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/
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.
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
Literati is proud to be partnering with the Helen Zell Writers Program to host poet Gregory Pardlo at University of Michigan Museum of Art Apse
Gregory Pardlo’s collection Digest (Four Way Books) won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Digest was also nominated for an NAACP Image Award, named a standout book by the Academy of American Poets, a New York Times best poetry book of the year, and a finalist for the Hurston Wright Legacy Award and INDIEFAB Book of the Year. Gregory Pardlo’s other honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His first poetry collection, Totem, won the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize in 2007.
John U. Bacon is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including Three and Out; Fourth and Long; and Endzone. He appears often on NPR and national television, and teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and the University of Michigan. He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife and son.
Book:
From New York Times bestselling author John U. Bacon, a gripping narrative history of the largest manmade detonation prior to Hiroshima: in 1917 a ship laden with the most explosives ever packed on a vessel sailed out of Brooklyn’s harbor for the battlegrounds of World War I; when it stopped in Halifax, Nova Scotia, an extraordinary disaster awaited…
Literati is excited to welcome author Richard Retyi who will be discussing his debut book The Book of Ann Arbor: An Extremely Serious History Book. Rich will discuss his book—one of the inaugural releases from the Ann Arbor District Library’s Fifth Avenue Press—as well as reading one of the 41 stories from the book, with photos, music, and details that just wouldn’t fit on the page. He’s also open to answering questions from the audience, no matter how shockingly personal in nature.
About The Book of Ann Arbor:
A suicide submarine parade. Ann Arbor’s top 10 astronauts. Shakey Jake, the Embassy Hotel, and train/building collisions. The birth of Iggy Pop. Nazis getting punched. Visits from heads of state, from presidents to a dictator. The Music Mobile, the Naked Mile and a round-the-world flight. Plus, a few tales of murder, because it happens here too. These are a few of the stories that make up The Book of Ann Arbor.
Richard Retyi is the communications and marketing manager at the Ann Arbor District Library and part of the Ann Arbor Stories podcast.
Literati is proud to be partnering with the Helen Zell Writers Program to host poet Gregory Pardlo at University of Michigan Museum of Art Helmut Stern Auditorium
Gregory Pardlo’s collection Digest (Four Way Books) won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Digest was also nominated for an NAACP Image Award, named a standout book by the Academy of American Poets, a New York Times best poetry book of the year, and a finalist for the Hurston Wright Legacy Award and INDIEFAB Book of the Year. Gregory Pardlo’s other honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His first poetry collection, Totem, won the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize in 2007.
