Literati is pleased to welcome Paul Dimond and Martha Buhr Grimes in support of their novel, The Belle of Two Arbors.
Born at the turn of the twentieth century in Glen Arbor, near the dunes of Northern Michigan, young Belle is the first child of a gruff stove works boss and a crippled mother who weaned Belle on the verse of Emily Dickenson. When a natural disaster results in her mother’s death and nearly takes the life of her younger brother Pip, Belle creates a fierce, almost ecstatic farewell song. Thus begins her journey to compose a perfect Goodbye to Mama.
At 21, Belle ventures south to Ann Arbor for university, with teenaged Pip in tow. There, she befriends Robert Frost, Ted Roethke and Wystan Auden and finds that her poetry stands alongside theirs, and even with that of her hero, Dickinson. Her lyrics capture the sounds, sights, and rhythms of the changing seasons in the northern forests, amidst the rolling dunes by the shores of the Great Lake.
Despite the peace she finds, Belle also struggles in both homes. Up north, she battles her father who thinks a woman can’t run the family business; and clashes against developers who would scar the natural landscape. In Ann Arbor, she challenges the status quo of academic pedants and chauvinists.
Belle’s narrative brings these two places to life in their historic context: a growing Midwestern town driven by a public university, striving for greatness; and a rural peninsula seeking prosperity while preserving its natural heritage. Through the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Post-War Boom, Belle’s story is hard to put down. Her voice and songs will be even harder to forget.
For more than 70 years Paul Dimond has split most of his time between Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, and Glen Arbor, amidst Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Prior to researching and writing The Belle of Two Arbors, Paul Dimond served as the Director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, tried several major race cases that challenged a divided Supreme Court, became a Professor Law, and served as Special Assistant to President Clinton for Economic Policy. He has also practiced law, chaired a national real estate firm and continues to spend his time between his two Arbors. Currently, he works on behalf of several non-profits in Michigan so the heart of the Great Lakes can once again become a thriving home for fresh water and fresh ideas. He is the author of numerous articles and three books on policy, law and history, including Beyond Busing, recipient of the Ralph J. Bunche Book of the Year in 1986, as well as the author of three novels, including the youth title North Coast Almanac. He is an alumnus of Amherst College and the University of Michigan Law School.
Martha (Marty) Buhr Grimes, a lifelong resident of Ann Arbor, also summered at her family cottage up north near Lake Michigan. She taught English, creative writing and poetry at secondary schools for 24 years, co-authored Summerskills language arts workbooks, and shared many hundreds of poems with her Paper Kite poetry group. Marty earned a BA in English and an MA in English and Education from the University of Michigan.
Literati is delighted to welcome Stephanie Burgis back to Michigan in support of her latest children’s novel, The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart. Stephanie will be joined by Merrie Haskell, Jim C. Hines, and Patrick Samphire for a conversation about writing fantasy for children and adults alike.
Stephanie Burgis grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, but now lives in Wales with her husband and two sons, surrounded by mountains, castles and coffee shops. She is the author of four MG fantasy adventures, including The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart (Bloomsbury 2017) and the Kat, Incorrigible trilogy (published in the UK as The Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson). She has also published two historical fantasy novels for adults, Masks and Shadows and Congress of Secrets(Pyr Books 2016) and nearly forty short stories for adults and teens in various magazines and anthologies. Her first book, A Most Improper Magick (a.k.a. Kat, Incorrigible in the US), won the 2011 Waverton Good Read Children’s Award for the Best Début Children’s Novel by a British Author.
Merrie Haskell grew up half in North Carolina, half in Michigan. She wrote her first story at age seven. She attended the University of Michigan, graduating from the Residential College with a degree in biological anthropology. She works in a library with over 7.5 million bound volumes. Her first three books are The Princess Curse, Handbook for Dragon Slayers, and The Castle Behind Thorns. She won the Schneider Family Book Award (Middle Grades) and the DetCon1 Middle Grade Speculative Fiction award, and she was twice a finalist for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. Merrie lives in Saline, Michigan.
Jim C. Hines is the author of twelve fantasy novels, including the Magic ex Libris series, the Princess series of fairy tale retellings, the humorous Goblin Quest trilogy, and the Fable Legends tie-in Blood of Heroes. He’s an active blogger, and won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. He lives in mid-Michigan with his family.
