Poet and memoirist Carmen Bugan was born in Romania and emigrated to the United States in 1989. She earned a BA from the University of Michigan Residentail College, an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University, and a MA and PhD, both in English Literature, from Oxford University. Bugan’s work reckons with the legacy of totalitarianism, including the crippling effects of the culture of surveillance that existed under Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Her visit is co-sponsored by the LSA Honors Program and the Residential College.
Literati is proud to be partnering with the Helen Zell Writers Program to host authors Esmé Weijun Wang and Danielle Lazarin at the University of Michigan Art Museum Helmet Stern Auditorium.
Danielle Lazarin’s debut collection of short stories, Back Talk, has been praised for its ability to bend form and turn the story into something that is temporally and emotionally elastic. A New York Times pick for a 2018 special book review issue on women, Lazarin is a graduate of Oberlin College’s creative writing program, she received her MFA from the University of Michigan, where her stories and essays won Hopwood Awards.
Esmé Weijun Wang is a novelist and essayist. Her debut novel, The Border of Paradise, was called a Best Book of 2016 by NPR and one of the 25 Best Novels of 2016 by Electric Literature. She was named by Granta as one of the “Best of Young American Novelists” in 2017, won the Whiting Award in 2018, and is the recipient of the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize for her forthcoming essay collection, The Collected Schizophrenias. Born in the Midwest to Taiwanese parents, she lives in San Francisco.
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 in Guernica, 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.
About Number One Chinese Restaurant
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.
7 p.m., Nicola’s, Westgate shopping center. Free. 662-0600.
This year’s Rasa Festival reading features poets Samiah Haque, Ashwini Bhasi, Zilka Joseph, and Inam Kang.
Samiah Haque speaks in fluid tones, with an acute clarity of voice. Her hobbies include jaywalking, whistling in the company of passers-by, and skipping to the lou. Recently, she has taken to advising young soldiers on the subject of hygiene and proper table manners. She lives in a swollen field outside of Madrid.
Ashwini Bhasi lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan and writes poems to make sense of the mind-body connection of trauma and chronic pain, life in India, and the duality of her experiences as a data analyst and poet. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Room Magazine, Rogue Agent, Bear River Review, Yellow Chair Review, The Feminist Wire, and Driftwood Press among others. Her poem about the 2016 presidential election was nominated for a Pushcart prize.
Zilka Joseph teaches creative writing and is an independent editor and manuscript coach. Her chapbooks, Lands I Live In and What Dread, were nominated for a PEN America and a Pushcart award, respectively. She was awarded a Zell Fellowship, a Hopwood Prize, and the Elsie Choy Lee Scholarship (Center for the Education of Women) from the University of Michigan.
Inam Kang is a Pakistani-born Muslim poet, student, curator and researcher currently living in Cleveland, OH as an MS candidate in Medical Physiology at Case Western Reserve University. He is also a former Ann Arbor Poetry & Slam finalist. Currently, he is a co-curator for the POC-centered reading and dialogue series FRUIT in Ann Arbor, MI. His work can be found or is forthcoming in Freezeray Poetry and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others.
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
Learn first-hand how Chicken Soup stories are curated for anthologies, and enjoy a reading from Michigan authors featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Power of Yes! Featured authors will include Women Writers of Ann Arbor/Ypsi founder Kaye Curren, Nancy Beaufait, and Tammy Nicole Glover.
About the Book
Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Power of Yes! celebrates the empowerment we feel when we say “Yes!” to something that challenges us. Change your life for the better by doing the things that scare you. These 101 true, revealing stories will help you do just that.
In a world where “why” is too often asked and “no” is too often an answer, this book encourages us to ask “why not” and celebrates the tremendous power in saying “Yes!” The authors of these 101 stories explain how saying “Yes!” changed their lives for the better. Whether it’s something little, like trying a new food or something big, like jumping out an airplane, you’ll be ready to shake up your own life after you read about their experiences.
About the Authors
Nancy Beaufait resides in Madison Heights, with Tim, her dog Cash, and her cat, Simon. Nancy has lived in Michigan all her life and loves her mitten state. She always loved writing and the old-fashioned art of writing a letter and slipping it into the mailbox is a favorite pastime of Nancy’s. Nancy will retire from nursing soon and have more time to write.
Kaye Curren lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kaye writes essays and humor for various blogs and magazines and has recently been published in Laugh Out Loud: 40 Women Humorists Celebrate Then and Now…Before We Forget. She is the author of Memories A La Carte, Essays on a Life. Find her musings at https://www.writethatthang.com.
Tammy Nicole Glover is a freelance writer and inspirational blogger. She writes short stories and devotionals. She has written several pieces for Believers Bay online magazine and is a contributing writer for GACCS Teen Magazine. You can follow her on Facebook @ Balm4theSoul and Twitter @ T_Glov.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Power of Yes! celebrates the empowerment we feel when we say “Yes!” to something that challenges us. Change your life for the better by doing the things that scare you. These 101 true, revealing stories will help you do just that.
In a world where “why” is too often asked and “no” is too often an answer, this book encourages us to ask “why not” and celebrates the tremendous power in saying “Yes!” The authors of these 101 stories explain how saying “Yes!” changed their lives for the better. Whether it’s something little, like trying a new food or something big, like jumping out an airplane, you’ll be ready to shake up your own life after you read about their experiences.
7 p.m., Nicola’s, Westgate shopping center. Free. 662-0600.
