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
Readings by local writers. Books and authors include Meg Gowers’ Michigan Moon(picture book), Judy Patterson Wenzel’s Light from the Cage: 25 Years in a Prison Classroom (memoir), Lexi Mohney’s Carnal Knowledge: The Adoration of a Dangerous Woman and the Death of a Dream (erotica), and Lori Wojtowicz’s Crossing the Hall: Exposing an American Divide (memoir). Signings. Refreshments.
All writers welcome to read their own or other favorite poetry or short fiction afterward at open mic.
Hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and Dave Jibson
see our blog at Facebook/Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series
Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room, 114 S. Main St. Free. 7346652757.info@crazywisdom.net www.crazywisdom.net
This Oakland University creative writing professor reads from and discusses his recent work. His short stories and comics blend the mundane with the fantastical, creating largely plausible narratives with small doses of the impossible.
7:30 p.m., Concordia University Kreft Center Recital Hall, 4090 Geddes. Free. 995-7389.
Literati is proud to be partnering with the Helen Zell Writers Program to host author Sigrid Nunez and poet Aracelis Girmay at the University of Michigan Art Museum Helmet Stern Auditorium.
Aracelis Girmay was born and raised in Santa Ana, California. She received a BA from Connecticut College in 1999 and went on to earn an MFA in poetry from New York University. She is the author of The Black Maria (BOA Editions, 2016), Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011), winner of the Isabella Poetry Award and a finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Award, and Teeth (Curbstone Press, 2007). In a statement for the New American Poets series, she says of her work, “I hope the poems are songs sometimes. I want the poems to ask questions. To engage other people. To promote compassion.” Girmay is also the author of a collage-based picture book, changing, changing (George Braziller, 2005). She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Civitella Ranieri, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches and lives in New York City.
Sigrid Nunez has published seven novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, Salvation City, and, most recently, The Friend. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Sigrid’s honors and awards include a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, and two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters: the Rosenthal Foundation Award and the Rome Prize in Literature. She has taught at Columbia, Princeton, Boston University, and the New School, and has also been on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and of several other writers’ conferences across the country. She lives in New York City.
Civil rights activists Brenda Travis and John Obee discuss their new book about Travis’ arrests in 1961 at age 16 for participating in a sit-in at a bus station and leading a walkout from her high school. She was released from jail the 2nd time on the condition that she leave Mississippi.
7-8:30 p.m., AADL Downtown multipurpose rm. Free. 327-4200.
One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends – a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including poetry by Gerardo Sámano and prose by Elinam Agbo.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State. Free. 764-6330.
