Literati is delighted to welcome award-winning author Richard Russo for a discussion his newly released essay collection The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing. Richard will be joined by Sam Krowchenko for a post-reading discussion.
About The Destiny Thief:
A master of the novel, short story, and memoir, the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Everybody’s Fool now gives us his very first collection of personal essays, ranging throughout writing and reading and living.
In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain’s value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thiefreflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America’s most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo’s writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers.
Ricahrd Russo is the author of eight novels, most recently Everybody’s Fool and That Old Cape Magic; two collections of stories, with Trajectory published in 2017; and the memoir Elsewhere. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which like Nobody’s Fool was adapted to film, in a multiple-award-winning HBO miniseries; in 2016 he was given the Indie Champion Award by the American Booksellers Association; and in 2017 he received France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. He lives in Portland, Maine.
Sam Krowchenko is the host of Literati Bookstore’s podcast Shelf Talking. His work has appeared in Salon, Full Stop, and The Michigan Quarterly Review. A graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, he is currently a Zell Fellow.
On June 8th at 5pm, Literati is thrilled to welcome David Sedaris back to Ann Arbor and to Literati Bookstore as he tours independent bookstores across the country in support of his latest essay collection, Calypso!
PLEASE READ CAREFULLY BEFORE MAKING YOUR PURCHASE
Seating for this event is incredibly limited, as the reading will take place on our main floor. For a chance to attend the reading, purchase a priority signing line ticket between 4/20-4/27! Purchasing this ticket will not only enter you into a raffle for a chance to see David read in-store, but also pre-buys a hardcover copy of Calypso through Literati and reserves a priority spot in the signing line following the event!
Limit two priority signing line tickets per person. Purchase is non-refundable.
When the priority signing line ticket offer ends on 4/27 at 5pm, we will randomly draw a limited number of names to attend the reading on Literati’s main floor, and notify those winners directly via email. The remainder will have priority access to the signing line, according to the signing line number printed on their ticket, and following all event attendees.
All priority signing line ticket holders will be able to pick up their books starting 5/29 in-store, or the night of the event when they join the signing line. For additional signing line procedures, see FAQ below.
A free signing line ticket will become on 4/27 at 5pm. These tickets will grant access to the signing line following priority signing line ticket holders. Calypso will go on sale at Literati on 5/29, and we will have additional copies of all David’s books available for purchase on June 8th to all signing line ticket holders.
To eliminate long lines and time spent in them, we will call signing line numbers up by groups via our twitter account (@literatibkstore) to join the line at our store, so that you can explore downtown Ann Arbor (or avoid the weather) while you wait.
David is willing to sign as long as there are still people in line (four years ago our signing went into the early morning the following day)! David is incredibly gracious and takes his time with each person in line, so please do note that we expect him to sign late into the evening.
Click here, or click the button below to purchase tickets.
FAQ
Q: Why are you doing a raffle for attendance?
A: Not everyone receives our newsletter at the same time, and there very limited seats which would be snapped up near-instantly. A raffle increases your chance to attend!
Q: How will raffle winners be notified?
A: You’ll receive an email directly from Literati, with a special ticket attachment. We ask that winners arrive, ticket-in-hand, no later than 4:55pm on June 8th to be allowed into the store to your seat, otherwise your seat may be given away. Seating is first come, first serve.
Q: I purchased a priority signing line ticket, when do I pick up my book?
A: You can pick up your book beginning 5/29 at Literati Bookstore, just show your signing line ticket. You can also pick up your book the night of the event when you join the line (please note Literati will be closed during the day on the 8th to set up for the event).
Q: How do I find my signing line number?
It will appear on your ticket as Sec: Space in Line, Row: LINE, Seat: (1, 2, 99,etc., this is your number in the line)
Q: I purchased a priority signing line ticket, my ticket is signing line number #47, does this mean I’ll be the 47th person to get their book signed overall?
A: Not exactly. Following David’s reading in the store, guests attending the reading (those who won the raffle) will be first through the signing line. Then, ticket numbers will be called to line up at the store in groups, starting with the earliest priority signing line ticket numbers.
Q: I don’t have twitter, and I don’t want twitter.
A: No problem! Access our feed on any mobile browser at https://twitter.com/literatibkstore the day of the event!
Q: I would like to enter the signing line, but I don’t necessarily want to purchase a hardcover copy of Calypso in advance, is this possible?
