in Nashville, Tennessee playing music and writing poems on his 1960’s Smith Corona Sterling typewriter.
KFG is a potpourri-of-queerness, Pisces poet metamorphosed from the Great Lake State. As a spoken word poet, they are considered one of the most evocative and dynamic writers and performers to premiere in Michigan. *Blush* A multiple slam champ, literary published poet, activist, educator through The Diatribe and the Grand Rapids Creative Youth Center, they are perhaps most well known for their 90’s sitcom catch-phrase, “We do two-arms hugs in this household.” In conclusion, they like hugs.
Elysia Smith is a California transplant; re: h/s and college in Indiana. She’s learning how to undo Midwestern apology and avoidance one day at a time. Her first book, UNRULY is forthcoming from BlazeVOX books in the fall.
C. M. Keehl is part dreamer / part destroyer / but all alien. She currently lives in the suburbs of Michigan with her dog Carver. She is the poetry editor at Dirty Chai. Her most recent poems are/ forthcoming in: Up The Staircase Quarterly, Vending Machine Press, Spy Kids Review & Reality Beach. Keep your eyeballs peeled for TBA happenings @CMKeehl / cmkeehl.tumbr.com.
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including Michigan fiction writer Yasin Abdul-Muqit and Colorado poet Ambalila Hemsell.
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.
