Dr. Anan Ameri is the founding director of the Arab American National Museum (AANM), the only cultural institution in the United States that documents, preserves and presents the history, culture and contributions of Arab Americans. She joined the Museum’s parent organization ACCESS in 1997 and retired from AANM in 2013.
Anan Ameri was born in Syria and grew up in Amman, Jordan, where she earned a B.A. in Sociology at the University of Jordan. She also holds an M.A. in Sociology from Cairo (Egypt) University and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Wayne State University in Detroit. Before immigrating to the U.S., Ameri worked as a television producer and as an educator and community organizer in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. Prior to her ACCESS/AANM tenure, she was executive director and national president of the Palestine Aid Society of America in Washington, D.C.; a Fellow at the Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College; and a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
Under her aegis, AANM has received numerous awards, among them a national Coming Up Taller Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities for exemplary youth after-school programs. Ameri herself has been honored many times, receiving recognition as a “Michiganian of the Year” from The Detroit News; a “Woman of Wayne” from her alma mater Wayne State University; and “Arab American Businesswoman of the Year” from the Arab American Women’s Business Council. In 2016, she was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.
Ameri is a respected author and editor with several titles to her credit, including Telling Our Story: The Arab American National Museum (2007, AANM); Arab Americans in Detroit: A Pictorial History (2001, Arcadia); and Etching Our Own Image: Voices from the Arab American Art Movement (2007, Cambridge Scholars Press). She was a contributing author and co-editor of The Arab American Encyclopedia (2000, UXL) and the school textbook Daily Life of Arab Americans in the 21st Century (2011, Greenwood Press).
Literati is pleased to welcome Toby Altman and Katie Hartsock in support of their most recent publications.
Toby Altman is the author of Arcadia, Indiana (Plays Inverse, 2017) as well as five previous chapbooks, including Security Theater (Present Tense Pamphlets, 2016). His poems can or will be found in Crazyhorse, Jubilat, Lana Turner, and other journals. He is currently completing a PhD in Poetry and Poetics at Northwestern University.
Katie Hartsock‘s debut poetry collection, Bed of Impatiens, was published by Able Muse Press. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Hotels, Motels, and Extended Stays, published by Toadlily Press in their 2014 Quartet Series, and Veritas Caput (Passim Editions, 2015). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Crab Orchard Review, DIAGRAM, Hanging Loose, H_NGM_N, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere.
2-4 p.m., Ann Arbor District Library Freespace (3rd floor), 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 971-5763.
Tillinghast is the author of twelve books of poetry including, most recently, Selected Poems (2008) and Wayfaring Stranger (2012). Using formal constraint to shape and sharpen his examinations of historical and personal events, Tillinghast is often concerned with the elusive nature of home. Poet Floyd Skloot, reviewing The Stonecutter’s Hand (1995) for the Harvard Review, observed that in those poems, “the urgency—the impulse to go—rises from a need to strip the self down to its essence, to relocate intimacy and a sense of community by immersing himself in remoteness.”
Tillinghast has traveled widely in Europe, America, Asia, and the Middle East. Many of his poems are informed by his travels, which have been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the British Council, the Irish Arts Council, the American Research Institute in Turkey, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. He has also received the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship from Harvard. He is the winner of the Ann Stanford Prize for Poetry and the James Dickey Poetry Prize. He has reviewed poetry extensively for the New York Times Book Review, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New Republic, and other periodicals.
In 2000 Tillinghast founded the Bear River Writers’ Conference, which he directed until 2005, when he moved to Ireland. In 2011 he moved back to the United State, and divides his year between Hawaii and Sewanee, Tennessee.
Book: Journeys Into The Mind of the World
Renowned poet Richard Tillinghast’s wanderlust and restless spirit are nearly as well known as his verses. This book of essays captures that penchant to wander, yet Journeys into the Mind of the World is not merely a compilation of travel stories—it is a book of places. It explores these chosen locations—Ireland, England, India, the Middle East, Tennessee, Hawaii—in a deeper way than would be typical of travel literature, attempting to enter not just the world, but “the mind of the world”—the roots and history of places, their political and cultural history, spiritual, artistic, architectural, and ethnic dimensions.
