Maya Barzilai (modern Herbrew and Jewish culture) and Kathryn Babayan (Iranian history and culture) discuss Barzilai’s new book Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters, a monster tour of the Golem narrative across various cultural and historical landscapes.
About the book:
“In the 1910s and 1920s, a “golem cult” swept across Europe and the U.S., later surfacing in Israel. Why did this story of a powerful clay monster molded and animated by a rabbi to protect his community become so popular and pervasive? The golem has appeared in a remarkable range of popular media: from the Yiddish theater to American comic books, from German silent film to Quentin Tarantino movies. This book showcases how the golem was remolded, throughout the war-torn twentieth century, as a muscular protector, injured combatant, and even murderous avenger. This evolution of the golem narrative is made comprehensible by, and also helps us to better understand, one of the defining aspects of the last one hundred years: mass warfare and its ancillary technologies.
Detroit poet Dawn McDuffie reads from her new chapbook, Happenstance and Miracles, which explores hidden aspects of Detroit. Followed by a poetry and short fiction open mike.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757.
Literati is thrilled to welcome poets Sam Sax and Franny Choi who will be reading from their latest collections Madness and Death By Sex Machine.
About Madness:
“An “astounding” (Terrance Hayes) debut collection of poems – Winner of the 2016 National Poetry Series Competition In this —powerful debut collection, sam sax explores and explodes the linkages between desire, addiction, and the history of mental health. These brave, formally dexterous poems examine antiquated diagnoses and procedures from hysteria to lobotomy; offer meditations on risky sex; and take up the poet’s personal and family histories as mental health patients and practitioners. Ultimately, Madnessattempts to build a queer lineage out of inherited language and cultural artifacts; these poems trouble the static categories of sanity, heterosexuality, masculinity, normality, and health. sax’s innovative collection embodies the strange and disjunctive workings of the mind as it grapples to make sense of the world around it”
About Death By Sex Machine:
“Franny Choi’s poetry has the extraordinary ability to solder with tender focus one moment, then rage like electrical fire in the next.” — francine j. harris
“These poems—sparking with the deep, connective work of persona and genre—helped me to look at the world once more, and to glimpse a world worth dreaming of… When the future might feel simply cold, Franny Choi gifts us complex fire.” — Lo Kwa Mei-En
Sam Sax is a queer Jewish writer and educator. He’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambda Literary, The MacDowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Michener Center for Writers. He’s the winner of the 2016 Iowa Review Award and his poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Ploughshares, Poetry, and other journals.
Franny Choi is a writer, performer, and educator. She is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody, 2014) and the chapbook Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). She has been a finalist for multiple national poetry slams, and her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, the New England Review, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman Fellow, Senior News Editor for Hyphen, co-host of the podcast VS, and member of the Dark Noise Collective. Her second collection, Soft Science, is forthcoming from Alice James
NYC-based writer Grady Hendrix reads from his humorous history on the horror paperback boom of the 1970s and 80s, which tor.com calls a “gorgeous, lurid deep-dive into horror’s heyday and a must-read for any self-respecting horror fan.” Hendrix’s 1st novel, Horrorstör, a comic-horror tale about a haunted IKEA store, was one of NPR’s best books of 2014.
7-9 p.m., Live, 102 S. First. Free. 327-4555.
Literati is honored to welcome back poet Tarfia Faizullah who will be sharing her latest collection Registers of Illuminated Villages. She will joined by poet Keith Taylor for a post-reading conversation.
About Registers of Illuminated Villages:
Registers of Illuminated Villages is Tarfia Faizullah’s highly anticipated second collection, following her award-winning debut, Seam. Faizullah’s new work extends and transforms her powerful accounts of violence, war, and loss into poems of many forms and voices–elegies, outcries, self-portraits, and larger-scale confrontations with discrimination, family, and memory. One poem steps down the page like a Slinky; another poem responds to makeup homework completed in the summer of a childhood accident; other poems punctuate the collection with dark meditations on dissociation, discipline, defiance, and destiny; and the near-title poem, “Register of Eliminated Villages,” suggests illuminated texts, one a Qur’an in which the speaker’s name might be found, and the other a register of 397 villages destroyed in northern Iraq. Faizullah is an essential new poet whose work only grows more urgent, beautiful, and–even in its unsparing brutality–full of love.
Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Seam, winner of a VIDA Award and a Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. She teaches at the University of Michigan and lives in Detroit.
Join us for a special event as we celebrate the release of Notes from a Public Typewriter!
About Notes from a Public Typewriter:
When Michael Gustafson and his wife Hilary opened Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, they put out a typewriter for anyone to use. They had no idea what to expect. Would people ask metaphysical questions? Write mean things? Pour their souls onto the page? Yes, no, and did they ever.
