Please join us as we celebrate the winners of the 2018-19 Hopwood Awards.
Following the announcement of the awards, there will be a lecture from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hilton Als and a light reception. Free to attend and open to all!
Hilton Als began contributing to The New Yorker in 1989, writing pieces for ‘The Talk of the Town,’ he became a staff writer in 1994, theatre critic in 2002, and lead theater critic in 2012. Week after week, he brings to the magazine a rigorous, sharp, and lyrical perspective on acting, playwriting, and directing. With his deep knowledge of the history of performance—not only in theatre but in dance, music, and visual art—he shows us how to view a production and how to place its director, its author, and its performers in the ongoing continuum of dramatic art. His reviews are not simply reviews; they are provocative contributions to the discourse on theatre, race, class, sexuality, and identity in America.
Before coming to The New Yorker, Als was a staff writer for the Village Voice and an editor-at-large at Vibe. Als edited the catalogue for the 1994-95 Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art.” His first book, The Women, was published in 1996. His book, White Girls, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2014 and winner of the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Non-fiction, discusses various narratives of race and gender. He is author of the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of The Early Stories of Truman Capote. He is also guest editor for the 2018 Best American Essays (Mariner Books, October 2, 2018). He also wrote Andy Warhol: The Series, a book containing two previously unpublished television scripts for a series on the life of Andy Warhol.
In 1997, the New York Association of Black Journalists awarded Als first prize in both Magazine Critique/Review and Magazine Arts and Entertainment. He was awarded a Guggenheim for creative writing in 2000 and the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for 2002-03. In 2016, he received Lambda Literary’s Trustee Award for Excellence in Literature, in 2017 Als won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, and in 2018 the Langston Hughes Medal.
In 2009, Als worked with the performer Justin Bond on “Cold Water,” an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and videos by performers, at La MaMa Gallery. In 2010, he co-curated “Self-Consciousness,” at the VeneKlasen/Werner gallery, in Berlin, and published “Justin Bond/Jackie Curtis.” In 2015, he collaborated with the artist Celia Paul to create “Desdemona for Celia by Hilton,” an exhibition for the Metropolitan Opera’s Gallery Met. In 2016, his debut art show “One Man Show: Holly, Candy, Bobbie and the Rest” opened at the Artist’s Institute. In 2017 he curated “Alice Neel, Uptown” at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York City.
Als is an associate professor of writing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and has taught at Yale University, Wesleyan, and Smith College. He lives in New York City.
Literati is excited to welcome poet Sue William Silverman in celebration of her new poetry collection If the Girl Never Learns: Poems. Sue will be joined by fellow poets Keith Taylor, Elizabeth Schumhl, and Marc Sheehan who will be reading from their own work.
About If the Girl Never Learns:
From the opening lines, it’s clear The Girl at the center of these poems is damaged–which is another way to say she’s a survivor. If the Girl Never Learns moves from the personal to the mythic to the apocalyptic, because The Girl would do anything, even go to hell, to save her soul. So, she resists, takes action to overturn society’s suffocating ideal of Good Girldom. The poems’ sense of breathlessness reflects The Girl’s absolute need to control her own destiny, to outrun her past, while at the same time chasing a future she alone has envisioned and embodied. Because The Girl is, above all else, a badass.
Sue William Silverman’s first poetry collection is Hieroglyphics in Neon. She is also the author of four books of creative nonfiction. Her most recent book, The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew, was a finalist in Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award. Her memoir, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, won the AWP Award, and Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction is also a Lifetime TV original movie. Her craft book is Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir, and she teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
The poet Marc Sheehan is a life-long Michigan resident. He has earned degrees from Western Michigan University, Central Michigan University and the University of Michigan, where he received a Major Hopwood Award in Poetry. His honors also include grants from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has served as Writer Center Coordinator at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, and has reviewed books for both the Lansing Capital Times and On the Town.
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.
Chamber Music, directed by Katri Ervamaa. Featuring music by Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, and others. April 20, 2pm and April 22, 6pm, Keene Theater. Free.
Chamber Music, directed by Katri Ervamaa. Featuring music by Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, and others. April 20, 2pm and April 22, 6pm, Keene Theater. Free.
