Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for the 2017 Storymakers Dinner, a fundraising event for the wonderful folks at 826michigan. This year’s dinner will feature author and friend of the store, Peter Ho Davies. Tickets and more information can be found here. We hope to see you there!
***
Questions about the event or sponsorship inquiries may be directed to 826michigan Executive Director Amanda Uhle at Amanda@826michigan.org.
Peter Ho Davies is the author of two novels, The Fortunes (winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award) and The Welsh Girl (long-listed for the Man Booker Prize), and two short story collections, The Ugliest House in the World (winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize) and Equal Love (A New York Times Notable Book). His work has appeared in Harpers, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Guardian and Washington Post among others, and has been widely anthologized, including selections for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. In 2003 Granta magazine named him among its Best of Young British Novelists. Davies is also a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and is a winner of the PEN/Malamud Award.
Born in Britain to Welsh and Chinese parents, he now makes his home in the US. He has taught at the University of Oregon and Emory University, and is currently on the faculty of the Helen Zell MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Read a recent profile in the Guardian.
Every Thurs-Sun., June 8-25. U-M Residential College drama lecturer Kate Mendeloff directs students and local actors an alfresco production of Shakespeare’s culminating work, a visionary romance set on a magical island ruled by the enigmatic but benevolent sorcerer Prospero and his beautiful daughter Miranda. Prospero is in fact the exiled duke of Milan, who conjures a storm that shipwrecks his old enemies upon his island. He takes the opportunity to teach them a lesson before bestowing forgiveness, abandoning his magical powers, and preparing to return to the world. The Tempest is filled with verse and song (including the famous “Full fathom five”) and contains some of Shakespeare’s most gorgeously haunting poetry. The RC’s annual Shakespeare in the Arb productions have become a hugely popular local summer tradition. Director Mendeloff takes special care to make the shifting Arb environments an active force in the performance. Bring a blanket or portable chair to sit on; dress for the weather.
6:30 p.m., meet at the Peony Garden entrance at 1610 Washington Heights. $15 (students, seniors, & Friends of Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum, $10; kids under 5, free) at the gate only. Tickets go on sale at 5:30 p.m. Space limited; come early. 998-9540.
Literati is pleased to welcome John Cheney-Lippold in support of his book We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves.
Algorithms are everywhere, organizing the near limitless data that exists in our world. Derived from our every search, like, click, and purchase, algorithms determine the news we get, the ads we see, the information accessible to us and even who our friends are. These complex configurations not only form knowledge and social relationships in the digital and physical world, but also determine who we are and who we can be, both on and offline.
Algorithms create and recreate us, using our data to assign and reassign our gender, race, sexuality, and citizenship status. They can recognize us as celebrities or mark us as terrorists. In this era of ubiquitous surveillance, contemporary data collection entails more than gathering information about us. Entities like Google, Facebook, and the NSA also decide what that information means, constructing our worlds and the identities we inhabit in the process. We have little control over who we algorithmically are. Our identities are made useful not for us—but for someone else.
Through a series of entertaining and engaging examples, John Cheney-Lippold draws on the social constructions of identity to advance a new understanding of our algorithmic identities. We Are Data will educate and inspire readers who want to wrest back some freedom in our increasingly surveilled and algorithmically-constructed world.
John Cheney-Lippold is Assistant Professor of American Culture and Digital Studies at the University of Michigan.
Readings by Chicago poet (and Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series cohost) Edward Morin and Mt. Pleasant poet Eric Torgersen. Morin’s new chapbook, Housing for Wrens, is a collection of poems about birds and other animals. Torgersen’s In Which We See Our Selves is a collection of ghazals, an ancient Persian form. The program begins with an open mike for poets, who are welcome to read their own work or a favorite poem by another writer.
7 p.m., Bookbound, 1729 Plymouth, Courtyard Shops. Free. 369-4345.
Storytellers Guild members present a program of old tales and personal stories for grownups.
Free; donations accepted. annarborstorytelling.org, facebook.com/annarborstorytellers. 665-2757.
Every Thurs-Sun., June 8-25. U-M Residential College drama lecturer Kate Mendeloff directs students and local actors an alfresco production of Shakespeare’s culminating work, a visionary romance set on a magical island ruled by the enigmatic but benevolent sorcerer Prospero and his beautiful daughter Miranda. Prospero is in fact the exiled duke of Milan, who conjures a storm that shipwrecks his old enemies upon his island. He takes the opportunity to teach them a lesson before bestowing forgiveness, abandoning his magical powers, and preparing to return to the world. The Tempest is filled with verse and song (including the famous “Full fathom five”) and contains some of Shakespeare’s most gorgeously haunting poetry. The RC’s annual Shakespeare in the Arb productions have become a hugely popular local summer tradition. Director Mendeloff takes special care to make the shifting Arb environments an active force in the performance. Bring a blanket or portable chair to sit on; dress for the weather.
