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.
Sept. 16 & 30. U-M Zell Fellow Rebecca Fortes leads a workshop to help participants in grades 6-12 hone their creative writing skills. Each session focuses on a different skill. Snacks provided.
12:30-2 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200.
Local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal are joined by a representative from Cherry Lake Press and San Diego-based children’s nonfiction writer Virginia Loh-Hagan to discuss how to plan, write, and publish a children’s book. From noon-2 p.m., Loh-Hagan discusses literacy strategies for struggling readers (preregistration required at registrations@aadl.org). For adult and teen (grade 6 & up) fiction and nonfiction writers. Also, Kourvo and Neal host an open house for writers to connect with one another and/or work on their projects at 7 p.m. on Oct. 15.
7-8:45 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200
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 Residential 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.
Detroit reporter and RC creative writing alumna Anna Clark discusses her critically acclaimed book about the Flint water crisis. Signing.
7 p.m., Nicola’s, Westgate shopping center. Free. 662-0600.
Literati is exited to host poet Elizabeth Schmuhl, an RC Creative Writing alum, who will be reading from her new collection Premonitions. Keith Taylor will give an introduction to the reading and lead a Q&A discussion aftewards.
About Premonitions:
Visceral and brimming with vitality, the poems in Premonitions reverberate with the voice of a woman on a secluded farm, confronting her emotional and physical isolation. Drawing on her own experience as a daughter of a third-generation fruit farmer, Elizabeth Schmuhl gives readers a fresh and powerful perspective on what it means to be alive.
Layering one upon another, the poems blur boundaries and create a volatile state out of which the remarkable and unexpected occur. Embracing chaos, change, and unpredictability, these poems are energetically charged and infused with succinct, imagistic language. They reach beyond the constraints assigned to the female form and examine a place where time, the body, sexuality, and the natural world are not fixed. At times surreal, at others painfully real, the poems in Premonitions are the expression of a human life that merges and melds with the world around it, acting and reacting, loving and despairing, disintegrating and rebuilding. The speaker travels fluidly between strata of the natural world and her own body. Adding to the complexity of her poems, Schmuhl creates additional layers of meaning as the poems and their titles relate to the author’s synesthesia, a sensory phenomenon through which letters and numbers are experienced as colors and emotions.
Premonitions will turn the reader inward, encouraging the examination of the small details of life and a growing acceptance of the perpetual turmoil and uncertainty of existence despite our own desire to find a firm footing. This volume will be prized by lovers of contemporary poetry and literature alike.
Elizabeth Schmuhl is a multidisciplinary artist whose work appears in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, Paper Darts, PANK, Hobart, Pinwheel, and elsewhere. She has worked at various nonprofits, including the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, and currently works at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Keith Taylor has published many books over the years: collections of poetry, a collection of very short stories, co-edited volumes of essays and fiction, and a volume of poetry translated from Modern Greek.
7 p.m., Literati, 124 E. Washington. Free. 585-5567
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 Residential 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.
Ken Mikolowski taught poetry at the RC for many years.
Oct. 2 & 16. Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit storytelling organization that also produces a weekly public radio show. 10 storytellers are selected at random from among those who sign up to tell a 3-5 minute story on “Scandal” (Oct. 2) and “Disguises” (Oct. 16). The 3-person judging teams are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Space limited, so it’s smart to arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. $10. 764-5118. [map]