Every day, people of all ages sit down at the public typewriter. Children perch atop grandparents’ knees, both sets of hands hovering above the metal keys: I LOVE YOU. Others walk in alone on Friday nights and confess their hopes: I will find someone someday. And some leave funny asides for the next person who sits down: I dislike people, misanthropes, irony, and ellipses … and lists too.
In Notes from a Public Typewrite Michael and designer Oliver Uberti have combined their favorite notes with essays and photos to create an ode to community and the written word that will surprise, delight, and inspire.
Michael Gustafson is the co-owner of Literati Bookstore, an independent bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife and Literati Bookstore co-owner, Hilary.
Oliver Uberti is an award-winning graphic designer and was Senior Design Editor at National Geographic before turning to books. He is the co-author and designer of two books published by Penguin in the UK, London: The Information Capital (2014) and Where the Animals Go (2016). He lives in Los Angeles.
This year’s Story Slam is quickly approaching! Using this year’s theme, “In search of a home: Home and belonging,” we are now accepting written submissions of prose, poetry, narratives, personal essays and more (900 words or less) for our Story Slam to be held March 30 at 7 p.m. in the newsroom at 420 Maynard.
A panel of judges will select a winner to receive a prize!
Guests and participants can enjoy food during the event, and all are welcome to attend!
Submit online to tinyurl.com/TMDstoryslam. You will be notified if your piece is selected to present! There may also be time for an open mic portion of the evening.
Meet long-time Detroit Free Press sports writer Keith Gave as he presents his fascinating book The Russian Five: A Story of Espionage, Defection, Bribery, and Courage, a gripping story featuring our beloved Detroit Red Wings! Five former Soviet hockey players who wound up in Detroit in the 1990s and helped to catapult a beleaguered hockey franchise to the top of the summit played a pivotal role in that city’s celebrated comeback. They are The Russian Five, and while they changed their sport forever they also helped bridge rival cultures with their unique style of diplomacy. This is their remarkable story of espionage, defection, heartbreak and triumph – and remarkable courage after a fateful limo crash nearly killed one of them. Mitch Albom calls The Russian Five “a whirlwind story that is at times fantastical, gripping, emotional and even humorous.”
Praise for The Russian Five
“Keith Gave, always a terrific reporter, had a front row seat to the most fascinating and colorful chapter of Red Wings history – the Russian Five. At times, he was smack in the middle of it, as an envoy, Russian-speaker and secret-keeper. No one could write this story with the detail, depth and understanding that Gave delivers. The result is a whirlwind story that is at times fantastical, gripping, emotional and even humorous. This book was a long time in the making, but well worth the wait.” ─Mitch Albom, columnist, Detroit Free Press
“The ultimate inside story” – Doc Emrick, Hall of Fame broadcaster
“Part thriller, part memoir, part Russian fairytale come true, this is an important book” – Dan Milstein, best-selling author and NHL player agent.
About The Russian Five
When the Detroit Red Wings were rebooting their franchise after more than two decades of relative futility, they knew the best place to find world-class players who could help turn things around more quickly were conscripted servants behind the Iron Curtain. All they had to do then was make history by drafting them, then figure out how to get them out. That’s when the Wings turned to Keith Gave, the newsman whose clandestine mission to Helsinki, Finland, was the first phase of a of a years-long series of secret meetings from posh hotel rooms to remote forests around Europe to orchestrate their unlawful departures from the Soviet Union. One defection created an international incident and made global headlines. Another player faked cancer, thanks to the Wings’ extravagant bribes to Russian doctors, including a big American car. Another player who wasn’t quite ready to leave yet felt like he was being kidnapped by an unscrupulous agent. Two others were outcast when they stood up publicly against the Soviet regime, winning their freedom to play in the NHL only after years of struggle. They are the Russian Five: Sergei Fedorov, Viacheslav Fetisov, Vladimir Konstantinov, Vyacheslav Kozlov and Igor Larionov. Their individual stories read like pulse-pounding spy novels. The story that unfolded after they were brought together in Detroit by the masterful coach Scotty Bowman is unforgettable.
About the Author
Keith Gave spent six years in the United States Army as a Russian linguist working for the National Security Agency during the Cold War. Nothing could have better prepared him for a career as a sports writer covering hockey for the Detroit Free Press. His 15 years with the newspaper were the highlight of a career spanning nearly four decades in the news industry. He also served as writer/producer for the soon-to-be-released documentary film, “The Russian Five.” He lives in Roscommon, Michigan, where he continues to write when he’s not sneaking off to cast a fly to the trout on his home waters of the Au Sable River.
In celebration of Literati Bookstore’s Fifth Birthday, please join us for a reading of poetry and prose by booksellers past and present!
Neutral Zone literary arts director and award-winning local slam poet Molly Raynor discusses writing poetry from initial idea through final revisions. For adult and teen (grade 6 & up) fiction and nonfiction writers. Also, local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal host an open house for writers to connect with one another and/or work on their projects at 7 p.m. on Apr 16.
7-8:45 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-8301.
