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 prose by Samantha Bares and poetry by Daniel Neff.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State. Free. 764-6330
Literati is proud to welcome authors and faculty members at the University of Michigan Shachar Pinsker and Sara Blair who will be sharing and discussing their new books A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture and How the Other Half Looks: The Lower East Side and the Afterlives of Images.
About A Rich Brew:
A fascinating glimpse into the world of the coffeehouse and its role in shaping modern Jewish culture. Unlike the synagogue, the house of study, the community center, or the Jewish deli, the café is rarely considered a Jewish space. Yet, coffeehouses profoundly influenced the creation of modern Jewish culture from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. With roots stemming from the Ottoman Empire, the coffeehouse and its drinks gained increasing popularity in Europe. The “otherness,” and the mix of the national and transnational characteristics of the coffeehouse perhaps explains why many of these cafés were owned by Jews, why Jews became their most devoted habitués, and how cafés acquired associations with Jewishness. Examining the convergence of cafés, their urban milieu, and Jewish creativity, Shachar M. Pinsker argues that cafés anchored a silk road of modern Jewish culture. He uncovers a network of interconnected cafés that were central to the modern Jewish experience in a time of migration and urbanization, from Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin to New York City and Tel Aviv. A Rich Brew explores the Jewish culture created in these social spaces, drawing on a vivid collection of newspaper articles, memoirs, archival documents, photographs, caricatures, and artwork, as well as stories, novels, and poems in many languages set in cafés. Pinsker shows how Jewish modernity was born in the café, nourished, and sent out into the world by way of print, politics, literature, art, and theater. What was experienced and created in the space of the coffeehouse touched thousands who read, saw, and imbibed a modern culture that redefined what it meant to be a Jew in the world.
About How the Other Half Looks:
How New York’s Lower East Side inspired new ways of seeing America
New York City’s Lower East Side, long viewed as the space of what Jacob Riis notoriously called the “other half,” was also a crucible for experimentation in photography, film, literature, and visual technologies. This book takes an unprecedented look at the practices of observation that emerged from this critical site of encounter, showing how they have informed literary and everyday narratives of America, its citizens, and its possible futures.
Taking readers from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, Sara Blair traces the career of the Lower East Side as a place where image-makers, writers, and social reformers tested new techniques for apprehending America–and their subjects looked back, confronting the means used to represent them. This dynamic shaped the birth of American photojournalism, the writings of Stephen Crane and Abraham Cahan, and the forms of early cinema. During the 1930s, the emptying ghetto opened contested views of the modern city, animating the work of such writers and photographers as Henry Roth, Walker Evans, and Ben Shahn. After World War II, the Lower East Side became a key resource for imagining poetic revolution, as in the work of Allen Ginsberg and LeRoi Jones, and exploring dystopian futures, from Cold War atomic strikes to the death of print culture and the threat of climate change.
How the Other Half Looks reveals how the Lower East Side has inspired new ways of looking–and looking back–that have shaped literary and popular expression as well as American modernity.
Shachar M. Pinsker is Associate Professor of Hebrew Literature and Culture at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Literary Passports: The Making of Modernist Hebrew Fiction in Europe.
Sara Blair is the Patricia S. Yaeger Collegiate Professor of English and a faculty associate in the Department of American Culture and the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Her books includeHarlem Crossroads: Black Writers and the Photograph in the Twentieth Century (Princeton) and Trauma and Documentary Photography of the FSA.
Ann Arbor Storytellers Guild members host a storytelling program. Audience members are encouraged to bring a 5-minute story to tell.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom Tea Room, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
Ann Arbor Storytellers Guild members host a storytelling program. Audience members are encouraged to bring a 5-minute story to tell.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom Tea Room, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757.
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 prose by Samantha Bares and poetry by Daniel Neff.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State. Free. 764-6330
Reading by this Ann Arbor-based poet from Kerala (India), who writes poems about the connection between trauma and chronic pain and about her experiences as a genomic data analyst and poet. Her poem about the 2016 presidential election was nominated for a Pushcart prize. Preceded by an open mike.
7-8:30 p.m. Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea, 123 W. Washington. Free. 994-6663.
Literati Bookstore is thrilled to welcome Lindsay-Jean Hard who will be sharing her new cookbook Cooking with Scraps: Turn Your Peels, Cores, Rinds, and Stems Into Delicious Meals
About Cooking with Scraps:
“A whole new way to celebrate ingredients that have long been wasted. Lindsay-Jean is a master of efficiency and we’re inspired to follow her lead!” –Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, cofounders of Food52
In 85 innovative recipes, Lindsay-Jean Hard shows just how delicious and surprising the all-too-often-discarded parts of food can be, transforming what might be considered trash into culinary treasure.
