Monica Youn is the author of three books of poetry: Blackacre (Graywolf Press, 2016); Barter(Graywolf Press, 2003); and Ignatz (Four Way Books, 2010), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and the New York Times Magazine, and she has been awarded fellowships from the Library of Congress and Stanford University, among other awards. A former attorney, she now teaches poetry at Princeton University and at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She previously taught at Bennington College, Columbia University, and at the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Program. Youn’s poetry has been described as “interested in the intersection between the beauty we want in life, and the darkness that often serves as an invisible barrier for it,” with her background in law allowing her to “probe and navigate these gray areas gently, using an economy of language that both cuts to the heart of the matter and reveals nuanced layers of caution, lust, and desperation.”
One of the most prolific American writers of the 20th century, Joyce Carol Oates counts historical biographies, depictions of working class families, and magical realist Gothic fiction among her oeuvre. She often depicts hardships and violence in American towns, and has received both critical and popular acclaim in her 50-year career. Oates is the author of over 70 books, including the novels them (1969), winner of the National Book Award; Bellefleur (1980); You Must Remember This (1987); Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990); We Were the Mulvaneys (1996); Blonde (2000), winner of the National Book Award; The Gravedigger’s Daughter (2007); and The Accursed (2013). Her short stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Harper’s, and have been widely anthologized. In an interview for the Paris Review, she says: “I try to write books that can be read in one way by a literal-minded reader, and in quite another way by a reader alert to symbolic abbreviation and parodistic elements. And yet, it’s the same book—or nearly. A trompe l’oeil, a work of ‘as if.’”
Literati is excited to welcome Jennifer Weiss-Wolf in support of her new book Periods Gone Public.
About Periods Gone Public
Leading menstrual rights advocate, writer, and attorney Jennifer Weiss-Wolf’s PERIODS GONE PUBLIC examines the cultural and political history of menstruation and the new, high-profile menstrual equity movement dispelling stigma and promoting advocacy on a global level.
The first book to explore menstruation in the current cultural and political landscape and to investigate the new wave of period activism taking the world by storm.
After centuries of being shrouded in taboo and superstition, periods have gone mainstream. Seemingly overnight, a new, high-profile movement has emerged—one dedicated to bold activism, creative product innovation, and smart policy advocacy—to address the centrality of menstruation in relation to core issues of gender equality and equity.
In Periods Gone Public, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf—the woman Bustle dubbed one of the nation’s “badass menstrual activists”—explores why periods have become a prominent political cause. From eliminating the tampon tax, to enacting new laws ensuring access to affordable, safe products, menstruation is no longer something to whisper about. Weiss-Wolf shares her firsthand account in the fight for “period equity” and introduces readers to the leaders, pioneers, and everyday people who are making change happen. From societal attitudes of periods throughout history—in the United States and around the world—to grassroots activism and product innovation, Weiss-Wolf challenges readers to face stigma head-on and elevate an agenda that recognizes both the power—and the absolute normalcy—of menstruation.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is a leading advocate and voice for equitable menstrual policy in America. Her petition to end the tampon tax, launched in partnership with Cosmopolitan, catalyzed a national movement. Newsweek deemed her the “architect of the U.S. policy campaign to squash the tampon tax.” Weiss-Wolf’s writing and work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, TIME, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, The Nation, Bloomberg, and Ms. magazine, among others. She is on the Advisory Board of ZanaAfrica Foundation, which provides essential menstrual health education and products to girls in Kenya. She lives in Maplewood, New Jersey.
Cookbook author Julia Turshen, who wrote the acclaimed home cooking handbook Small Victories, discusses her new book of recipes and resources for community building and political engagement. Signing.
7-8:30 p.m., AADL multipurpose room (lower level), 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-4555.
Both “halves” of Michael Stanley – Stan Trollip and Michael Sears – join us Friday, October 27 at 7 p.m. to discuss their latest Detective Kubu novel, Dying to Live. We’ll be hosting a dinner at the store for the guys and interested customers. A separate e-mail to come as you’ll need to RSVP to this special event.
Literati is pleased to welcome the Honorable Raymond M. Kethledge who will be discussing his new book Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude.
About Lead Yourself First:
To inspire and lead others, you must first lead yourself: a powerful and invaluable guide to productive time spent alone.
Famous leaders have long used solitude as means for inspiration. Solitude is a state of mind, a space in which to focus on one’s own thoughts without distraction, with a unique power to bring mind and soul together in clear-eyed conviction. In our time-challenged world today, such space is ever more important to leaders, and increasingly difficult to find. We are losing solitude without even realizing it.
Lead Yourself First will inspire leaders to spend time alone. Through firsthand interviews with a wide range of contemporary leaders in politics, business, sports, the military, and family life, as well as through illuminating historical accounts of Abraham Lincoln, Jane Goodall, Pope John Paul II, Aung San Suu Kyi, and others, leadership experts Raymond Kethledge and Michael Erwin show how solitude can improve clarity and bolster creativity; generate the emotional balance needed to sustain certainty and the moral courage required to challenge convention; and strengthen a leader’s ability to make courageous decisions in the face of adversity and criticism. In years past, leaders used solitude subconsciously; today it takes a conscious choice to unplug from one’s daily life. Introduced by Jim Collins (author of the bestseller Good to Great), Lead Yourself First is a crucial and timely guide, a rallying cry for how leaders can reclaim the power of solitude in today’s over-connected world.
