Literat is pleased to welcome some soon-to-be graduates of the University of Michigan’s Creative Writing undergraduate program to read from their theses. More information to come!
Written and directed by RC Creative Writing student Clare Higgins.
AUDREY KELLAN is a brash, well-spoken but socially clueless young woman in her early twenties who has recently had to leave her university due to a dangerous “incident”. She moves back in with her mother while attending some court-mandated therapy before she is allowed back at school. Meanwhile, she finds a job at a local comic shop, befriends slacker and secret beat poet, REN, and reluctantly makes a friend or two at therapy, as well. Her tense relationship with her mother starts to lift as Audrey discovers new romance in her therapy group: a young man named ADAM who, though they have barely spoken, is bound to be her soul-mate. Meanwhile, CALEB, another young man in the group who is dealing with problems of his own tries to get closer to Audrey, to her constant rebuff, eventually earning her friendship. As Audrey becomes more connected in her hometown, she believes she is making the kind of progress others want from her. But when she is deemed still unfit to return to school, and her therapist warns her she might be making the same mistakes she made leading up to “the incident”, Audrey leans into disaster. Will she find her way out of her own chaos, or will she remain nothing but Loveless in Lakewood?
Lora Bex Lempert discusses her book Women Doing Life: Gender, Punishment and the Struggle for Identity, which was selected as one of the Library of Michigan’s 2017 Michigan Notable Books. This is her only public library stop on the MNB tour.
One third of the world’s imprisoned women are in the United States, and Women Doing Life shines a spotlight on the experiences of 72 women serving life sentences in Michigan. Through in-depth interviews, Lempert brings these marginalized women back into the center of the public arena, drawing attention to their complicated, contradictory, and yet compelling lives. This fascinating study looks at the ways women grow and create meaningful lives in the most restrictive of environments.
This program is made possible thanks to support from the Michigan Humanities Council, the Library of Michigan, the Library of Michigan Foundation, Meijer, and the Michigan Center for the Book.
Saline District Library, 555 N. Maple Road, Saline. Free. 734-429-5450.www.salinelibrary.org
Poets:
Jennifer Burd has had poetry published in numerous print and online journals. She is author of a full-length book of poems, Body and Echo (2010; PlainView Press), a chapbook with CD of original poems set to music by Laszlo Slomovits, Receiving the Shore (2016, Little Light Publications), and a book of creative nonfiction, Daily Bread: A Portrait of Homeless Men & Women of Lenawee County, Michigan (Bottom Dog Press; 2009). Her newest collection of poetry, Days’ Late Blue, is scheduled to be published by Cherry Grove Editions in July 2017. She is co-author of a children’s play based on Patricia Polacco’s book I Can Hear the Sun, which was produced by Wild Swan Theatre of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2015. Burd received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in Seattle. She currently teaches writing and literature classes at Jackson College and Washtenaw Community College, both in Michigan, as well as creative writing classes online through The Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis, MN.
Saleem Peeradina is the author of First Offence (Newground, 1980), Group Portrait (OUP, 1992), Meditations on Desire (Ridgeway Press, 2003), Slow Dance (Ridgeway Press, 2010), and Final Cut (Valley Press, 2016). He edited Contemporary Indian Poetry in English (Macmillan, 1972), one of the earliest and most widely used texts in courses on South Asian literature. The Ocean in My Yard, a prose memoir of growing up in Bombay, was published by Penguin Books, in 2005. His next book, Heart’s Beast : New and Selected Poems is forthcoming in early 2017. Meditations on Desire was published in Arabic translation by Kalima Publishers in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
His poetry is represented in most major anthologies of Indian, South Asian, and Asian American writing including The Oxford India Anthology of Poetry (1994), Living in America: Fiction and Poetry by South Asian-American Writers (1995), Contours of the Heart (1996), Uncommon Wealth (1997), Vespers: Contemporary American Poems of Religion and Spirituality (2003), The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poetry (2008), and 60 Indian Poets, Penguin Books (2008).
