As part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati Series, we welcome author Stephen Markley in support of his bestselling debut, Ohio, which NPR called “a wild, angry and devastating masterpiece of a book.” This event is free and open to the public.
About the book: Since the turn of the century, a generation has come of age knowing only war, recession, political gridlock, racial hostility, and a simmering fear of environmental calamity. In the country’s forgotten pockets, where foreclosures, Walmarts, and opiates riddle the land, death rates for rural whites have skyrocketed. This is the world the characters in Stephen Markley’s brilliant debut novel, Ohio, inherit. This is New Canaan.
On one pivotal summer night in 2013, four former classmates converge on the rust belt town where they grew up, each of them with a mission. There’s Bill Ashcraft, an alcoholic, drug-abusing activist, whose fruitless ambitions have taken him from Cambodia to Zuccotti Park and now back to “The Cane” with a mysterious package strapped to the underside of his truck; Stacey Moore, a doctoral candidate reluctantly confronting her former lover’s mother; Dan Eaton, a veteran of three tours in Iraq, home for a date with a woman he’s tried to forget; and the beautiful, fragile Tina Ross, whose rendezvous with the captain of the football team triggers the novel’s shocking climax.
“[ Ohio is] a descendant of the Dickensian ‘social novel’ by way of Jonathan Franzen: epic fiction that lays bare contemporary culture clashes, showing us who we are and how we got here” ( O, the Oprah Magazine). “Markley is one of the first novelists to fully reflect the social forces at work without sacrificing an iota of character work or narrative tension” ( New York magazine), and Ohio captures the fractured zeitgeist of a nation, offering a prescient vision for America at the dawn of a turbulent new age.
About the author: Stephen Markley is an author, screenwriter, and journalist. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Markley’s previous books include the novel Ohio, the memoir Publish This Book The Unbelievable True Story of How I Wrote, Sold, and Published This Very Book, and the travelogue Tales of Iceland. He lives in Los Angeles.
As part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati Series, we welcome New York Times-bestselling author Susan Jane Gilman in support of her latest, Donna Has Left the Building, which author Boris Fishman calls an “engrossing and incisive–politically, domestically, psychologically–story.” The event is free and open to the public.
About the book:Forty-five-year-old Donna Koczynski is an ex-punk rocker, a recovering alcoholic, and the mother of two teenagers whose suburban existence detonates when she comes home early from a sales conference in Las Vegas to the surprise of a lifetime. As her world implodes, she sets off on an epic road trip to reclaim everything she believes she’s sacrificed since her wild youth: Great friendship, passionate love, and her art. But as she careens across the U.S. from Detroit to New York to Memphis to Nashville, nothing turns out as she imagines. Ultimately, she finds herself resurrected on the other side of the globe, on a remote island embroiled in a crisis far bigger than her own.
About the author: Susan Jane Gilman is the bestselling author of Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, Kiss My Tiara, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, and the novel, The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street. She has provided commentary for NPR and written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Ms. Magazine, among others. Visit her at SusanJaneGilman.com.
We welcome author Dean Kuipers in support of his new memoir, The Deer Camp, which Kirkus describes as “lushly detailed and full of eco-devotion.”
About the book: For readers of The Stranger in the Woods and H Is for Hawk, a beautifully written and emotionally rewarding memoir about a father, his three sons, and a scrappy 100-acre piece of land in rural Michigan. Bruce Kuipers was good at hunting and fishing, but not at anything else that makes a real father or husband. Distant, angry, and a serial cheater, he destroyed his relationship with his wife, Nancy, and alienated his three sons–journalist Dean, woodsman Brett, and troubled yet brilliant fisherman Joe. He distrusted people and clung to rural America as a place to hide. So when Bruce purchased a 100-acre hunting property as a way to reconnect with his sons, they resisted. The land was the perfect bait, but the moment the sons arrived, none of them knew how to be together as a family. Conflicts arose over whether the land–an old farm that had been degraded and reduced to a few stands of pine and blowing sand–should be left alone or be actively restored. After a decade-long impasse, Bruce acquiesced, and his sons proceeded with their restoration plan. What happened next was a miracle of nature. Dean Kuipers weaves a beautiful and surprising story about the restorative power of land and of his own family, which so desperately needed healing. Heartwarming and profound, The Deer Camp is the perfect story of fathers, sons, and the beauty and magic of the natural world
About the author: Dean Kuipers has studied and written about the field of environmental politics and the human-nature relationship for decades. He is the author of Burning Rainbow Farm and Operation Bite Back. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Outside, The Atlantic, Men’s Journal, Rolling Stone, andPlayboy. He lives in Los Angeles.