Behind each essay is the presence, curiosity, and intelligence of the author himself, who uses his experience of the places he visits as a way of bringing the reader into the equation. Tillinghast illuminates his travels with a brilliant eye, a friendly soul, and eclectic knowledge of a variety of disparate areas—Civil War history, Venetian architecture, Asian cultures, Irish music, and the ways of out-of-the-way people. This attention to history and cultural embeddedness lends unique perspectives to each essay.
At the heart of his journeys are his deep roots in the South, tracing back to his hometown in Tennessee. The book explores not only Tillinghast’s childhood home in Memphis, but even the time before his birth when his mother lived in Paris. Readers will feel a sense of being everywhere at once, in a strange simultaneity, a time and place beyond any map or guidebook.
Phoenix-based freelance literary critic Mark Athitakis, a National Book Critics Circle board member, discusses his new book.
7-8:30 p.m. p.m., AADL multipurpose room (lower level), 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-4555
Panel discussion with young adult writers TBA, and a teen writing workshop hosted by the Neutral Zone. Also, announcement of the winners of the annual AADL “It’s All Write” teen short story writing contest, which features $1,500 in prizes.
1-5 p.m., AADL multipurpose room, 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-8301.
Carey F. Whitepigeon is a member of a Potawatomi tribe, one of the Three Fires of the Anishinaabe. A lifelong resident of the state of Michigan, she lives in Ann Arbor with her husband, three children, and two cats. She holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from the University of Michigan. Carey’s career has included marketing, market research, business consulting, project management, and non-profit management. She read Tolkien’s The Hobbit in second grade, and has loved science fiction and fantasy literature ever since. In addition to reading, Carey enjoys travel, hiking, kayaking, and spending time with her family.
Book:
Vivian Debaussigeh is a seventeen-year-old orphan growing up among her father’s people, the Anishnabeh, when she receives a letter inviting her to visit her mother’s planet of New Dawn. She leaps at the chance to unravel the mystery of her unknown past. But once Vivian arrives on New Dawn, nothing is as she had expected. Discovering a society of magic and deadly intrigue, Vivian becomes the target of kidnappers, murderers–and aristocrats who want to use her as a pawn. Now a battle of interplanetary politics threatens to destroy everything that she holds dear. Can Vivian master her hidden talents in time to save her new world–or to create a world worth saving?
On June 5, local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal discuss the basic issues that need to be confronted and resources available in getting your book published. 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 June 19.
7-8:45 p.m., AADL Westgate Branch, Westgate shopping center, 2503 Jackson. Free. 327-8301.
Literati Bookstore is pleased to welcome acclaimed filmmaker Whit Stillman, in conversation with Literati bookseller Sam Krowchenko, in support of Love & Friendship: In Which Jane Austen’s Lady Susan Vernon Is Entirely Vindicated.
A sharp comedy of manners, and a fiendishly funny treat for Jane Austen and Whit Stillman fans alike Impossibly beautiful, disarmingly witty, and completely self-absorbed: Meet Lady Susan Vernon, both the heart and the thorn of Love & Friendship. Recently widowed with a daughter who’s coming of age as quickly as their funds are dwindling, Lady Susan makes it her mission to find them wealthy husbands–and fast. But when her attempts to secure their futures result only in the wrath of a prominent conquest’s wife and the title of ‘most accomplished coquette in England’, Lady Susan must rethink her strategy. Unannounced, she arrives at her brother-in-law’s country estate. Here she intends to take refuge – in no less than luxury, of course – from the colorful rumors trailing her, while finding another avenue to ‘I do’. Before the scandalizing gossip can run its course, though, romantic triangles ensue.