The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poets (1994) carries an entry on Peeradina. Peeradina has given readings all over the world. In 2003, he served as writer-in-residence at American College, Madurai, India, and at Lenoir-Rhyne College, NC. In 2009-10, he was writer-in-residence at The Chelsea Public Library, MI. Peeradina is Professor Emeritus at Siena Heights University, Adrian, Michigan.
Laz Slomovits: Born in Budapest, Hungary, Laz and his twin brother emigrated with their parents after the 1956 Revolution and lived in Israel for three years before moving to the United States. Living in several countries as they were growing up gave San and Laz a chance to see and appreciate many different ways of life, as well as exposing them to the music and instruments of various cultures. They grew up hearing a rich variety of music at home. Their father, a fine singer and a Cantor in the synagogue, taught them everything from religious music and Italian opera, to Hungarian and Yiddish folk songs. Their mother, though not a musician, nevertheless had a powerful impact on their choice of careers. “The music comes from our father,” the brothers say, “but whatever it takes to get up in front of an audience and put a song across, that comes from our mother’s spirit.”
A longtime New Orleans resident, Sinclair is an Ann Arbor counterculture legend who is also known for his vigorous blues- and jazz-steeped poetry, mostly on cultural and artistic themes, which he often performs with a jazz ensemble. Tonight he reads selections of his prose and poetry from It’s All Good: A John Sinclair Reader.
4:20-6:20 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757.
Literati is pleased to be the bookseller for Agata Tuszyńska’s visit to the University of Michigan in support of her latest book, Family History of Fear. This event is organized by the Copernicus Program in Polish Studies, part of UM’s Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia.
Every family has its own history. Many families carry a tragic past. Like the author’s mother, many Poles did not tell their children a complete story of their wartime experiences. Agata Tuszyńska was nineteen years old when her mother told her that she was Jewish—and began to tell her stories of the family’s secret past in Poland. In Family History of Fear, Tuszyńska investigates her past and writes of her journey to uncover her family’s history during World War II—of her mother, entering the Warsaw Ghetto at age eight, escaping just before the fateful uprising, and then living “hidden on the other side.” She writes of her relatives and their mysterious pasts, as she tries to make sense of the hatred of Jews in her country.
Agata Tuszyńska is an award winning journalist, scholar, and internationally renowned author. Her latest works include Vera Gran (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2010), The Fiancée of Bruno Schulz, and Family History of Fear, released in English in Spring 2016 by Knopf.
Readings by featured poets, preceded by a poetry open mike.
Anthony Zick, a member of the 2008 Ann Arbor Youth Poetry Slam team featured in the HBO documentary Brave New Voices.
7-9 p.m. (sign-up begins at 6:30 p.m.), Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry.
On April 3, local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal discuss the difference between traditional and self-publishing and examine the benefits and drawbacks of each path. 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 Apr. 17.
Keith Taylor has authored or edited 16 books and chapbooks, including his most recent small collection, Fidelities (Alice Greene and Co., 2015). His last full length collection was If the World Becomes So Bright, and his next one, The Bird-while, will be published by Wayne State University Press in February, 2017. He has also co-edited several collections of fiction and non-fiction, including a recent collection of contemporary Michigan ghost stories. His poems, stories, reviews and translations have appeared widely in North America and in Europe. He has received Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. He teaches at the University of Michigan where he also serves as Associate Editor of Michigan Quarterly Review and director of the Bear River Writers Conference. He spends his summers teaching at the University of Michigan Biological Station near Pellston.