We welcome author Sharon McRill, president of The Betty Brigade based in Ann Arbor, in support of her new book Downsizing the Silver Tsunami: Who to Call and Where Does the Stuff Go?
About the book: This is the moving reference you’ve been waiting for! Downsizing the Silver Tsunami is the compilation of years of working with thousands of clients and helping them resolve the moving problems and logistical and vendor questions that come up everyda, a comprehensive reference tool that you can refer to over and over to help you navigate the difficult pathways of estate sales, consignment dealers, picking the right real estate agent, why a trust or will are important and so many other moving and downsizing questions.
About the author: Sharon McRill is owner and president of The Betty Brigade, a relocation and organization company based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her mission is to help people live more organized and less stressful lives.
Laid off from a corporate marketing job in 2003, McRill turned the setback into an opportunity. As a busy professional herself, she wanted to help other busy people get organized and stay that way. She’s now done so successfully for 15 plus years. McRill, a graduate from Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, has expanded her brand’s influence through strategic marketing and sales reaching 100k plus on social media daily. Her highly trained team of 12 is comprised of handymen, organizing experts and logistical wizards.
McRill has done scores of television and radio interviews and has been featured in such media outlets as Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, Crain’s Detroit Business, Forbes.com and The Ann Arbor Observer. Additionally, she won awards from the ATHENA foundation, Tuck School of Business, and Women Business Owners of Southeast Michigan.
Literati is thrilled to welcome bestselling novelist Sarah Dessen in support of her latest book The Rest of the Story. A book signing will follow an author talk and Q&A. A copy of The Rest of the Story is required to join the signing line. Copies will be available to purchase in our store. If you pre-order your copy through Literati (your support makes these events possible!) before June 4th, you can receive a special tote from Epic Reads. Sarah will personalize copies of The Rest of the Story and sign up to two backlist titles.
About The Rest of the Story:
Emma Saylor doesn’t remember a lot about her mother, who died when Emma was twelve. But she does remember the stories her mom told her about the big lake that went on forever, with cold, clear water and mossy trees at the edges.
Now it’s just Emma and her dad, and life is good, if a little predictable…until Emma is unexpectedly sent to spend the summer with her mother’s family that she hasn’t seen since she was a little girl.
When Emma arrives at North Lake, she realizes there are actually two very different communities there. Her mother grew up in working class North Lake, while her dad spent summers in the wealthier Lake North resort. The more time Emma spends there, the more it starts to feel like she is also divided into two people. To her father, she is Emma. But to her new family, she is Saylor, the name her mother always called her.
Then there’s Roo, the boy who was her very best friend when she was little. Roo holds the key to her family’s history, and slowly, he helps her put the pieces together about her past. It’s hard not to get caught up in the magic of North Lake–and Saylor finds herself falling under Roo’s spell as well.
For Saylor, it’s like a whole new world is opening up to her. But when it’s time to go back home, which side of her–Emma or Saylor–will win out?
Sarah Dessen is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen novels for teens, which have received numerous awards and rave reviews. Her books have been published in over thirty countries and have sold millions of copies worldwide. She is the recipient of the 2017 Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association for outstanding contribution to young adult literature for her novels, including Keeping the Moon, Dreamland, This Lullaby, The Truth about Forever, Just Listen, Along for the Ride, and What Happened to Goodbye. A North Carolina native, Sarah currently lives in Chapel Hill with her family.
Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and David Jibson • Second and Fourth Wednesdays, 7-9 p.m. in the Crazy Wisdom Tea Room • Second Wednesdays are poetry workshop nights. All writers welcome to share and discuss their own poetry and short fiction. Sign up for new participants begins at 6:45 p.m.
Fourth Wednesdays have a featured reader for 50 minutes and then open mic for an hour. All writers welcome to share. Sign up begins at 6:45 p.m. Free. Contact Ed at 668-7523; eacmorso@sbcglobal.net or cwpoetrycircle.tumblr.com.
As part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati Series, we welcome celebrated author and poet Ocean Vuong in support his debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
About the book: Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more, poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
About the author: Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have also been featured in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is his first novel.
We welcome journalist and professor in the School of Communications at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Julien Gorbach, in support of his latest book The Notorious Ben Hecht.
About the book: In 1932, Hecht solidified his legend as “the Shakespeare of Hollywood” with his thriller Scarface, the Howard Hughes epic considered the gangster movie to end all gangster movies. But Hecht rebelled against his Jewish bosses at the movie studios when they refused to make films about the Nazi menace. Leveraging his talents and celebrity connections to orchestrate a spectacular one-man publicity campaign, he mobilized pressure on the Roosevelt administration for an Allied plan to rescue Europe’s Jews. Then after the war, Hecht became notorious, embracing the labels “gangster” and “terrorist” in partnering with the mobster Mickey Cohen to smuggle weapons to Palestine in the fight for a Jewish state.
The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist is a biography of a great twentieth-century writer that treats his activism during the 1940s as the central drama of his life. It details the story of how Hecht earned admiration as a humanitarian and vilification as an extremist at this pivotal moment in history, about the origins of his beliefs in his varied experiences in American media, and about the consequences.
About the author: Julien Gorbach spent most of his 10 years as a daily newspaper reporter on the police beat, covering drive-by shootings and murder trials, and publishing an investigative series on killings that remained unsolved because gangs had intimidated witnesses into silence. As a freelancer, he contributed to the Boston Phoenix, Time Out New York, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and the New Orleans Gambit, among other publications. He covered Hurricane Katrina for the Boston Globe. Gorbach earned a doctorate in media history at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2013 and is now an assistant professor in the School of Communications at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
We welcome Nebula Nominated author Ferrett Steinemetz in support of his new novel, The Sol Majestic, a big-hearted and delightful intergalactic adventure for fans of Becky Chambers and The Good Place, as part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati series. The event is free and open to the public.
About the book: Kenna, an aspirational teen guru, wanders destitute across the stars as he tries to achieve his parents’ ambition to advise the celestial elite.
Everything changes when Kenna wins a free dinner at The Sol Majestic, the galaxy’s most renowned restaurant, giving him access to the cosmos’s one-percent. His dream is jeopardized, however, when he learns his highly-publicized “free meal” risks putting The Sol Majestic into financial ruin. Kenna and a motley gang of newfound friends–including a teleporting celebrity chef, a trust-fund adrenaline junkie, an inept apprentice, and a brilliant mistress of disguise–must concoct an extravagant scheme to save everything they cherish. In doing so, Kenna may sacrifice his ideals–or learn even greater lessons about wisdom, friendship, and love.
Utterly charming and out of this world, Ferrett Steinmetz’s The Sol Majestic will satisfy the appetites of sci-fi aficionados and newcomers alike.
About the author: Ferrett Steinemetz s a graduate of both the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and Viable Paradise. He was nominated for the Nebula Award in 2012 for his novelette Sauerkraut Station, and for the Compton Crook Award in 2015. He is the author of The Sol Majestic for Tor Books, as well as the ‘Mancer trilogy and The Uploaded. He has written for Asimov’s Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Ferret lives in Cleveland with his very clever wife, a small black dog of indeterminate origin, and a friendly ghost.
All invited to listen to guild members swap stories or bring their own to tell, at the AASG monthly meeting.
