U-M history of medicine professor Howard Markel reads from his acclaimed new book about these Michigan brothers who revolutionized American notions of health and wellness. He also discusses the book with U-M English professor Michael Schoenfeldt.
5:30-7 p.m., 100 U-M Hatcher Grad Library Gallery, enter from the Diag. Free. 764-3166.
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including fiction writers Christina Kim and poet Chelsea Walsh.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State. Free.
The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends – a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.
Literati Bookstore is excited to partner with the Michigan Chapter of the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators with a fun-filled reading with three Michigan childrens book authors!
Supriya Kelkar was born and raised in the Midwest. She learned Hindi as a child by watching three Bollywood films a week. After college she realized her lifelong dream of working in the film industry when she got a job as a Bollywood screenwriter. She has credits on one Hollywood film and several Hindi films. Ahimsa, inspired by her great-grandmother’s role in the Indian freedom movement, is her debut middle-grade novel. Supriya still lives in the Midwest with her husband, their three children, and a very hyper dog.
Amy Nielander lives in Royal Oak, Michigan, with her husband and two children. The Ladybug Race received international recognition as a Silent Book Contest finalist. It is her first picture book.
Deb Pilutti has many fond memories of summer vacations spent in Michigan. She has lived in Ann Arbor for most of her adult life and loves exploring Michigan with her husband, Tom, and their kids, Kyle and Jack. Deb is the author and illustrator of several books for children.
Maureen Jennings joins us with her first Inspector Murdoch novel since 2010 on Saturday, November 18 at 2 pm. Kick off your holiday shopping with Maureen & Inspector Murdoch.
The Driftwood Shrine author, John Gendo Wolff, will discuss poetry by Americans like Emily Dickinson, and William Carlos Williams, highlighting the influence of Zen in their work. 45 minute duration, followed by Q&A.
https://www.driftwoodshrine.com
John Gendo Wolff, Sensei, is a Zen priest and teacher in the White Plains Asanga. He is the Dharma heir of Susan Myoyu Andersen, Roshi, and the Spiritual Director of the Great Wave Zen Sangha in Northern Michigan. He is a college professor of writing and literature with numerous publications of poetry and essays, and also a graduate of Huron High School in Ann Arbor.
Crazy Wisdom Bookstore & Tea Room., 114 South Main Street. Free. (734) 276-5979. Chris@wuigglemylegs.comhttps://www.driftwoodshrine.com
Stage name of Kelly Mays, who uses poetry to explore her indigenous heritage (she’s a member of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe) and the struggles of being female in a patriarchal culture. Preceded by a poetry open mike.
7 p.m. Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry.
Author and world traveler Robert (Bob) Downes has been inspiring readers to pursue their dreams of travel and adventure for more than three decades.
A resident of Traverse City, Michigan, Downes, 64, is the author of three nonfiction books: “Planet Backpacker” (2008),” Biking Northern Michigan” (2014), and “Travels With My Wife” (2015) and his novel, “Windigo Moon,” (2017).
A native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Downes earned a B.A. in journalism from Wayne State University in Detroit in 1976.
Book:
The great love of Blue Heron and Red Bear sustain an Ojibwe clan as it struggles to survive war, famine, and the coming of foreign explorers bearing deadly diseases.
The blood feud between two rival warriors over the love of Ashagi, a strong-willed woman of great beauty and greater determination threads through this story of one Ojibwe clan on the cusp of great change. A young woman from a peaceful village, Ashagi (Blue Heron) is abducted in a raid conducted by the Sioux, the ancestral enemies of her clan, and made a concubine of a fat, slovenly chief who already has two wives. When she is rescued by Misko (Red Bear), an Ojibwe youth, the two fall in love and a lifelong bond is formed. But Nika, Misko’s rival, demands that Misko surrender Ashagi to replace his brother who was killed during a raid involving the young warriors’ two clans. As Nika’s pride and obsession with Ashagi eats away at his sanity, greater danger for the whole Ojibwe way of life creeps ever closer.
Warfare, vengeance, supernatural monsters, and strange spirits all claw at the edges of this love triangle, but the power of the clan and the love of family and tradition helps sustain a culture on the verge of harrowing times. Beginning in 1588 and spanning twenty-five years, WINDIGO MOON encompasses warring tribes of the Upper Great Lakes, the onset of the Little Ice Age of the 1600s, the diseases introduced by foreign explorers, and, always and forever, the great love of Blue Heron and Red Bear.
