Join us for an evening of discussing literature in both the novel and short story format with University of Michigan Zell Writers’ professors Douglas Trevor and Claire Vaye Watkins as they discuss Trevor’s new collection of short stories, The Book of Wonders. Both authors have a published novel and collection of short stories.
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.
Claire Vaye Watkins is the author of the novel Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn, which won the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. A Guggenheim Fellow, she is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan and the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada.
Books:
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. 9780984824557
Gold Flame Citrus
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Vanity Fair, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, The Atlantic, Refinery 29, Men’s Journal, Ploughshares, Lit Hub, Book Riot, Los Angeles Magazine, Powells, BookPage and Kirkus Reviews The much-anticipated first novel from a Story Prize-winning “5 Under 35” fiction writer.
In 2012, Claire Vaye Watkins’s story collection, Battleborn, swept nearly every award for short fiction. Now this young writer, widely heralded as a once-in-a-generation talent, returns with a first novel that harnesses the sweeping vision and deep heart that made her debut so arresting to a love story set in a devastatingly imagined near future: Unrelenting drought has transfigured Southern California into a surreal, phantasmagoric landscape. With the Central Valley barren, underground aquifer drained, and Sierra snowpack entirely depleted, most “Mojavs,” prevented by both armed vigilantes and an indifferent bureaucracy from freely crossing borders to lusher regions, have allowed themselves to be evacuated to internment camps. In Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon, two young Mojavs–Luz, once a poster child for the Bureau of Conservation and its enemies, and Ray, a veteran of the “forever war” turned surfer–squat in a starlet’s abandoned mansion. Holdouts, they subsist on rationed cola and whatever they can loot, scavenge, and improvise.
The couple’s fragile love somehow blooms in this arid place, and for the moment, it seems enough. But when they cross paths with a mysterious child, the thirst for a better future begins. They head east, a route strewn with danger: sinkholes and patrolling authorities, bandits and the brutal, omnipresent sun. Ghosting after them are rumors of a visionary dowser–a diviner for water–and his followers, who whispers say have formed a colony at the edge of a mysterious sea of dunes.
Immensely moving, profoundly disquieting, and mind-blowingly original, Watkins’s novel explores the myths we believe about others and tell about ourselves, the double-edged power of our most cherished relationships, and the shape of hope in a precarious future that may be our own.
Literati is pleased to host Dr. Rana Adwish who will discussing her book In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope
About In Shock:
A riveting first-hand account of a physician who’s suddenly a dying patient and her revelation of the horribly misguided standard of care in the medical world.
Dr. Rana Awdish never imagined that an emergency trip to the hospital would result in hemorrhaging nearly all of her blood volume and losing her unborn first child. But after that first visit, Dr. Awdish spent months fighting for her life, enduring consecutive major surgeries and experiencing multiple overlapping organ failures. At each step of the recovery process, Awdish was faced with something even more unexpected: repeated cavalier behavior from her fellow physicians—indifference following human loss, disregard for anguish and suffering, and an exacting emotional distance.
Hauntingly perceptive and beautifully written, In Shock allows the reader to transform alongside Awidsh and watch what she discovers in our carefully-cultivated, yet often misguided, standard of care. Awdish comes to understand the fatal flaws in her profession and in her own past actions as a physician while achieving, through unflinching presence, a crystalline vision of a new and better possibility for us all.
As Dr. Awdish finds herself up against the same self-protective partitions she was trained to construct as a medical student and physician, she artfully illuminates the dysfunction of disconnection. Shatteringly personal, and yet wholly universal, she offers a brave road map for anyone navigating illness while presenting physicians with a new paradigm and rationale for embracing the emotional bond between doctor and patient.
Dr. Rana Adwish is the Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and a Critical Care Physician. She was recently named Medical Director of Care Experience for the ($6 billion, 24,000 employee) Health System. She was awarded the Speak-Up Hero award in 2014 for her work on improving communication, as well as the Critical Care Teaching Award in 2016. In 2017 she was named a finalist for the Schwartz Center’s 2017 National Compassionate Caregiver of the Year (NCCY) Award and awarded the Physician of the Year award from the Press Ganey National Client Conference. Dr. Awdish is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.
