Calendar

Feb
1
Fri
Webster Reading Series: Justin Balog and Rachel Ann Girty @ UMMA
Feb 1 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

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 Justin Balog and prose by Rachel Ann Girty.

 

 

Feb
4
Mon
Suzanne Dalton: A Year Lost, A Life Gained @ Literati
Feb 4 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Join us as we welcome author Suzanne Dalton who will be sharing her new memoir A Year Lost, a Life Gained: Fighting Breast Cancer with Wit, Humor, Friends and a Perky Poodle.

About A Year Lost, a Life Gained:
Suzanne Dalton has accomplished much in her life–she is an artist, writer, actor, web designer, and program manager. The one undertaking for which she did not sign up was breast cancer. In her new memoir, humor guides Suzanne through difficult decisions about treatments, surgeries, and reconstruction. Her story, told through witty letters to friends, includes a party before surgery, a zany poodle, and refusal to let cancer define her. A Year Lost, A Life Gained: Fighting Breast Cancer With Wit, Humor, Friends and a Perky Poodle is at its heart a beautifully-told story and a guide intended to aid anyone diagnosed with cancer whether they’ve completed the journey or are just embarking upon the path.

Suzanne Dalton graduated from Wayne State University with a BS in geology. She studied fine art, industrial design, watercolor, and photography at College for Creative Studies, and has a TEFL diploma and a Master Certificate in Applied Project Management from Villanova University. Suzanne wrote the humorous short story series Poodle Possessed for Hoflin Publishing’s bimonthly international publication, Poodle Review, for 14 years. A Year Lost, A Life Gained is Suzanne’s first book. She is presently working on her next, a book of travel, adventure, and poodles. Suzanne is currently a program manager of software development at an automotive company in Detroit, where she lives with her husband and her standard poodle, American Canadian Champion Ascot Rosebar Double Diaka CGC, a.k.a. “Fletcher,” but being such an accomplished poodle, of course, he prefers “Mr. Fletcher.”

Feb
5
Tue
David Stephen Calonne: The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way @ Literati
Feb 5 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Literati is excited to welcome David Stephen Calonne who will be presenting this new collection of Charles Bukowski’s work The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way: On Writers and Writing.

About The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way:
In The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way, Charles Bukowski considers the art of writing, and the art of living as a writer. Bringing together a variety of previously uncollected stories, columns, reviews, introductions, and interviews, this book finds him approaching the dynamics of his chosen profession with cynical aplomb, deflating pretensions and tearing down idols armed with only a typewriter and a bottle of beer. Beginning with the title piece–a serious manifesto disguised as off-handed remarks en route to the racetrack–The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way runs through numerous tales following the author’s adventures at poetry readings, parties, film sets, and bars, and also features an unprecedented gathering of Bukowski’s singular literary criticism. From classic authors like Hemingway to underground legends like d.a. levy to his own stable of obscure favorites, Bukowski uses each occasion to expound on the larger issues around literary production. The book closes with a handful of interviews in which he discusses his writing practices and his influences, making this a perfect guide to the man behind the myth and the disciplined artist behind the boozing brawler.

David Stephen Calonne is the author of several books and has edited four previous collections of the uncollected work of Charles Bukowski for City Lights: Portions from a Wine-Stained NotebookAbsence of the HeroMore Notes of a Dirty Old Man, and The Bell Tolls for No One.

Feb
7
Thu
Fiction at Literati: Caleb Roehrig: Death Prefers Blondes @ Literati
Feb 7 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Literati is thrilled to welcome author Caleb Roehrig who will be sharing his new novel Death Prefers Blondes.

About Death Prefers Blondes:
Teenage socialite Margo Manning leads a dangerous double life. By day, she dodges the paparazzi while soaking up California sunshine. By night, however, she dodges security cameras and armed guards, pulling off high-stakes cat burglaries with a team of flamboyant young men. In and out of disguise, she’s in all the headlines.

But then Margo’s personal life takes a sudden, dark turn, and a job to end all jobs lands her crew in deadly peril. Overnight, everything she’s ever counted on is put at risk. Backs against the wall, the resourceful thieves must draw on their special skills to survive. But can one rebel heiress and four kickboxing drag queens withstand the slings and arrows of truly outrageous fortune? Or will a mounting sea of troubles end them–for good?

 

Caleb Roehrig is the author of White Rabbit and Last Seen Leaving, which was called one of the Best YA Novels of 2016 by Buzzfeed.com. Caleb lives with his husband in Chicago.