A: Yes. Free, general signing line tickets become available when the priority signing line ticket offer ends on 4/27 at 5pm.
Q: Do I need a signing line ticket to enter the signing line?
A: Yes. We encourage you to go through Brown Paper Tickets to get a signing line ticket. Free tickets will become available when the priority signing line ticket off ends on 4/27 at 5pm. Note that those who purchased the priority signing line ticket receive the initial signing line numbers. We will be calling ticket holders up by groups according to their assigned numbers, via our twitter, until there are no more numbers to call. This helps us stay in fire code and eliminate long lines and your time spent waiting in one.
Q: Are we expected to sign up exactly according to our numbers?
A: No. We simply want to eliminate waiting in a longer line by calling guests up in groups. You’re welcome to self-police outside while you initially form a line to be let inside, but once you’re let inside the store, we will not be reorganizing guests by exact signing line number.
Q: I have a pretty high signing line number. What time will I get my book signed??
A: We don’t know. We expect David to be signing late into the night. Also, the wait will be WORTH IT. David is incredibly gracious and generous with his time to *everyone* in the line. We encourage you to enjoy and hang out in our great downtown neighborhood while you wait.
Q: I can’t make the event or signing line, can I still get a book signed?
A: Yes, call Literati bookstore at 734-585-5567 to make a purchase, or order a David Sedaris title online at literatibookstore.com, and indicate you would like the book signed at the event. There will be no refunds for these orders. We will notify you when your order is ready to be picked up if you elect to pick-up in the store following the event.
Literat is excited to welcome author and artist Anne & Jerzy Drozd who will be sharing their new action-packed graphic novel, Science Comics: Rockets: Defying Gravity!
About Science Comics: Rockets: Defying Gravity:
Blast off! Discover the history of rockets and their impact on the future with Anne and Jerzy Drozd in this volume of Science Comics, the action-packed nonfiction graphic novel series for middle-grade readers!
Every volume of Science Comics offers a complete introduction to a particular topic—dinosaurs, coral reefs, the solar system, volcanoes, bats, flying machines, and many more. These gorgeously illustrated graphic novels offer wildly entertaining views of their subjects. Whether you’re a fourth grader doing a natural science unit at school or a thirty-year-old with a secret passion for airplanes, these books are for you!
This volume: In Rockets we explore the 2,000 years that rockets have been in existence. We dive into Newton’s Laws of Motion—learning all about gravity, force, acceleration, and the history of rockets made in the past and rockets to be made in the future!
Jerzy Drozd is one of the artists of The Warren Commission Report. He has drawn special projects for Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, Marvel Comics, VIZ Media, and others. His favorite NASA mission is Apollo 15. He founded and runs the Ann Arbor Comics Arts Festival and also started a podcast called Galaxy of Super Adventure.
Anne Drozd is a public librarian by day and a cartoonist by night. She’s an avid space exploration enthusiast and a card-holding member of the Planetary Society. Her favorite NASA mission is Apollo 12. Anne helps to introduce people to comics through her work at the Ann Arbor District Library and as co-organizer of the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival.
All invited to read and discuss their poetry or short stories. Bring about 6 copies of your work to share.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
Literati is honored and especially excited to host author, bookseller, and number one human being Lillian Li who will be sharing her debut novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant.
About Number One Chinese Restaurant:
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2018 by The Millions and Cosmopolitan
An exuberant and wise multigenerational debut novel about the complicated lives and loves of people working in everyone’s favorite Chinese restaurant.
The Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland, is not only a beloved go-to setting for hunger pangs and celebrations; it is its own world, inhabited by waiters and kitchen staff who have been fighting, loving, and aging within its walls for decades. When disaster strikes, this working family’s controlled chaos is set loose, forcing each character to confront the conflicts that fast-paced restaurant life has kept at bay.
Owner Jimmy Han hopes to leave his late father’s homespun establishment for a fancier one. Jimmy’s older brother, Johnny, and Johnny’s daughter, Annie, ache to return to a time before a father’s absence and a teenager’s silence pushed them apart. Nan and Ah-Jack, longtime Duck House employees, are tempted to turn their thirty-year friendship into something else, even as Nan’s son, Pat, struggles to stay out of trouble. And when Pat and Annie, caught in a mix of youthful lust and boredom, find themselves in a dangerous game that implicates them in the Duck House tragedy, their families must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice to help their children.