“A postmodern confection [that’s] very, very funny.”–Penelope Green, New York Times
“In the ever-booming Austen spinoff industry, where paeans to Mr. Darcy are the norm, rewriting a work of the master’s in the guise of one of her detractors makes for an eccentrically cheeky tribute.”–Alexandra Schwartz, New Yorker
“A merry comedy of pride, prejudice, and duplicity…. Silly, sly, eccentric characters and brisk chatter make for a diverting romp.”–Kirkus Reviews
“Lady Susan is finally getting some long overdue respect.”–Alexandra Alter, New York Times
Whit Stillman–winner of France’s Prix Fitzgerald for his prior novel–is the writer-director of five films, including Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco, Damsels in Distress, and Love & Friendship, a mendacious representation of this story. At university, he was an editor of the Harvard Crimson, and he later worked in book publishing and journalism. His first novel, The Last Days of Disco, With Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards, was also derived from a film story.
Sam Krowchenko is the host of Literati Bookstore’s podcast Shelf Talking. His work has appeared in Salon, Full Stop, and The Michigan Quartely Review. He is an MFA candidate at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program.
Literati is pleased to welcome Courtney Maum back to Ann Arbor in support of her second novel, Touch. Courtney will be joined in conversation by Callie Collins, a member of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program and co-director of independent press A Strange Object.
About Touch: Sloane Jacobsen was the foreseer of “the swipe,” among many other successful premonitions, and global fashion, lifestyle, and tech companies pay to hear her opinions on the future of everything from clothes to gadgets, food and families. Sloane’s recent forecasts on the family are definitive and unwavering: the world is over-populated, and with unemployment, college costs, and food prices all on the rise, having children is an indulgence. These predictions are also what brings her from Paris to New York City to work for the tech-giant, Mammoth, as their in-house trend forecaster for six months.
But not far into her contract, she begins to sense the undeniable signs of a movement against electronics that will see people embracing compassion, empathy, and “in-personism” again. She’s struggling with the fact that her predictions are hopelessly out of sync with her employers’ mission when her partner, the French “neo-sensualist” Roman Bellard, reveals that he is about to publish an op-ed on the death of penetrative sex. Still, Sloane becomes convinced that her instincts are the right ones, and goes on a quest to bring compassion and humanism to others, while finally allowing the love and connectedness she’s long been denying herself.
With the same mixture of wit and sincerity that won her debut novel so many fans, Touch is a poignant reminder to keep our heads up and our hearts open in our modern lives. It is a thoughtful, of-the-moment exploration of real-life concerns—that is truly another “book for everyone” (as the Washington Post said of her first) —and also explores prescient issues of technology, family, and artificial intelligence in a sophisticated and entertaining way.
“Touch is so smart that even its comic absurdities quiver with wisdom, as an anti-mom and a neo-sensualist confirm our suspicion that the lives of trendsetters aren’t quite what they appear to be. Courtney Maum’s writing is sharp and complex—prepare to be touched by this novel is ways you might not expect.”—Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen
“Our modern world is at once hyper-connected and hyper-alienating, and in this magical/terrible time, Courtney Maum’s latest novel offers us a balm, a solution, a call to action, or, at the very least, time away from our smartphones to read a compelling, perceptive, and moving story about the state of human intimacy and love in our contemporary era. Touch is at once wry and sincere, funny and serious, and you won’t be able to put it down.”—Edan Lepucki, author of California
“What begins as a satirical romp through the fields of trend forecasting and technology in Courtney Maum’s Touch deepens into a trenchant and wise portrait of what it means to be fully human at a time when the culture is trying its hardest to make us only partially so.”—Teddy Wayne, author of Loner and The Love Song of Johnny Valentine
Courtney Maum is the author of the celebrated novel I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You and her short fiction, book reviews, and essays on the writing life have been widely published in outlets such as The New York Times, Tin House, Electric Literature, and Buzzfeed. She has also co-written films that have debuted at Sundance and won awards at Cannes. At various points in her life, she has been a trend forecaster herself, a fashion publicist, and a party promoter for Corona Extra. She currently works as a product namer for M·A·C cosmetics from her home in Litchfield County, CT, where she lives with her husband and daughter.