Purple Rose Theatre artistic director Guy Sanville directs Purple Rose actors in readings, usually from new scripts being considered for production. Followed by a discussion with the audience. Dec. 2: Match, Stephen Belber’s 2004 dramatic comedy about an aging Juilliard professor who discovers that the couple he invites into his home for an interview have ulterior motives for their visit. Feb. 10: TBA.
10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., CDL McKune Room, 221 S. Main, Chelsea. Free. Preregistration required. 475-8732.
Looking for that perfect gift for a youngster or new parent? Join us for a signing event with six local authors who are members of the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators. Join us and meet and talk with this wonderful array of authors. For more information regarding SCBWI – Michigan go to https://michigan.scbwi.org
Authors Participating:
Leslie Helakoski
Leslie Helakoski grew up in south Louisiana. She is the author of Big Chickens (Puffin Books; the Michigan Reads picture book for 2007, Great Lakes Great Books Award and a GLBA finalist) and Woolbur (HarperCollins; a Book Sense pick for 2008, Florida Reading Association Honor Book and nominee for state book awards in nine states). Her other books include Big Chickens Fly the Coop (Puffin Books) , The Smushy Bus (Millbrook Press), and Fair Cow (Two Lions). She lives in southern MI. https://www.helakoskibooks.com/
Nancy Shaw
Nancy Shaw is the author of seven beloved tales featuring the endearing and comical sheep. She came up with the idea for the sheep books during a very long car trip with her husband and two children. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her family. http://www.nancyshawbooks.com/
Jodi McKay
Jodi McKay lives in Michigan with her husband, son, and a crazy Goldendoodle named Ralph. She’s too embarrassed to tell you what her typical day as a writer looks like, but she will say that it involves a ton of weird daydreams. Jodi is a proud member of the writing community and is involved in multiple writing groups including SCBWI and 12×12. http://www.jodimckaybooks.com/
Jeff Jantz
Deep within the mind of Jeff Jantz… lives a mad sculptor named Dr. Jantzer…Dr. Jantzer is the creative mastermind behind Jantzer Studios, he dreams up original characters, creatures, and contraptions. Jeff is tasked with constructing Dr. Jantzer’s ideas using clay, wood, metal and whatever else he can get his hand on. Jeff writes fun and quirky stories to accompany the sculptures and with a little hard work, light, and artistic magic colorful and energetic picture books are forged. Jantzer studios creates imaginative sculptures, sets, and props. Gruel Snarl Draws a Wild Zugthing is Jantzer Studios picture book debut. http://www.jeffjantz.com/
Kathryn Madeline Allen
Kathryn Madeline Allen is the author of numerous books, short stories, and poems for children. She lives in Michigan with her three children. http://www.kmabooks.com/blog/
Janet Ruth Heller
Janet Ruth Heller is a poet, literary critic, college professor, essayist, playwright, and fiction writer. I am a past president of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, and I am currently president of the Michigan College English Association. I have a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. http://www.janetruthheller.com/
Local writer Natalie Bakopoulos, author of The Green Shore, offers tips on revising your written work and how to get published. Q&A. In conjunction with the end of National Novel Writing Month, a nonprofit promotion challenging teens and adults to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of November.
1-2:30 p.m., AADL Westgate Branch West Side Room, Westgate shopping center, 2503 Jackson. Free. 327-8301.
Jewish Theological Seminary modern Jewish history professor David Fishman discusses his recent book about ghetto residents who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts from the Nazis and the Soviets.
6:30 p.m., Beth Israel Congregation, 2000 Washtenaw. Free. 665-9897.
Performances by Detroit slam poet/high school English teacher Brittany Rogers and U-M Zell Writers Program MFA candidate Franny Choi, whose new chapbook, Death by Sex Machine, imagines the inner monologues of different femme cyborgs featured in movies and manga. Preceded by a poetry open mike.