IIllustrator and children’s author Tom Pohrt grew up in the automobile-manufacturing town of Flint, Michigan. A self-taught artist whose love of animals is evident in his artwork, Pohrt has been interested in writing and drawing ever since he was a little boy. Despite his lack of guidance as a youngster, Pohrt has become a well-established illustrator, working with texts by authors such as Philippa Pierce, Julia Durango, and Jim Harrison as well as penning the text for two self-illustrated books featuring his original stories. “The precise, delicate lines of his drawings, coupled with his slightly moody, sepia-toned palette, suggest antique etchings,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor in reviewing Pohrt’s work for Howard Norman’s Trickster and the Fainting Birds, the critic dubbing the picture book “beautifully designed and presented.”
Pohrt is the winner of the Lee Bennett Hopkins Award for Children’s Poetry, 2004, for The Wishing Bone and Other Poems by Stephen Mitchell; American Library Association Notable Children’s Book designation, 2004, for The Little Gentleman by Philippa Pearce.
The Bird-while is a collection of forty-nine poems that meditate on the nature-both human and non-human-that surrounds us daily. Taylor is in the company of naturalist poets such as Gary Snyder and Mary Oliver-poets who often drew from an Emersonian sensibility to create art that awakens the mind to its corresponding truths in the natural world. The book ranges from the longer poem to the eight line, unrhymed stanza similar to that of the T’ang poet Han-Shan. And without section breaks to reinforce the passing of time, the collection creates greater fluidity of movement from one poem to the next, as if there is no beginning or end, only an eternal moment that is suspended on the page. Tom Pohrt’s original illustrations are scattered throughout the text, adding a stunning visual element to the already vivid language. The book moves from the author’s travel accounts to the destruction of the natural world, even species extinction, to more hopeful poems of survival and the return of wildness. The natural rhythm is at times marred by the disturbances of the twenty-first century that come blaring into these meditations, as when a National Guard jet rumbles over the treeline upsetting a hummingbird, and yet, even the hummingbird is able to regain its balance and continue as before. At its core, Taylor’s collection is a reminder of Emerson’s idea that natural facts are symbols of spiritual facts.
Literati is pleased to welcome Knight-Wallace Fellow Erica Westly in celebration of the paperback release of Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Made the Game, a finalist for the 2017 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting.
If you think softball is just a “women’s version” of the great American pastime of baseball—well, think again. Fastpitch softball is one of the most widely played sports in the world, with tens of millions of active participants in various age groups. But the origins of this beloved sport and the charismatic athletes who helped it achieve prominence in the mid-twentieth century have been largely forgotten, until now.
Fastpitch brings to life the eclectic mix of characters that make up softball’s vibrant 129-year history. From its humble beginnings in 1887, when it was invented in a Chicago boat club and played with a broomstick, to the rise in the 1940s and 1950s of professional-caliber company-sponsored teams that toured the country in style, softball’s history is as diverse as it is fascinating. Though it’s thought of today as a woman’s sport, fastpitch softball’s early years featured several male stars, such as the vaudeville-esque Eddie Feigner, whose signature move was striking out batters while blindfolded. But because softball was one of the only team sports that women were allowed to play competitively, it took on added importance for female athletes. Top fastpitch teams of the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, such as the New Orleans Jax Maids and Connecticut’s Raybestos Brakettes, gave women access to employment and travel opportunities that would have been unavailable to them otherwise. At a time when female athletes had almost no prospects, softball offered them a chance to flourish. Women put off marriage and moved across the country just for a shot at joining a strong team.
Told from the perspective of such influential players as Bertha Ragan Tickey, who set strikeout records and taught Lana Turner to pitch, and Joan Joyce, who struck out baseball legend Ted Williams and helped found a professional softball league with Billie Jean King, Fastpitch chronicles softball’s rich history and its uncertain future (as evidenced by its controversial elimination from the 2012 Olympics and the mounting efforts to have it reinstated). A celebration of this unique American sport and the role it plays in our culture today, Fastpitch is as entertaining as it is inspiring.
Erica Westly is a journalist whose work has appeared in Slate, Wired, The Smart Set, Self, Esquire, Popular Science, and The New York Times. Fastpitch is her first book.