Generous in spirit, unaffected in its intelligence, multi-voiced, poignant, and darkly funny, Number One Chinese Restaurant looks beyond red tablecloths and silkscreen murals to share an unforgettable story about youth and aging, parents and children, and all the ways that our families destroy us while also keeping us grounded and alive.
Lillian Li received her BA from Princeton and her MFA from the University of Michigan. She is the recipient of a Hopwood Award in Short Fiction, as well as Glimmer Train‘s New Writer Award. Her work has been featured inGuernica, Granta , and Jezebel. She is from the D.C. metro area and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Number One Chinese Restaurant is her first novel.
Literati is thrilled to welcome author Nick Dybek who will reading and discussing his new novel, The Verdun Affair.
About The Verdun Affair:
“The Verdun Affair is ravishingly beautiful, and as much about love as about war. Nick Dybek is a storyteller of great power.” –Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and Circling the Sun
“The Verdun Affair is an intensely gripping story set in the immediate aftermath of war. From a still-smoldering battlefield, Nick Dybek conjures a sweeping saga of secrets, lies, mistaken identity, love and betrayal. This is the kind of book you can’t put down.” — Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn
A sweeping, romantic, and profoundly moving novel, set in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and Los Angeles in the 1950s, about a lonely young man, a beautiful widow, and the amnesiac soldier whose puzzling case binds them together even as it tears them apart.
In 1921, two young Americans meet in Verdun, the city in France where one of the most devastating battles of the war was waged. Tom is an orphan from Chicago, a former ambulance driver now gathering bones from the battlefield; Sarah is an expatriate from Boston searching for the husband who wandered off from his division and hasn’t been seen since. Quickly, the two fall into a complicated affair against the ghostly backdrop of the ruined city. Months later, Sarah and Tom meet again at the psychiatric ward of an Italian hospital, drawn there by the appearance of a mysterious patient the doctors call Douglas Fairbanks (after the silent film actor)–a shell-shocked soldier with no memory of who he is. At the hospital, Tom and Sarah are joined by Paul, an Austrian journalist with his own interest in the amnesiac.
Each is keeping a secret; each has been shaken by the horrors of war. Decades later, Tom, now a successful screenwriter, encounters Paul by chance in LA, still grappling with the questions raised by this gorgeous and incisive novel: How to begin again after unfathomable trauma? How to love after so much loss? And who, in the end, was Douglas Fairbanks?
From the bone-strewn fields of Verdun to the bombed-out cafés of Paris, from the riot-torn streets of Bologna to the riotous parties of 1950s Hollywood, The Verdun Affair is a riveting tale of romance, grief, and the far-reaching consequences of a single lie.
Nick Dybek is a recipient of a Granta New Voices selection, a Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and a Maytag Fellowship. He received a BA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He teaches at Oregon State University. He is the author of When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man and The Verdun Affair.
Literati is excited to welcome author Mark Beyer who will be reading and discussing his new novel, Hired Man.
About Hired Man:
What would you do if a dying stranger begged you to save his daughter and then paid you seven figures to do it? When suburban dad Terry Holbrook stops to help the quickly dying driver of an icy car wreck on a dark, lonely country road, he can’t believe the bloody check thrust into his hands is worth the paper it’s printed on. Yet, in no time, Terry and his family are swept into a dangerous vortex of powerful Detroit drug dealers, vicious blackmailers, homicidal white supremacists and the dead man’s vengeful family. Enter Pearce Butler, a “ghost” who operates both inside and outside the law. But is his true motive to mete out justice? Or simply to get to the money first? From word one, Hired Man speeds like a bullet train through ever-tightening coils of suspense toward a climax as riveting as any in crime fiction.
Mark Beyer is a Detroit-based writer, creative director, and video producer. He and his wife, Linda, live in Beverly Hills, MI. His fiction has been published in the L.A. Reader. Hired Man is his first nove
All invited to listen to guild members swap stories or bring their own to tell.
2-4 p.m., AADL Downtown 3rd-floor freespace rm., 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. annarborstorytelling.org, 997-5388
This local husband-and-wife writing team reads from ‘Til Death: Marriage Poems, their jointly written collection exploring the ups and downs of suburban monogamy from their dual perspectives. The program begins with open mike readings.
7-8:30 p.m., Sweetwaters, 123 W. Washington. Free. 994-6663.
