Local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal host an open house for writers to connect with one another and/or work on their projects at 7 p.m. on Sept. 24.
7-8:45 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200.
Literati is thrilled to welcome poet Lawrence Joseph who will reading from his new collection So Where Are We? After the reading he will be joined in conversation with author Cody Walker
About So Where Are We?:
So where are we?” asks Lawrence Joseph in the title poem of his powerful and moving sixth book of poetry.
Beginning where his acclaimed collection Into It left off, amid the worldwide violence unleashed by the World Trade Center terrorist attack, Joseph’s poems–global and historic in scope–boldly encounter the imaginative challenges of our time: issues of political economy, labor and capital, racism and war, and “the point at which / violence becomes ontology, / these endless ambitious experiments in destruction, / a species grief.”
Against these realities, Joseph presents an intimate, sensuous language of beauty and love, “a separate / palette kept for each poem,” a constant shifting and fluid play of sound and tone. With incisive intensity, intelligence, emotional force, and fierce, uncompromising vision, Joseph speaks from deep within the truths of poetry’s common language. So Where Are We? is extraordinary new work from one of our most distinctive poets.
Lawrence Joseph is the author of five previous books of poetry, including Into It; Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos: Poems 1973-1993, and Before Our Eyes. He is also the author of two books of prose: Lawyerland, a novel, and The Game Changed: Essays and Other Prose. He is the Tinnelly Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law, and he has taught creative writing at Princeton. He is married to the painter Nancy Van Goethem and lives in New York City.
Cody Walker is the author of The Self-Styled No-Child (Waywiser, 2016) and Shuffle and Breakdown (Waywiser, 2008). His poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Yale Review, Slate, Salon, and The Best American Poetry (2015 and 2007); his essays have appeared online in The New Yorker and the Kenyon Review. The former Poet Populist of Seattle, he now lives with his family in Ann Arbor, where he directs the creative writing minor at the University of Michigan. His new collection, The Trumpiad (Waywiser, 2017), was released last April.
Literati is thrilled to welcome poets Megan Levad and Franny Choi for a special reading from their latest collections What Have I to Say to You and Death by Sex Machine.
Selected as Tavern Books’ 2014 Wrolstad Contemporary Poetry Series poet, Levad is the author of WHY WE LIVE IN THE DARK AGES (Tavern Books, 2015). Her poems have appeared in journals such as Denver Quarterly, Fence, Mantis, and Tin House, among others, and in the Everyman’s Library anthology Killer Verse. She also writes lyrics for composers Tucker Fuller and Kristin Kuster. Her debut libretto Kept: A Ghost Story premiered at the Virginia Arts Festival in May 2017. Levad lives in San Francisco.
Franny Choi is a writer, performer, and educator. She is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody, 2014) and the chapbook Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). She has been a finalist for multiple national poetry slams, and her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, the New England Review, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman Fellow, Senior News Editor for Hyphen, co-host of the podcast VS, and member of the Dark Noise Collective. Her second collection, Soft Science, is forthcoming from Alice James Books.
Join us for a reading from four accomplished Michigan poets! Charles W. Brice will present poetry from his newest book, Mnemosyne’s Hand, while Judith Alexander Brice is celebrating the release of her newest collection, Overhead from Longing. Monica Rico is an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program and the author of Twisted Mouth of the Tulip; and rounding out the group is acclaimed Michigan Notable winning poet Keith Taylor, whose most recent book, The Bird-while, won the Bronze Award from the Foreword Indies Poetry Book of the Year for 2017.
About Mnemosyne’s Hand by Charles W. Brice
This collection deals with the challenges, dilemmas, joys, and struggles of living in a world that we often don’t want to live in, but don’t want to die in either. These poems explore the wonders of family, the horrors of war, racism, and prejudice against various minorities, as well as the heaps of hypocrisy our times produce, and the inevitability of the great equalizer-death.
Charles W. Brice is a retired psychoanalyst and is the author of Flashcuts Out of Chaos(WordTech Editions, 2016) and Mnemosyne’s Hand (WordTech Editions, 2018). His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Hawaii Review, The Main Street Rag, Chiron Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, SLAB, The Paterson Literary Review, Spitball, Plainsongs and elsewhere.