Literati is excited to welcome poets Phil Kaye and Jon Sands who will be reading from their latest collections Date & Time and The New Clean.
About Date & Time:
Phil Kaye’s debut collection is a stunning tribute to growing up, and all of the challenges and celebrations of the passing of time, as jagged as it may be. Kaye takes the reader on a journey from a complex but iridescent childhood, drawing them into adolescence, and finally on to adulthood. There are first kisses, lost friendships, hair blowing in the wind while driving the vastness of an empty road, and the author positioned in the middle, trying to make sense of it all. Readers will find joy and vulnerability, in equal measure. Date & Time is a welcoming story, which freezes the calendar and allows us all to live in our best moments.
About The New Clean:
Jon Sands has traveled into a ridiculous world, where nothing is too hilarious to not be honest, and nothing is too honest to not get you pregnant. Best of all, he’s packed us in his suitcase. He represents an ever-changing population of those raised elsewhere who find themselves beckoned by the history, mystique, and magic-makers of New York City. These poems inhabit their own contradictions, and exquisitely navigate the many complicated sides of what it means to be alive.
Phil Kaye is a Japanese-American poet. His work has been featured in settings ranging from The New Yorker to NPR to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He has performed his work in eighteen countries and was invited to open for His Holiness The Dalai Lama for the celebration of his 80th birthday. A former teacher of weekly poetry workshops in maximum security prisons, Phil was the head coordinator of Space in Prisons for the Arts and Creative Expression (SPACE). Phil is a National Poetry Slam finalist, and his book, Date & Time, was published in 2018 by Button Poetry.
Jon Sands is a poet and fiction writer. He was a winner of the 2019 National Poetry Series, selected for his second book, It’s Not Magic, forthcoming from Beacon Press in the fall of 2019. He is the author of The New Clean (Write Bloody Publishing, 2011), and the co-host of The Poetry Gods Podcast. His work has been featured in the New York Times, published widely, and anthologized in The Best American Poetry. He’s also represented New York City multiple times at the National Poetry Slam. He lives in Brooklyn.
Monday, April 22, 2019 at 7:00 PM
Michigan Theater and Nicola’s Books will host a conversation with Valerie Jarrett.
Just added: new discounted ticket for students in the balcony! Select Desired Section – Balcony to access these tickets.
Join us for an evening in conversation with the longest serving senior advisor to President Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett. In her memoir, Finding My Voice, Valerie shares her journey as a daughter, mother, lawyer, business leader, public servant, and leader in government at a historic moment in American history. Jarrett has received numerous awards and honorary degrees, including Time’s “100 Most Influential People.” She received her B.A. from Stanford University in 1978 and her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981.
This is a ticketed event and each ticket will include a signed copy of Jarrett’s memoir, Finding My Voice.
Tickets $65, $49.50, and $35, with a special $24.50 ticket for students.
Renaissance Drama presents, Commedia del’arte final performance directed by Martin Walsh. Featuring a period scenario about “Il cavadente” or “the tooth puller”, a bogus dentist that pulls the teeth out of the evil Pantelone. April 23, 1-2pm, North Courtyard if weather permits.
Join us for the book signing of Naomi Stephen’s Shadow Among Sheaves out April 1st.
A Timeless, Beautiful Allegory of the Biblical Love Story of Ruth and Boaz
The Great Rebellion of 1857 was a remarkably bloody business. At a time when Britain’s imperial influence in India was sparking brutal clashes on both sides, no one could have expected Rena, an Indian woman, to marry a British officer—nor do they understand her decision to follow her mother-in-law to England after her husband’s tragic death.
Once the two widows are in Abbotsville, the stern yet compassionate Lord Barric attempts to help them despite his better judgment. Soon he is torn between the demands of reputation and his increasing desire to capture Rena’s heart for his own.
The Michigan Quarterly Review launches their Spring issue featuring poetry, fiction, and essays, from contemporary Iran. Featuring readings in Farsi and English from contributors Shahla Farghadani and Mason Jabbari, Guest Editor Kathryn Babyran, MQR Editor Khaled Mattawa, and MQR Staff Readers. Letterpress prints, specially designed for this issue by Wolverine Press, will also be available.