Patrick Samphire started writing when he was fourteen years old and thought it would be a good way of getting out of English lessons. It didn’t work, but he kept on writing anyway. He has lived in Zambia, Guyana, Austria and England. He now lives with his wife and two children in Wales, U.K. He has published almost twenty short stories. Secrets of the Dragon Tomb is his first novel.
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.), $10. 764-5118.
Literati is pleased to welcome Kristina Riggle and Jacquelyn Vincenta in support of their recent novels.
About Kristina’s Vivian in Red: Famed Broadway producer Milo Short may be eighty-eight but that doesn’t stop him from going to the office every day. So when he steps out of his Upper West Side brownstone on one exceptionally hot morning, he’s not expecting to see the impossible: a woman from his life sixty years ago, cherry red lips, bright red hat, winking at him on a New York sidewalk, looking just as beautiful as she did back in 1934.
The sight causes him to suffer a stroke. And when he comes to, the renowned lyricist discovers he has lost the ability to communicate. Milo believes he must unravel his complicated history with Vivian Adair in order to win back his words. But he needs help—in the form of his granddaughter Eleanor— failed journalist and family misfit. Tapped to write her grandfather’s definitive biography, Eleanor must dig into Milo’s colorful past to discover the real story behind Milo’s greatest song Love Me, I Guess, and the mysterious woman who inspired an amazing life.
A sweeping love story, family mystery and historical drama set eighty years apart, Vivian in Red will swell your heart like a favorite song while illuminating Broadway like you’ve never seen before.
Kristina Riggle lives and writes in West Michigan. Her debut novel, Real Life & Liars, was a Target “Breakout” pick and a “Great Lakes, Great Reads” selection by the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association. Her other novels have been honored by independent booksellers, including an IndieNext Notable designation for The Life You’ve Imagined. Kristina has published short stories in the Cimarron Review, Literary Mama, Espresso Fiction, and elsewhere, and is a former co-editor for fiction at Literary Mama. Kristina was a full-time newspaper reporter before turning her attention to creative writing. She likes to run and read, though not at the same time.
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About Jacquelyn’s The Lake and the Lost Girl: On a stormy night in 1939, Mary Stone Walker disappears from her home in White Hill, Michigan. Everyone knew the talented poet was desperate to escape her demons, but when Mary goes missing without a trace, one question lingers in the small town: Did Mary successfully break free of her troubled past and flee, or did her life end that night?
Sixty years later, Lydia Carroll’s husband is still fixated on the local mystery. English Professor Frank Carroll has invested years in the search for local poet Mary Stone Walker and her lost works, sacrificing his family, his reputation, and even Lydia for the ever-more unlikely discovery. As Frank’s behavior grows more erratic, Lydia sees that his interest in Mary has evolved into an obsession-one that threatens to destroy the family they have built together, and which can only be undone by solving the mystery of what happened to Mary on that rainy night in 1939.
The Lake and the Lost Girl tells the riveting story of secrets from the past unraveling one family from the inside out, and two women, separated by sixty years of history, determined to pursue their dreams.
Jacquelyn Vincenta spent her childhood in the suburbs of Washington, DC where she discovered the alchemy of language and imagination at a young age. After graduating from the University of Iowa with a B.A. in English Literature she started her writing life as a police beat reporter for a daily newspaper near New Orleans. While raising a family in Texas and Michigan she worked as managing editor of the publishing company she and her then-husband owned, wrote magazine articles, and became involved with non-profit organizations dedicated to the arts and environmental issues. Jacquelyn works part-time for a translation company based in Prague, and devotes herself to her writing. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she is currently at work on her next novel.
Literati is delighted to celebrate the publication of Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution by S. Margot Finn.
For the past four decades, increasing numbers of Americans have started paying greater attention to the food they eat, buying organic vegetables, drinking fine wines, and seeking out exotic cuisines. Yet they are often equally passionate about the items they refuse to eat: processed foods, generic brands, high-carb meals. While they may care deeply about issues like nutrition and sustainable agriculture, these discriminating diners also seek to differentiate themselves from the unrefined eater, the common person who lives on junk food.
Discriminating Taste argues that the rise of gourmet, ethnic, diet, and organic foods must be understood in tandem with the ever-widening income inequality gap. Offering an illuminating historical perspective on our current food trends, S. Margot Finn draws numerous parallels with the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, an era infamous for its class divisions, when gourmet dinners, international cuisines, slimming diets, and pure foods first became fads.
