Tonight Literati is excited to welcome author Steven Gillis who will be reading from his new novel Liars
About Liars
Eric McCanus is a novelist with the misfortune of having written his one great book when he was young. Struggling to write more, recently divorced, cynical toward marriage while still missing his ex-wife, Eric becomes convinced that happy relationships are unsustainable. He sets out to prove his theory when he spots a seemingly perfect couple, Cara and Matt, at the market. Convinced that Cara and Matt’s marriage can’t be as successful as it appears, Eric does what he can to break them apart, using his power as a one-time great novelist. What follows is a psychological and philosophical comedy of errors. Liars is an exploration of love, relationships, and human interaction—a madcap romp through the vestiges of modern affairs—revolving around five characters, each spun drunk on the batterings of love while attempting to sustain themselves in a false world.
“Steve Gillis was born to write Liars, the mesmerizing, noirish story of Eric McCanus, a writer, professor, music aficionado, bon vivant. This lyrical, fast-paced novel is chock-full of intrigue, slight paranoia, plans gone awry, and outright mystery. One couple, pushing the same grocery cart, serves as Gillis’s madeleine. And then the reader’s taken on one fun bumpy jolting ride.” — George Singleton, author of Calloustown
“Writers may control the plot on the page, but can they bend real-life to their purposes? In the story of writer and dilettante Eric McManus, Gillis explores the slippery slope between love and commitment, with McManus determined to prove love’s folly by interfering in the marriage of a happy couple. Reminiscent of Pinter and Mamet, Gillis writes a sharp but strangely vulnerable comedy of errors that shows sometimes the ringmaster is really the dancing bear.” —Jen Michalski, author of The Summer She Was Under Water
Steven Gillis is the author of five novels and two short story collections. A founding member of the Ann Arbor Book Festival Board of Directors, and a finalist for the 2007 Ann Arbor News Citizen of the Year, Steve taught writing at Eastern Michigan University. In 2004 Steve founded 826Michigan, a mentoring program for students. In 2006 Steve co-founded Dzanc Books. Steve lives in Ann Arbor with his wife Mary, and two dogs, and regular visits from their kids, Anna and Zach.
Literati is thrilled to welcome back Douglas Trevor who will be sharing his new collection of stories The Book of Wonders
About The Book of Wonders:
A lonely female accountant falls for a man who seems to have stepped out of a Greek myth; a scholar uncovers a lost Shakespearean couplet and decides to quit academia; a celebrated author experiments with downloading a story from her brain and uploading it to another. In these and other stories, Douglas Trevor explores situations–both unsettling and comic–in which people lose their bearings, reinvent themselves, and resolve, sometimes haplessly, to make sense of their lives. Characters are kidnapped by teenagers; they are bitten by raccoons. Some of them go on Prozac; while others rely on bowling to persevere. Running through these nine stories is the ghostly, and at times material, presence of books themselves. What does it mean to turn to books for comfort? Or to uncover the ways in which the stories we absorb and revisit not only open up worlds but also close them off? In a variety of moods and settings, The Book of Wonders reminds us not only of the struggle to connect, but also of what the most unlikely of people may realize they share.
“The Book of Wonders is aptly titled. These are richly inventive and deftly executed stories that brim with life–unpredictable, lyric, energetic, ‘storytelling’ at its finest. Doug Trevor is intrigued by the vicissitudes of ‘character’ and his stories touch upon moral, intellectual, spiritual issues that engage us all.” – Joyce Carol Oates
“The Book of Wonders is lovely, and, yes, wondrous. With one foot in contemporary life and another in the land of myth and fable, Douglas Trevor is a unique and memorable conjurer.” – Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will
Douglas Trevor is the author of the short story collection THE THIN TEAR IN THE FABRIC OF SPACE (winner of the 2005 Iowa Short Fiction Award and a finalist for the 2006 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for First Fiction), and the novel GIRLS I KNOW (winner of the 2013 Balcones Fiction Prize). His short stories have appeared in dozens of publications, including (most recently) Ploughshares Solos, The Iowa Review, and New Letters. A professor of English literature and creative writing, he is the current Director of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.
Literati is thrilled to welcome author Merle Kröger who will be reading and discussing her new book Collision
About Collision:
A cruise ship full of holidaymakers and crewmembers collides with a raft of refugees in the Mediterranean
A raft with eleven Algerian refugees, running low on fuel. A cruise ship with a small town’s worth of international passengers and crew members. An Irish freighter. A Spanish rescue vessel. One single point of convergence in a vast wash of blue water. Miami-based The Spirit of Europe, the third largest cruise liner in the world, plows through the Mediterranean every summer, offering its passengers a temporary escape from their everyday lives. But even the bloated tackiness of the ship’s much-hyped belly flop competition is not immune to the chaos of the European migration crisis. When a disabled raft nears The Spirit of Europe, the ship’s captain is forced to do something headquarters in Miami wants to avoid: cut the engines.
Collision is a maritime thriller by one of Germany’s most celebrated crime writers, building suspense through the eyes of a diverse array of memorable characters, among them Karim Yacine, the Algerian captain of the raft disable; Lalita Masarangi, member of the massive cruise ship’s security team; and Sybille Malinowski, an elderly passenger on holiday with her sister, which, as the drama at sea continues to unfold, seems to be turning increasingly sinister. Central to all of it is Nikhil “Nike” Mehta, the cruise ship’s ambitious head of security who, like an illusionist, makes the ship’s relentless problems disappear. As Collision races toward its surprising conclusion, Nike’s particular solution for the Algerian refugees at sea might be his greatest slight of hand yet.