7 p.m. Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry.
U-M Zell Writers’ Program director Douglas Trevor reads from his new collection of witty and satirical short stories about characters, often academics, facing big changes in their lives. “Trevor manages again and again to steer the stories into deeper, weirder, more fascinating waters,” says a Kirkus review. He also discusses the book with U-M English professor and award-winning fiction writer Peter Ho Davies.
5:30-7 p.m., 100 U-M Hatcher Grad Library Gallery, enter from the Diag. Free. 764-3166.
Come join us for our first ever Books We Love and Love to Share Panel!
Buying gifts for friends and family throughout the holiday season can be quite stressful. What do you get the brother-in-law who (thinks he) has everything? What about the niece whose interests alter as constantly as our peculiar Michigan weather? And of course, there are the rowdy kids and the beloved partner and the cordial neighbors and….Just thinking about it makes us unstoppably anxious.
So in order to help you buy books for the woods walking naturalist, or the news junkie, or the literary fiction enthusiast, or the esoteric indie book reading hipster, we will be hosting a panel to provide options, answers, and most importantly, soothing advice regarding a vast array of titles. With a stellar line up of booksellers, writers, editors, critics, and one of our favorite publisher reps, we hope this event might make the burden of holiday shopping somewhat lighter–maybe even entertaining? We hope to see you there!
Our list of panelists…
Keith Taylor teaches at the University of Michigan. He has published many books over the years: collections of poetry, a collection of very short stories, co-edited volumes of essays and fiction, and a volume of poetry translated from Modern Greek. His most recent collection, published by Wayne State University Press, is The Bird-while.
Claire Vaye-Watkins is the author of Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn, which won the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. A Guggenheim Fellow, she has been a professor at Bucknell University and Princeton, and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. She is also the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada. She earned her MFA from the Ohio State University, where she was a Presidential Fellow. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, Tin House, Freeman’s, The Paris Review, Story Quaterly, New American Stories, Best of the West, The New Republic, The New York Times, and many others. A recipient of fellowships from the Sewanee and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, Claire was also one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35.”
Polly Rosenwaike’s story collection, Look How Happy I’m Making You, will be published by Doubleday in 2019. Her stories have appeared in Colorado Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Copper Nickel, Indiana Review, and Glimmer Train. Her story “White Carnations” was selected for the O. Henry Prize Stories 2013. She has published book reviews and essays in the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times Book Review, The Millions, and The Brooklyn Rail. She lives in Ann Arbor and teaches creative writing at Eastern Michigan University.
Kate McCune is a publisher representative for Harper Collins. She is a voracious reader who has been known to write outstanding reviews. It is often quite difficult for her to speak about a book without making you want to immediately read said title.
Jill Zimmerman is a bookseller, children’s book buyer, and manager at Literati Bookstore. When she isn’t ordering the latest children’s books, making sure the deposits make it to the bank in a timely manner, or helping customers find that perfect title for a close friend, she enjoys spending time with her lovely daughter and phenomenol husband.
Hilary Gustafson is a co-owner of Literati Bookstore. A serious reader, authentic cat lover, and dedicated coffee drinker, Hilary chooses the titles for Literati’s signed first edition book club, Literati Cultura, in addition to running the bookstore.
Laura Kasischke’s most recent book, from which she will read, brings new poems together with work from her previous nine collections of poetry, published over the last twenty-five years. The citation for the National Book Critics Circle Award, which she received in 2011, reads: “No poet alive has worked harder to depict the contemporary American life course: she has shown herself, in sharply vivid poems, as a girl, as a wayward teen, as a young adult, as a passionate and worried mother with a baby, a child, and now a teenaged son…And no poet now at work does better than Kasischke in finding ways to depict not just how we feel about life stages and the people in them but also how we change as those stages go by…Kasischke stands for many among us.” Her collection of new and selected poems gathers together the breadth of this vision, and Kasischke will offer readings from both her earliest and most recent work.
For questions, contact Julie Sparkman at jmallard@umich.edu