Here’s how to put those seeds, stems, tops, rinds to good use for more delicious (and more frugal) cooking: Carrot greens–bright, fresh, and packed with flavor–make a zesty pesto. Water from canned beans behaves just like egg whites, perfect for vegan mayonnaise that even non-vegans will love. And serve broccoli stems olive-oil poached on lemony ricotta toast. It’s pure food genius, all the while critically reducing waste one dish at a time.
“I love this book because the recipes matter…show[ing] us how to utilize the whole plant, to the betterment of our palate, our pocketbook, and our place.” –Eugenia Bone, author of The Kitchen Ecosystem
“Packed with smart, approachable recipes for beautiful food made with ingredients that you used to throw in the compost bin!” –Cara Mangini, author of The Vegetable Butcher
Lindsay-Jean Hard received her Master’s in Urban Planning from the University of Michigan. Her education and passion for sustainability went on to inform and inspire her work in the garden, home, and community. The seeds of this book were planted in her Food52 column of the same name. Today she works to share her passion for great food and great communities as a marketer at Zingerman’s Bakehouse. She lives, writes, loves, and creates in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Ann Arbor Storytellers Guild members host a storytelling program. Audience members are encouraged to bring a 5-minute story to tell.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom Tea Room, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757.
Literati is thrilled to welcome back author R.J. Fox who will be sharing his new novel Awaiting Identification.
About Awaiting Identification:
Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office, Detroit, Michigan: October 31, 1999.
Five unidentified bodies lie in the Wayne County morgue on Halloween night. Although each character was on a separate journey, fate leads each of the five victims to cross paths on the streets of Detroit en route to their tragic demise. Set against the backdrop of a Devil’s Night party at legendary Detroit concert venue and nightclub, Saint Andrew’s Hall, Awaiting Identification details the final night on earth for five lost souls. NYC Girl: a former dancer arrives back home from New York City to make amends with her mother and begin to rebuild her life. Leaf Man: a musician and part-time DJ is on the cusp of his big break with one final, unexpected drug deal to complete before he can go totally straight. R.I.P.: a career criminal must come up with a large sum of money to pay for his father’s medical expenses, despite his yearning for a crime-free life. The Zealot: a religious fanatic on a mission from God to rid the city of filth. Cat Man: a kind and trusting homeless man wanders the city looking for new friends. Like the city in which it takes place, Awaiting Identification is a story of hope, identity, and above all, redemption.
R.J. Fox is an English and video production teacher who uses his own dream of making movies to inspire his students to follow their dreams. He has previously worked in public relations and as a journalist. He is the author of Love & Vodka. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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 thrilled to welcome back author R.J. Fox who will be sharing his new novel Awaiting Identification. R.J. will be in conversation with fellow novelist Michael Ferro.
About Awaiting Identification:
Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office, Detroit, Michigan: October 31, 1999.
Five unidentified bodies lie in the Wayne County morgue on Halloween night. Although each character was on a separate journey, fate leads each of the five victims to cross paths on the streets of Detroit en route to their tragic demise. Set against the backdrop of a Devil’s Night party at legendary Detroit concert venue and nightclub, Saint Andrew’s Hall, Awaiting Identification details the final night on earth for five lost souls. NYC Girl: a former dancer arrives back home from New York City to make amends with her mother and begin to rebuild her life. Leaf Man: a musician and part-time DJ is on the cusp of his big break with one final, unexpected drug deal to complete before he can go totally straight. R.I.P.: a career criminal must come up with a large sum of money to pay for his father’s medical expenses, despite his yearning for a crime-free life. The Zealot: a religious fanatic on a mission from God to rid the city of filth. Cat Man: a kind and trusting homeless man wanders the city looking for new friends. Like the city in which it takes place, Awaiting Identification is a story of hope, identity, and above all, redemption.
R.J. Fox is an English and video production teacher who uses his own dream of making movies to inspire his students to follow their dreams. He has previously worked in public relations and as a journalist. He is the author of Love & Vodka. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Michael A. Ferro‘s debut novel, TITLE 13, was published by Harvard Square Editions in February 2018. He has received an Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train for their New Writers Award, won the Jim Cash Creative Writing Award for Fiction, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Michael’s writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Crack the Spine, Entropy, Amsterdam Quarterly, Yale University’s Perch Journal, Duende, The Nottingham Review, Splitsider, Potluck Magazine, and elsewhere. Born and bred in Detroit, Michael has lived, worked, and written throughout the Midwest; he currently resides in rural Ann Arbor, Michigan