Examining a diverse set of cultural touchstones ranging from Ratatouille to The Biggest Loser, Finn identifies the key ways that “good food” has become conflated with high status. She also considers how these taste hierarchies serve as a distraction, leading middle-class professionals to focus on small acts of glamorous and virtuous consumption while ignoring their class’s larger economic stagnation. A provocative look at the ideology of contemporary food culture, Discriminating Taste teaches us to question the maxim that you are what you eat.
“Finn’s compelling argument about the role of class in today’s food culture is sure to have a major impact on how both scholars and foodies think about the food revolution.”–Charlotte Biltekoff, author of Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food and Health
“Finn offers an engaging and compelling explanation for the rise of the modern food movement. It’s one that the leaders of the movement will no doubt find unsettling.”–Jayson Lusk, author of Unnaturally Delicious and The Food Police
S. Margot Finn is a lecturer in literature, science, and the arts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Kelly DiPucchio is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Grace for President and numerous other books for kids, including the Crafty Chloe booksCrafty Chloe and Dress-Up Mess-Up, as well as Zombie in Love, Zombie in Love 2 + 1, and Gaston. She lives with her husband and three children in Michigan, and you can visit her at KellyDiPucchio.com.
New York Times bestselling author Kelly DiPucchio and illustrator Stephanie Graegin bring a lionhearted new hero to life in this tender, sparkling story about standing up for what’s right–and finding your inner superpowers. Every day after school, Manny saves the world from formidable foes.
I AM FEARLESS
I AM STRONG
I AM BRAVE
I AM POWERFUL
I AM INVINCIBLE Zombie bears, evil cloud monsters, and alien robots with laser beam eyes are no match for Super Manny. But when Manny encounters a real-life nemesis in the school cafeteria, will he be able to summon his superhero strength to save the day?
Readings by featured poets, preceded by a poetry open mike.
Reading by TBA
7-9 p.m. (sign-up begins at 6:30 p.m.), Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry.
The Hummingbird Global Writers’ Circle is an international reading series started by Dr. Debotri Dhar, CEW Visiting Scholar (2015-17) and Lecturer in Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. The aim of this literary initiative is to bring writers and communities together in different parts of the world to foster a love of books, to discuss the craft of writing, and to promote creative dialogue and global understanding in small ways. The name was inspired by the tiny hummingbird which builds its home with just a few drops of nectar, a root here, a leaf there, and a little bit of sky.
The Circle’s themed readings by established and emerging writers are free and open to the community. The theme for the first event of the Circle is feminism/ gender, to be held on Monday August 21 (3-5 pm) at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
The writer-speakers for this session are Linda Gregerson, Laura Hulthen Thomas, Mike Ferro and Debotri Dhar (writer bios below), who will read from their poetry and fiction, followed by conversation /Q&A.
Light refreshments will be served. All members of the community are welcome to attend, however, RSVP is required. If you wish to hear our speakers read from their work, share tips, and engage in conversation, please RSVP to debotri@umich.edu.
Local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal host an open house for writers to connect with one another and/or work on their projects.
Literati is pleased to welcome Danya Kukafka in celebration of her debut novel, Girl in Snow, named a Best Beach Read of 2017 by Elle, Yahoo, and Refinery 29.
When a beloved high schooler named Lucinda Hayes is found murdered, no one in her sleepy Colorado suburb is untouched—not the boy who loved her too much; not the girl who wanted her perfect life; not the officer assigned to investigate her murder. In the aftermath of the tragedy, these three indelible characters—Cameron, Jade, and Russ—must each confront their darkest secrets in an effort to find solace, the truth, or both. In crystalline prose, Danya Kukafka offers a brilliant exploration of identity and of the razor-sharp line between love and obsession, between watching and seeing, between truth and memory.
Compulsively readable and powerfully moving, Girl in Snow offers an unforgettable reading experience and introduces a singular new talent in Danya Kukafka.
“From its startling opening line right through to its stunning conclusion, Girl in Snow is a perfectly paced and tautly plotted thriller. Danya Kukafka’s misfit characters are richly drawn, her prose is both elegant and eerie—this is an incredibly accomplished debut.”—Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water
Danya Kukafka is a graduate of New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She currently works as an assistant editor at Riverhead books. Girl in Snow is her first novel.