Feb
8
Fri
Zell Visiting Writers: Ada Limon @ U-M Museum of Art Stern Auditorium
Feb 8 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Literati is proud to be partnering with the Helen Zell Writers Program to host poet Ada Limón at the University of Michigan Art Museum Helmet Stern Auditorium.

Ada Limón is the author of four books of poetry, including Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and American Poetry Review, among others. She lives in both Kentucky and California.

Edwards Reading Series: Annesha Sengupta, Kassy Lee, Carl Levigne, and Jennifer Huang @ Literati
Feb 8 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Literati is proud to partner with the Helen Zell Writers’ Program to host the J. Edgar Edwards Reading Series, a reading series organized by first year poetry and fiction students.

This istallment features Annesha Sengupta, Kassy Lee, Carl Lavigne, and Jennifer Huang.

Feb
11
Mon
Panel Discussion: Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction @ Literati
Feb 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Literati is excited to host this special panel discussion with contributors from the new book Elemental: A Collection of Creative Nonfiction

About Elemental: A Collection of Creative Nonfiction:
Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction comes to us from twenty-three of Michigan’s most well-known essayists. A celebration of the elements, this collection is both the storm and the shelter. In her introduction, editor Anne-Marie Oomen recalls the “ritual dousing” of her storytelling group’s bonfire: “wind, earth, fire, water-all of it simultaneous in that one gesture. . . . In that moment we are bound together with these elements and with this place, the circle around the fire on the shores of a Great Lake closes, complete.”

The essays approach Michigan at the atomic level. This is a place where weather patterns and ecology matter. Farmers, miners, shippers, and loggers have built (or lost) their livelihood on Michigan’s nature-what could and could not be made out of our elements. From freshwater lakes that have shaped the ground beneath our feet to the industrial ebb and flow of iron ore and wind power-ours is a state of survival and transformation. In the first section of the book, “Earth,” Jerry Dennis remembers working construction in northern Michigan. “Water” includes a piece from Jessica Mesman, who writes of the appearance of snow in different iterations throughout her life. The section “Wind” houses essays about the ungraspable nature of death from Toi Dericotte and Keith Taylor. “Fire” includes a piece by Mardi Jo Link, who recollects the unfortunate series of circumstances surrounding one of her family members.

Elemental‘s strength lies in its ability to learn from the past in the hope of defining a wiser future. A lot of literature can make this claim, but not all of it comes together so organically. Fans of nonfiction that reads as beautifully as fiction will love this collection.

Anne-Marie Oomen is author of Love, Sex, and 4-H, House of Fields, Pulling Down the Barn, and Uncoded Woman, among others. She teaches at Solstice MFA at Pine Manor College, Interlochen’s College of Creative Arts, and at conferences throughout the country.

Feb
13
Wed
Poetry and the Written Word: Open Mike @ Crazy Wisdom
Feb 13 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Poetry workshop. All writers welcome to share

and discuss their poetry or short fiction.
BRING ABOUT SIX COPIES OF YOUR WORK.
COPIES WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU.
Hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and Dave Jibson
see our blog at Facebook/Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series
Crazy WisdomnBookstore and Tea Room, 115 S. Main St. Free. Free. 7346652757.info@crazywisdom.net www.crazywisdom.net 

 

Stephen Ward: James Boggs at 100: A Legacy and Lineage of Radical Social Change in Detroit @ Literati
Feb 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

James and Grace Lee Boggs left a remarkable legacy through their shared activism, writing, and mentoring. To mark what would be James Boggs’s 100th birthday Spring 2019, the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center in Detroit revisits his writings and activism, exploring the ways his and Grace’s efforts to bring about revolutionary change continue through a powerful lineage of thought and activism in contemporary community work in Detroit.

Stephen Ward is a historian at the University of Michigan who teaches in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) and the Residential College, and he is the faculty director of the Semester in Detroit program. He is also a board member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. He is the author of In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs. 

$20. 7pm.

Feb
14
Thu
Zell Visiting Writers: Major Jackson @ U-M Museum of Art Stern Auditorium
Feb 14 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Literati is proud to be partnering with the Helen Zell Writers Program to host poet Major Jackson at the University of Michigan Art Museum Helmet Stern Auditorium.

Major Jackson is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors. He teaches at the University of Vermont and is the poetry editor of the Harvard Review. His first book, Leaving Saturn, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. Each of his last two collections, Hoops and Holding Company, was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature-Poetry. He lives in South Burlington, Vermont.

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