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.
Tickets on sale now, click here to purchase.
Literati Bookstore is delighted to welcome Jennifer Weiner to the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor in support of her latest novel, Mrs. Everything. The program will feature a conversation with Cynthia Canty, host of Stateside on Michigan Radio. A book signing will follow. Light refreshments will be provided, courtesy of the JCC.
Tickets are general admission and include a hardcover copy of Mrs. Everything, to be picked up at the event. Literati will have additional copies of Jennifer Weiner’s previous titles available for purchase. Limited parking will be available on the premises of the JCC, but additional street parking is available on Pebble Creek Dr. and Birch Hollow Dr. surrounding the JCC.
About the book: Jo and Bethie Kaufman were born into a world full of promise. Growing up in 1950s Detroit, they live in a perfect “Dick and Jane” house, where their roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who enjoys the power her beauty confers and dreams of a traditional life.
But the truth ends up looking differently than what the girls imagined. Jo and Bethie survive traumas and tragedies. As their lives unfold against the background of free love and Vietnam, Woodstock and Women’s Lib, Bethie becomes an adventure-loving wild child who dives headlong into the counterculture, and is up for anything (except settling down). Meanwhile, Jo becomes a proper young mother in Connecticut, a witness to the changing world instead of a participant. Neither woman inhabits the world she dreams of, or has a life that feels authentic, or brings her joy. Is it too late for the women to finally stake a claim on happily ever after?
In her most ambitious novel yet, Jennifer Weiner tells a story of two sisters who, with their different dreams and different paths, offer answers to the question: How should a woman be in the world?
About the author: Jennifer Weiner is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of sixteen books, including Good in Bed, In Her Shoes, and her memoir, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing. A graduate of Princeton University and contributor to the New York Times Opinion section, Jennifer lives with her family in Philadelphia. Visit her online at JenniferWeiner.com.
Questions about the event? Email John@LiteratiBookstore.com
ONE PAUSE POETRY SALON is (literally) a greenhouse for poetry and poets, nurturing an appreciation for written art in all languages and encouraging experiments in creative writing.
We meet every Weds in the greenhouse at Argus Farm Stop on Liberty St. The poems we read each time are unified by form (haiku, sonnet, spoken word), poet, time / place (Tang Dynasty, English Romanticism, New York in the 70s) or theme / mood (springtime, poems with cats, protest poems). We discuss the poems and play writing games together, with time for snacks and socializing in between.
Members are encouraged to share their own poems or poems they like – they may or may not relate to the theme of the evening. This is not primarily a workshop – we may hold special workshop nights, but mostly we listen to and talk about poems for the sake of inspiring new writing.
Whether you are a published poet or encountering poetry for the first time, we invite you to join us!
$5 suggested donation for food, drinks and printing costs.
8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.
Join us for a Night Time Story Time to meet author-illustrator Emmy Kastner as she shares Nerdy Babies: Space. Cookies and milk will be served to all—and don’t forget to wear your pajamas!
About the Book
In Nerdy Babies: Space, follow our intrepid infants into the great unknown. Check out the moon and the sun and all the planets in our solar system. Plus, learn about gravity and orbits in this simple text written in question and answer format.
With bright artwork by Emmy Kastner, this will be a book that the very littlest nerds will want to return to again and again.
Stay curious. There’s more to learn about everything!
About the Illustrator
Emmy Kastner is a former classroom teacher and the co-founder of Read and Write Kalamazoo (RAWK), a nonprofit devoted to cultivating reading and writing for youth pre-K through high school. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband and three young kids. Emmy’s books include Nerdy Babies: Ocean and Nerdy Babies: Space.
Local writer (and Observer contributor) Patti Smith hosts a story time for adults, with Ken MacGregor, Callie Feyen, John Hritz, Morgan Hoeffel, Kelly Rowlands. Pajamas encouraged. For adults only.
Join us for a Night Time Story Time to meet author-illustrator Emmy Kastner as she shares Nerdy Babies: Space. Cookies and milk will be served to all—and don’t forget to wear your pajamas!
About the Book
In Nerdy Babies: Space, follow our intrepid infants into the great unknown. Check out the moon and the sun and all the planets in our solar system. Plus, learn about gravity and orbits in this simple text written in question and answer format.
With bright artwork by Emmy Kastner, this will be a book that the very littlest nerds will want to return to again and again.
Stay curious. There’s more to learn about everything!
About the Illustrator
Emmy Kastner is a former classroom teacher and the co-founder of Read and Write Kalamazoo (RAWK), a nonprofit devoted to cultivating reading and writing for youth pre-K through high school. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband and three young kids. Emmy’s books include Nerdy Babies: Ocean and Nerdy Babies: Space.
All invited to listen to guild members swap stories or bring their own to tell, at the AASG monthly meeting.
We welcome NEA Fellow and PEN/Hemingway Finalist Catherine Chung in support of her new novel, The Tenth Muse, which Roxane Gay calls “ambitious and intriguing,” as part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati series. The event is free and open to the public.
About the book: From childhood, Katherine knows she is different, and that her parents are not who they seem to be. But in becoming a mathematician, she must face the most human of problems–who is she? What is the cost of love, and what is the cost of ambition?
On her quest to conquer the Riemann hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns to a theorem with a mysterious history that holds both the lock and key to her identity, and to secrets long buried during World War II in Germany. Forced to confront some of the most consequential events of the twentieth century and rethink everything she knows of herself, she strives to take her place in the world of higher mathematics and finds kinship in the stories of the women who came before her–their love of the language of numbers connecting them across generations.
In The Tenth Muse, Catherine Chung offers a gorgeous, sweeping tale about legacy, identity, and the beautiful ways the mind can make us free.
About the author: Catherine Chung won an Honorable Mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award with her first novel, Forgotten Country, and has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a Granta New Voice, and a Director’s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She has a degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago, and worked at a think tank in Santa Monica before receiving her MFA from Cornell University. She has published work in The New York Times and Granta, and is a fiction editor at Guernica Magazine. She lives in New York City.
Cozine Welch is managing editor of Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing. The program begins with open mike readings.