About Overhead from Longing by Judith Alexander Brice
Longing describes it all: the yearning for a “cradle of molten moonlight” to underpin the vicissitudes of daily life as we seek to watch “silken embers of sun topaz the sky.” In lyrical free verse and, at times, formal verse, Judith Alexander Brice depicts the treasured echoes of a life/our lives, even as they are interrupted by the vagaries of misfortune, illness and loss-and by the whims of our world.
Judith Alexander Brice, a retired Pittsburgh psychiatrist, has had poems published in many journals and newspapers including The Paterson Literary Review, Vox Populi.com,The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Versewrights.com, and Annals of Internal Medicine among others. Her first book, Renditions in a Palette, appeared in 2013. Her second book, Overhead From Longing, is brand new. One of her poems, Mourning Calls, was set to music by Tony Manfredonia.
Praise for Twisted Mouth of the Tulip
“How fine it is to have Monica Rico’s poems in the world. They are fierce, smart, fleshy and transcendent, animal and incarnate. Somewhere in Ms. Rico’s cloud of witnesses, Jim Harrison, hungry and hirsute, sits to the comida –a feast of gamy feeds, green shoots, buckets of wine and usquebaugh — tamales and cajeta, dulce de leche fresh from the word horde.” — poet, Tom Lynch
Monica Rico grew up in Saginaw, Michigan alongside General Motors and the legend of Theodore Roethke. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program and the author of Twisted Mouth of the Tulip (Red Paint Hill Publishing, 2017). Her poems have appeared in SiDEKiCK Lit, Dunes Review, Moonchild Magazine, The Ilanot Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Luna Luna, and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse.
ISBN: Possible consignment
About The Bird-While by Keith Taylor
“A Bird-while. In a natural chronometer, a Bird-while may be admitted as one of the metres, since the space most of the wild birds will allow you to make your observations on them when they alight near you in the woods, is a pretty equal and familiar measure” (Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Journal, 1838).
Without becoming didactic or pedantic about the spiritual metaphor hidden in the concept of the “bird-while,” Keith Taylor’s collection evokes certain Eastern meditative poets who often wrote in an aphoristic style of the spirit or the mind mirroring specific aspects of the natural world.
Keith Taylor worked as a bookseller in Ann Arbor for more than twenty years, then taught in the undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs at the University of Michigan, and directed the Bear River Writers Conference. From 2010–2018 he worked as the Poetry Editor at Michigan Quarterly Review. He retired from the University of Michigan in 2018. He lives with his wife in Ann Arbor; they have one daughter.
His poems, stories, book reviews, translations and feature articles have appeared in many journals, magazines and newspapers in North America and in Europe, including The Chicago Tribune, The Iowa Review, The Los Angeles Times, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mondo Greco, Poetry Ireland Review, Poets and Writers, The Southern Review, etc. His work has also been included in anthologies and other books published by Oxford University Press, The University of Michigan Press, W.W. Norton, and others. He has also published a number of collections of his short stories and poetry, including the Michigan Notable winning book, Guilty at the Rapture.
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]
Talk by local novelist Lillian Li.
6-8 p.m., AADL Downtown multipurpose rm. Free. 327-4200
This award-winning local writer reads from and discusses Tazia and Gemma, her new novel that spans 1911-1961, moving forward in time with the story of an unwed pregnant Italian immigrant and then backward with the story of her daughter’s search for her father. Writer Deepak Singh calls it a “moving story of racial and religious conflicts.” Light refreshments. Signing.
7 p.m., Nicola’s, Westgate shopping center. Free. 662-0600.
Literati Bookstore is thrilled to welcome John Kerry to Ann Arbor as he reads and discusses his memoir, Every Day Is Extra. The Secretary will be in conversation with Congresswoman Debbie Dingell.
Tickets are general admission and include a hardcover copy of Every Day Is Extra, to be picked up at the venue the evening of the event. A Q&A and signing will follow. To reduce wait times for signing, there will be no personalizations and no posed photographs.
About Every Day Is Extra: John Kerry tells the story of his remarkable American life—from son of a diplomat to decorated Vietnam veteran, five-term United States senator, 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, and Secretary of State for four years—a revealing memoir by a witness to some of the most important events of our recent history.