We are so excited to welcome back to Ann Arbor food writer Julia Turshen who will be sharing with us her latest cookbook Now & Again: Go-To Recipies, Inspired Menus + Endless Ideas for Reinventing Leftovers. Julia will be in conversation with Chef Kate Williams of Lady of the House restaurant in Detroit and journalist Ashley Woods
About Now & Again:
Small Victories, one of the most beloved cookbooks of 2016, introduced us to the lovely Julia Turshen and her mastery of show-stopping home cooking, and her second book, Feed the Resistance, moved a nation, winning Eater Cookbook of the Year in 2017. In Now & Again, the follow-up to what Real Simple called “an inspiring addition to any kitchen bookshelf,” more than 125 delicious and doable recipes and 20 creative menu ideas help cooks of any skill level to gather friends and family around the table to share a meal (or many!) together. This cookbook comes to life with Julia’s funny and encouraging voice and is brimming with good stuff, including:
– can’t-get-enough-of-it recipes
– inspiring menus for social gatherings, holidays and more
– helpful timelines for flawlessly throwing a party
– oh-so-helpful “It’s Me Again” recipes, which show how to use leftovers in new and delicious ways
– tips on how to be smartly thrifty with food choices
Now & Again will change the way we gather, eat, and think about leftovers, and, like the name suggests, you’ll find yourself reaching for its pages time and time again.
JULIA TURSHEN is the bestselling author of Feed the Resistance, named the Best Cookbook of 2017 by Eater, and Small Victories, named one of the Best Cookbooks of 2016 by the New York Times and NPR. Her latest book, Now & Again, will be out in September, 2018. She has coauthored numerous cookbooks and hosted the first two seasons of Radio Cherry Bombe. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, and Saveur. Epicurious has called her one of the ‘100 Greatest Home Cooks of All Time’ and she sits on the Advisory Board of the National Museum of American History’s Kitchen Cabinet. She is the founder of Equity At The Table (EATT), an inclusive digital directory of women and non-binary individuals in food. Julia lives in the Hudson Valley with her wife and pets.
KATE WILLIAMS is the owner and executive chef of Lady of the House. With the opening of Lady of the House, Williams brought a new breed of progressive, vibrant and dynamic cooking to Detroit’s Corktown district. In its first year of opening, Lady of the House was named James Beard Foundation semi-finalist for “Best New Restaurant” 2017, GQ “Best New Restaurant in America, 2018”, and was profiled twice in the New York Times. In May 2018 Williams received the honor of Food & Wine“Best New Chef 2018”. Passionate about highlighting local farms, Williams focuses on #uglyfood, which minimizes food waste on farms to feed more people and encourage them to grow their own food. An extension of the Slow Food movement, it’s meant to beautifully prepare food that would otherwise be thrown away on the farm.
ASHLEY WOODS is the founder of Detour Media, a digital content publisher and agency based in Detroit, which publishes the Detour newsletter to thousands of engaged subscribers in the Motor City. She is a member of The Information Accelerator, a Silicon Valley-based initiative to fund the next generation of subscription-based news publications. Ashley was also a 2018 Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Before startup life, Ashley led digital strategy and consumer experience at the Detroit Free Press, and was a reporter and editor for Detroit-based publications like HuffPost Detroit, MLive, Issue Media Group and Real Detroit Weekly, specializing in entrepreneurism, culture and city life.
Literati is so excited to welcome author Wayétu Moore who will be reading and sharing her debut novel She Would Be King.
About She Would Be King:
A novel of exhilarating range, magical realism, and history–a dazzling retelling of Liberia’s formation
Wayétu Moore’s powerful debut novel, She Would Be King, reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years through three unforgettable characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from the West African village of Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but still she survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, can fade from sight when the earth calls him. When the three meet in the settlement of Monrovia, their gifts help them salvage the tense relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous tribes, as a new nation forms around them.
Moore’s intermingling of history and magical realism finds voice not just in these three characters but also in the fleeting spirit of the wind, who embodies an ancient wisdom. “If she was not a woman,” the wind says of Gbessa, “she would be king.” In this vibrant story of the African diaspora, Moore, a talented storyteller and a daring writer, illuminates with radiant and exacting prose the tumultuous roots of a country inextricably bound to the United States. She Would Be King is a novel of profound depth set against a vast canvas and a transcendent debut from a major new author.
Wayétu Moore is the founder of One Moore Book and is a graduate of Howard University, Columbia University, and the University of Southern California. She teaches at the City University of New York’s John Jay College and lives in Brooklyn.
Journalist and activist Herb Boyd discusses his new book, which covers such figures in Detroit history as abolitionist William Lambert, Motown founder Berry Gordy, the city’s first black mayor Coleman Young, and others.
7-9 p.m., AADL Downtown multipurpose rm. Free. 327-4200.
Reading by this Thailand-based queer poet, a Midwest native, whose latest book, Naming the No-Name Woman, likens her experiences as a Chinese American woman with various overlapping identities to those of the 1st Chinese American movie star, Anna May Wong. “The poems in [this] transformative, erotic collection teeter on the impossible border between consuming and rebuffing, naming and not naming the enigmatic presence of [Wong],” says Michigan poet Diane Seuss. “An’s formal choices tread a wavering line between poetry and prose, just as the poems draw as much from theory as memory and feeling.” Preceded by an open mike.
7-8:30 p.m. Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea, 123 W. Washington. Free. 994-6663