6:30 p.m., meet at the Peony Garden entrance at 1610 Washington Heights. $15 (students, seniors, & Friends of Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum, $10; kids under 5, free) at the gate only. Tickets go on sale at 5:30 p.m. Space limited; come early. 998-9540.
Literati is delighted to welcome award-winning author Maile Meloy in support of her new novel, Do Not Become Alarmed. Maile will be joined in conversation by Michael Byers, author of, most recently, Percival’s Planet, and a professor in the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.
A new novel about what happens when two families go on a tropical vacation—and the children go missing. When Liv and Nora decide to take their husbands and children on a holiday cruise, everyone is thrilled. The adults are lulled by the ship’s comfort and ease. The four children—ages six to eleven—love the nonstop buffet and their newfound independence. But when they all go ashore for an adventure in Central America, a series of minor misfortunes and miscalculations leads the families farther and farther from the safety of the ship. One minute the children are there, and the next they’re gone. The parents, accustomed to security and control, turn on each other and blame themselves, while the seemingly helpless children discover resources they never knew they possessed. Do Not Become Alarmed is a story about the protective force of innocence and the limits of parental power, and the way a crisis shifts our perceptions of what matters most.
“This is the book that every reader longs for: smart and thrilling and impossible to put down. Read it once at breakneck speed to find out what happens next, and then read it slowly to marvel at the perfect prose and the masterwork of a plot. It is an alarmingly good novel.”—Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth and Bel Canto
“Here is that perfect combination of a luminous writer and a big, page-turning story. This hugely suspenseful novel will speak to anyone who has ever felt responsible for keeping a loved one safe, whether it was a child, a partner, a parent, or a friend. Meloy’s characters – the adults and the children – feel like real, living people I’ll never forget.”—Helen Fielding, author of Bridget Jones’s Diary
“The plot unfolds with terrifying realism… This writer can apparently do it all—New Yorker stories, children’s books, award-winning literary novels, and now, a tautly plotted and culturally savvy emotional thriller. Do not start this book after dinner or you will almost certainly be up all night.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Maile Meloy is the author of the novels Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter and the story collections Half in Love and Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, which was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review and one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times. She has also written a trilogy for young readers, beginning with The Apothecary, which was a New York Times bestseller and won the 2012 E.B. White Award. Meloy’s short stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, and Best American Short Stories 2015, and she has received The Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two California Book Awards, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007, she was chosen as one of Granta’s 21 Best Young American Novelists. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Slate, Sunset, and O.
Every Thurs-Sun., June 8-25. U-M Residential College drama lecturer Kate Mendeloff directs students and local actors an alfresco production of Shakespeare’s culminating work, a visionary romance set on a magical island ruled by the enigmatic but benevolent sorcerer Prospero and his beautiful daughter Miranda. Prospero is in fact the exiled duke of Milan, who conjures a storm that shipwrecks his old enemies upon his island. He takes the opportunity to teach them a lesson before bestowing forgiveness, abandoning his magical powers, and preparing to return to the world. The Tempest is filled with verse and song (including the famous “Full fathom five”) and contains some of Shakespeare’s most gorgeously haunting poetry. The RC’s annual Shakespeare in the Arb productions have become a hugely popular local summer tradition. Director Mendeloff takes special care to make the shifting Arb environments an active force in the performance. Bring a blanket or portable chair to sit on; dress for the weather.
6:30 p.m., meet at the Peony Garden entrance at 1610 Washington Heights. $15 (students, seniors, & Friends of Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum, $10; kids under 5, free) at the gate only. Tickets go on sale at 5:30 p.m. Space limited; come early. 998-9540.
Veteran poet Frederick Glaysher, a U-M grad who was tutored by Robert Hayden, reads from and discusses his The Parliament of Poets, an epic poem set partially on he moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility, where Apollo, the Geek god of poetry summons the poets of all nations, ancient and modern, to fashion a new vision of universal life.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757.
Every Thurs-Sun., June 8-25. U-M Residential College drama lecturer Kate Mendeloff directs students and local actors an alfresco production of Shakespeare’s culminating work, a visionary romance set on a magical island ruled by the enigmatic but benevolent sorcerer Prospero and his beautiful daughter Miranda. Prospero is in fact the exiled duke of Milan, who conjures a storm that shipwrecks his old enemies upon his island. He takes the opportunity to teach them a lesson before bestowing forgiveness, abandoning his magical powers, and preparing to return to the world. The Tempest is filled with verse and song (including the famous “Full fathom five”) and contains some of Shakespeare’s most gorgeously haunting poetry. The RC’s annual Shakespeare in the Arb productions have become a hugely popular local summer tradition. Director Mendeloff takes special care to make the shifting Arb environments an active force in the performance. Bring a blanket or portable chair to sit on; dress for the weather.
6:30 p.m., meet at the Peony Garden entrance at 1610 Washington Heights. $15 (students, seniors, & Friends of Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum, $10; kids under 5, free) at the gate only. Tickets go on sale at 5:30 p.m. Space limited; come early. 998-9540.