Meticulously researched and beautifully written, WINDIGO MOON will appeal to fans of Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear, Jean Auel, Alexander Thom, Anna Lee Waldo, and other top authors of historical fiction.
Literati is proud to partner with our neighbors at the Neutral Zone to welcome Kaveh Akbar and Hanrif Abdurraraqib who will be reading from their latest work Calling a Wolf a Wolf and They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.
This event will be at the Neutral Zone.
About Calling a Wolf a Wolf
This highly-anticipated debut boldly confronts addiction and courses the strenuous path of recovery, beginning in the wilds of the mind. Poems confront craving, control, the constant battle of alcoholism and sobriety, and the questioning of the self and its instincts within the context of this never-ending fight. From “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before”: Sometimes you just have to leave whatever’s real to you, you have to clomp through fields and kick the caps off all the toadstools. Sometimes you have to march all the way to Galilee or the literal foot of God himself before you realize you’ve already passed the place where you were supposed to die. I can no longer remember the being afraid, only that it came to an end.
About They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
n an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s is a voice that matters. Whether he’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.
In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Willis-Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car.
In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—along with original, previously unreleased essays—Willis-Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.
Kaveh Akbar is the founding editor of Divedapper. His poems appear recently or soon in The New Yorker, Poetry, APR, Tin House, PBS NewsHour, and elsewhere. He is the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James 2017) and the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry). The recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives and teaches in Florida.
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, writer, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first collection of poems, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, was released by Button Poetry in 2016. His essays and music criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The FADER, and Pitchfork. He is currently a columnist at MTV News.
Nicholas Delbanco is the author of thirty books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels The Years, The Count of Concord, and Spring and Fall and his nonfiction works The Art of Youth: Crane, Carrington, Gershwin, and the Nature of First Acts, The Countess of Stanlein Restored, and The Lost Suitcase: Reflections on the Literary Life. Delbanco also taught at the University of Michigan where he was former director of the MFA program and Hopwood Awards Program. He retired in 2015.
Book:
A miscellany of sorts, preeminent author and critic Nicholas Delbanco’s Curiouser and Curiouser attests to a lifelong interest in music and the visual arts as well as both “mere” and “sheer” literature. With essays ranging from the restoration of his father-in-law’s famed Stradivarius cello—known throughout the world as “The Countess of Stanlein”—to a reimagining of H. A. and Margaret Rey’s lives and the creation of their most beloved character, Curious George, Delbanco examines what it means to live and love with the arts.
Whether exploring the history of personal viewing in the business of museum-going, musing on the process of rewriting one’s earliest published work, or looking back on the twists and turns of a life that spans the greater part of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, Delbanco’s Curiouser and Curiouser invites adventurous readers to follow him down the rabbit hole as he reflects on life as a student, an observer, a writer, a lover, a father, a teacher, and most importantly, a participant in the everyday experiences of human life.
Literati is pleased to partner with the University of Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing and WCBN Radio for the latest installment of Writer to Writer, a series which puts a UM professor and member of the Sweetland faculty in conversation about writing.
This month Writer to Writer welcomes Dr. Howard Markel. Acclaimed medical historian, Dr. Howard Markel is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. He is a professor of pediatrics, psychiatry, public health management and policy, history, and English literature and language. His work reaches a wide range of audiences and has had a broad impact on national and international health policy and on the public’s understanding of medicine.
Dr. Markel serves as editor-in-chief of the health policy journal The Milbank Quarterly and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, PBS NewsHour.org, and national radio and television shows. From 2006 to 2015, he served as the principal historical consultant on pandemic preparedness for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His historical epidemiological work has influenced strategies employed by the WHO, the CDC, and the Mexican Ministry of Health.
Dr. Markel is the author, co-author, or co-editor of ten books, including the award-winning Quarantine! and the national bestseller An Anatomy of Addiction. He has written over 450 articles and book chapters for scholarly and popular publications. He was a regular contributor on NPR’s Science Friday and has appeared in several acclaimed film documentaries, including, most recently, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies on PBS.
Dr. Markel has delivered lectures across the United States and in Europe and has spoken at U.S. government agencies, departments and the White House. His work has been recognized with numerous grants, honors and awards. In 2008 he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine. In 2015 was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship.
A native of Detroit, he earned his bachelor’s (1982) and medical degrees (1986) at the University of Michigan. He completed his pediatrics residency and fellowship and Ph.D. in the history of medicine, science and technology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School. In Fall, 2018, Pantheon/Random House will publish his new book, Corn Flakes, about Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, who invented the concept of “wellness,” and his brother, cereal magnate Will Kellogg.