Every Day Is Extra is John Kerry’s candid personal story. A Yale graduate, Kerry enlisted in the US Navy in 1966, and served in Vietnam. He returned home highly decorated but disillusioned, and testified powerfully before Congress as a young veteran opposed to the war.
Kerry served as a prosecutor in Massachusetts, then as lieutenant governor, and was elected to the Senate in 1984, eventually serving five terms. In 2004 he was the Democratic presidential nominee and came within one state—Ohio—of winning. Kerry returned to the Senate, chaired the important Foreign Relations Committee, and succeeded Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in 2013. In that position he tried to find peace in the Middle East; dealt with the Syrian civil war while combatting ISIS; and negotiated the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement.
Every Day Is Extra is Kerry’s passionate, insightful, sometimes funny, always moving account of his life. Kerry tells wonderful stories about colleagues Ted Kennedy and John McCain, as well as President Obama and other major figures. He writes movingly of recovering his faith while in the Senate, and deplores the hyper-partisanship that has infected Washington.
Few books convey as convincingly as this one the life of public service like that which John Kerry has lived for fifty years. Every Day Is Extra shows Kerry for the dedicated, witty, and authentic man that he is, and provides forceful testimony for the importance of diplomacy and American leadership to address the increasingly complex challenges of a more globalized world.
About John Kerry: John Forbes Kerry is a former Secretary of State and five-term US Senator. Kerry is the author of Every Day Is Extra, A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America, The New War, and the best-selling This Moment on Earth. He is currently a Distinguished Fellow for Global Affairs at Yale University as well as the inaugural Visiting Distinguished Statesman for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, have two daughters, three sons, and seven grandchildren.
About Debbie Dingell: Congresswoman Debbie Dingell represents Michigan’s 12th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Recognized as one of the 25 hardest-working Members of Congress, Debbie is focused on forging bipartisan solutions that support Michigan’s families and economy, including improving long-term care and ushering in the future of the American auto industry. Before being elected to Congress, Debbie worked in the auto industry for more than three decades, where she was President of the General Motors (GM) Foundation and a senior executive responsible for public affairs. She was also Chairman of the Wayne State University (WSU) Board of Governors, and continues to fight to make education more affordable and accessible in Congress.
Literati is proud to be partnering with the Helen Zell Writers Program to host author Karan Mahajan and poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi at the University of Michigan Art Museum Helmet Stern Auditorium.
Born in central Connecticut, Gabrielle Calvocoressi grew up in a family that owned movie theaters in several small towns across the state. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College and earned her MFA from Columbia University. Calvocoressi’s first book, The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (Persea Books, 2005), was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award and won the 2006 Connecticut Book Award in Poetry. Her second collection, Apocalyptic Swing (Persea Books, 2009), was a finalist for the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is also the author of Rocket Fantastic (Persea Books, 2017). Calvocoressi has been praised for “moving beyond the popular poetry of ‘self’ in an effort to understand other perspectives in this original and riveting collection.” Her awards and honors include a Stegner Fellowship, a Jones Lectureship at Stanford University and a Rona Jaffe Women Writers’ Award. Her poem “Circus Fire, 1944” received The Paris Review‘s Bernard F. Connors Prize.
Karan Mahajan grew up in New Delhi, India and moved to the US for college. Since then, he has lived in San Francisco, New Delhi, New York, Bangalore, and Austin. His first novel, “Family Planning” (2008), was a finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. It was published in nine countries. His second novel, “The Association of Small Bombs” (2016), was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Awards and was named one of the “10 Best Books of 2016” by The New York Times. Mahajan’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker Online, The New Republic and other venues.
This legal scholar and Fox News contributor discusses Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross. Also, display and sale in the JCC lobby (Oct. 18-Dec. 1) of some 170 new books by Jewish authors, ranging from cookbooks, expensive gift books, children’s books, and reference books to books by local authors and new titles hot off the presses. (Publishers plan their releases for November, which is Jewish Book Month.)
7-8:30 p.m., JCC, 2935 Birch Hollow Dr. Free admission to the sale; $18 for the talk. 971-0990.