Raymond M. Kethledge, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, formerly served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy. He lives near Ann Arbor, Michigan.
HOWARD MARKEL, M.D., Ph.D., is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine, director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan, and editor in chief of The Milbank Quarterly. His books include Quarantine!, When Germs Travel, and An Anatomy of Addiction. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and The New England Journal of Medicine. Markel is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Book: The Kelloggs: Battling Brothers of Battle Creek
From the much admired medical historian (“Markel shows just how compelling the medical history can be”–Andrea Barrett) and author of An Anatomy of Addiction (“Absorbing, vivid”–Sherwin Nuland, The New York Times Book Review, front page)–the story of America’s empire builders: John and Will Kellogg. John Harvey Kellogg was one of America’s most beloved physicians; a best-selling author, lecturer, and health-magazine publisher; founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium; and patron saint of the pursuit of wellness. His youngest brother, Will, was the founder of the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which revolutionized the mass production of food and what we eat for breakfast. In The Kelloggs, Howard Markel tells the sweeping saga of these two extraordinary men, whose lifelong competition and enmity toward one another changed America’s notion of health and wellness from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, and who helped change the course of American medicine, nutrition, wellness, and diet.
Part of the 30th Annual Jewish Book and Arts Festival, $
U.S. News correspondent Ken Walsh, one of the longest-serving White House correspondents in history, discusses his new book about presidential photographers and their power to define an era and make or break a presidential administration. Book sale, signing, and reception.
7 p.m., Ford Library, 1000 Beal. Free. 205-0555.
Sweetwaters and Toastmaster community members are creating a new Toastmasters Club at Sweetwaters! We will have 1 or 2 prepared speeches, showcase some of our (kind, encouraging and gentle) evaluations of the speeches, and some opportunities for people to have impromptu speaking fun. There will also be a chance for Q & A during the meeting too.
Come a little early and pick-up a beverage or snack from the cafe and have fun making new friendships with encouraging and supportive people!
Sweetwaters Washington St., 123 W. Washington St. Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Free.joshs@sweetwaterscafe.com https://www.facebook.com/events/1053675414768433/
This nationally recognized advocate for people with disabilities reads from What Matters: Reflections on Disability, Community, and Love, her new book that offers strategies for ensuring intellectually disabled individuals full social inclusion and chronicles the challenges faced by her son, a disability rights advocate who in 2009 successfully sued Oakland University for refusing to let him live on campus. Hosted by Crazy Wisdom owner Bill Zirinsky.
7 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757.
We are thrilled to welcome three wonderful poets to Literati as part of our Poetry at Literati series! Donald Dunbar, Christine Hume, and Becky Winn will be reading poems for their latest collections.
About Safe Word:
Safe Word, Donald Dunbar’s second collection of poetry, acts as a tonic against spiritual death. This book is the kompromat of the undersoul, the blotter paper in the plea deal, a crystal jutting out of the center of an otherwise-innocent forehead. Dunbar chops, screws, solders, and sutures forms of thought and feeling into abominations you might just fall in love with, and be consumed by. Never be bored again.
About Shot:
In alternating currents of prose and verse, SHOT reaches beyond the tradition of the nocturne to illuminate contradictory impulses and intensities of night. SHOT inhabits the sinister, visionary, intimate, haunted, erotic capacities to see and hear things at night, in the fertile void containing our own psychological and physical darkness. Via Levinas who locates self-knowledge and ethical contract in insomnia, this darkness is one “stuck full of eyes.” Here the insomniac falls into a Beckettian pattern of waiting, in an inextricable dialogue with a selfhood that cannot settle down. In a perpetual play between empirical and abstract knowledge, tantrum and meditation, SHOT creates torque that drives beyond material experience.
Donald Dunbar lives in Portland, OR, and is the author of SAFE WORD and EYELID LICK, winner of the 2012 Fence Modern Poets Series prize, as well as a number of chapbooks. In 2016 he co-founded Eyedrop, a virtual reality design studio. He has helped run If Not For Kidnap: a PDX Poetry Concern, The Poetry Data Project, and has contributed to a number of other worthy projects.
Christine Hume is the author of Shot (Counterpath Press, 2010); Alaskaphrenia (New Issues, 2004), winner of the Green Rose Award and Small Press Traffic’s 2005 Best Book of the Year Award; and Musca Domestica (Beacon Press, 2000), winner of the Barnard New Women Poets Prize. She currently serves as the coordinator of the creative writing program at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she also lives. Her latest collection of poetry is entitled Questions Like a Face.
Becky Winn is a poet and designer living in Portland, Oregon. She is a contributing editor for Gramma Poetry and the founder of ĐIỆN, an artist collective and clothing brand.