Merle Kröger is co-author and producer of the award-winning cinema documentaries Day of the Sparrow (2010) and Revision (2012). Kröger has published several novels and was awarded the German Crime Novel Award 2013. She will be releasing a documentary film in Germany based on the events that served as the inspiration for Collision, a bestseller in Germany.
Creative Writing Faculty read from their works:
Lolita Hernandez, Lecturer, RC Creative Writing and Literature
Laura Kasischke, RC ’84, Lecturer, RC Creative Writing and Literature Christopher Matthews, Lecturer, RC Creative Writing and Literature
Ken Mikolowski, Lecturer Emeritus, RC Creative Writing and Literature
Laura Thomas, RC ’88, Lecturer and Program Head, RC Creative Writing and Literature
Literati is excited to welcome Nick Riggle to discuss his new book On Being Awesome.
About One Being Awesome:
A lively philosophical exploration of the competing pheonomena of being awesome and sucking, and why we need awesomeness now more than ever
In this original, fun, and slyly helpful investigation of a thoroughly modern condition, pro-skater-turned-philospher Nick Riggle argues that our collective interest in being awesome (and not sucking) marks a new era in American culture, one that is shaped by relatively recent social, cultural and technological shifts. At the core of his work is the idea that awesome people are those who excel at creating social openings. Sucky people, by contrast, are those who foil such attempts. To be cool, down, game, basic, wack, or a preference dictator are just a handful of ways we can create these openings, respond, or fail to be awesome in the office, at home, or with our friends and loved ones.
Can introverts be awesome? How do our expectations of awesome relate to race, gender and sexuality? And what can the invention of the high five tell us about the origins of awesome? These are just a few of the questions Riggle explores. An accessible, philosophical road trip through the ethics of our time, On Being Awesome provides a new and inspiring framework for understanding friendship, success, and happiness in our everyday lives.
Nick Riggle dropped out of high school to become a pro-skater, participating in stunt shows, demos, and world class competitions (including three ESPN X-Games). Riggle has a BA in philosophy from UC Berkeley and a PhD from NYU, America’s leading philosophy program; he currently works as a philosophy professor at the University of San Diego. He speaks widely at conferences and workshops and is the organizer for the first major academic conference on street art and graffiti. He continues to publish in key and notable philosophical publications as well as more popular outlets including McSweeney’s, Aeon (on the high five, awesomeness and suckiness), and Hyperallergic. His current academic work focuses on the role of aesthetics in human life and is supported by a grant from The Experience Project, a 4.8 million dollar, three-year initiative at UNC Chapel Hill and the University of Notre Dame.
2-4 p.m., Ann Arbor District Library Freespace (3rd floor), 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 971-5763.
Literati is thrilled to welcome Bill Goldstein who will be discussing his new book The World Broke in Two: Virgina Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature. He will be joined by Douglas Trevor, chair of the Zell’s Writers Program at the University of Michigan
About The World Broke in Two
The World Broke in Two tells the fascinating story of the intellectual and personal journeys four legendary writers, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence, make over the course of one pivotal year. As 1922 begins, all four are literally at a loss for words, confronting an uncertain creative future despite success in the past. The literary ground is shifting, as Ulysses is published in February and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time begins to be published in England in the autumn. Yet, dismal as their prospects seemed in January, by the end of the year Woolf has started Mrs. Dalloway, Forster has, for the first time in nearly a decade, returned to work on the novel that will become A Passage to India, Lawrence has written Kangaroo, his unjustly neglected and most autobiographical novel, and Eliot has finished—and published to acclaim—“The Waste Land.”
As Willa Cather put it, “The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts,” and what these writers were struggling with that year was in fact the invention of modernism. Based on original research, The World Broke in Two captures both the literary breakthroughs and the intense personal dramas of these beloved writers as they strive for greatness.
Bill Goldstein, the founding editor of the books site of The New York Times on the Web, reviews books and interviews authors for NBC’s “Weekend Today in New York.” He is also curator of public programs at Roosevelt House, the public policy institute of New York’s Hunter College. He received a PH.D in English from City University of New York Graduate Center in 2010, and is the recipient of writing fellowships at MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross and elsewhere.
Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, creators of the wildly popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale, discuss It Devours!, their new mystery novel that explores the intersections of faith and science and a growing relationship between two young people who want to trust each other. Signing.
7 p.m., Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, 911 North University. Tickets $23.31 in advance at brownpapertickets.com/event/3084372 (includes a copy of the book). 585-5567.
Reading by Diane DeCillis, Detroit native whose award-winning 1st book of poems, Strings Attached, was described by Gargoyle Magazine (Washington, D.C.) editor Richard Peabody as a collection of “warm, philosophical poems [which] explore a cultural and emotional terrain similar to the work of Naomi Shihab Nye.” Followed by a poetry and short fiction open mike.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
Northern California native Tim Hunt reads from his latest book, Poem’s Poems & Other Poems, a collection of poems in which a persona named Poem seeks self-definition through the writing of poetry. DePauw University English profesor Deborah Geis says Poem is “always somewhere that he doesn’t quite belong, or is asking the ‘wrong’ questions, yet ultimately charms us with his love of both illusions and allusions.” The program begins with open mike readings.
7-8:30 p.m., Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea, 123 W. Washington. Free. 994-6663
