Calendar

Oct
10
Thu
MQR Fall Issue Launch @ Literati
Oct 10 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

The Michigan Quarterly Review launches its fall issue. Details and contributor bios to come. Stay tuned!

Oct
11
Fri
Fiction at Literati: Eileen Pollack: The Professor of Immortality, and in conversation with Lillian Li @ Literati
Oct 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Author and former director of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at The University of Michigan visits as part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati Series, in support of her new novel The Professor of Immortality. Eileen will be in-conversation with Literati bookseller and author Lillian Li. A book signing will follow. The event is free and open to the public. 

About the book: Professor Maxine Sayers once found her personal and professional life so fulfilling that she founded the Institute of Future Studies, a program dedicated to studying the effects of technology on our culture and finding ways to prolong human life. But when her beloved husband dies, she is so devastated she can barely get out of bed. To make matters worse, her son, Zach, has abruptly quit his job in Silicon Valley and been out of contact for seven months. Maxine is jolted from her grief by her sudden suspicion that a favorite former student (and a former close friend of her son) might be a terrorist called the Technobomber and that Zach might either be involved in or become a victim of this extremist’s bombing. Deserting her teaching responsibilities, her ailing mother, and an appealing suitor, Maxine feels compelled to set out and search for her son in order to warn and protect him, even as she knows she should report her suspicions to the FBI to prevent greater carnage.

Eileen Pollack graduated with a BS in physics from Yale and earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa. She is the author of the novels The Bible of Dirty JokesA Perfect LifeBreaking and Entering, andParadise, New York, the short-story collections In the Mouth and The Rabbi in the Attic, and the nonfiction books The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club and Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Catherine Weldon and Sitting Bull. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Michener Foundation, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. Her novella “The Bris” was chosen to appear in Best American Short Stories, edited by Stephen King; two other stories have been awarded Pushcart Prizes, and her essay “Pigeons” was selected by Cheryl Strayed for Best American Essays. Formerly the director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, she now lives in New York City.

Lillian Li received her BA from Princeton and her MFA from the University of Michigan. She is the recipient of a Hopwood Award in Short Fiction, as well as Glimmer Train‘s New Writer Award. Her work has been featured in Guernica, Granta, and Jezebel. She is from the D.C. metro area and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Number One Chinese Restaurant is her first novel.

Oct
14
Mon
Ann Patchett: The Dutch House @ Rackham Auditorium
Oct 14 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Tickets available now. Purchase them here.

Literati Bookstore is honored to welcome Ann Patchett to Rackham Auditorium for an event in support of her latest novel, The Dutch House, and in benefit of the Book Industry Charitable Foundation.

Established in 1996, The Book Industry Charitable Foundation’s mission is to strengthen the bookselling community through charitable programs that support bookstore employees and their families. The Foundation was imagined and built by booksellers and proudly continues to be their safety net. Since its inception, the organization has provided more than $6.6 million in financial assistance and scholarships to more than 7,476 families. Find out more about The Foundation and donate here.

The program will consist of an author talk and Q&A.

A very limited number of VIP tickets are available. These tickets provide access to a 5:30pm-6:30pm pre-event meet & greet with Ann at the Michigan League (light refreshments served), a hardcover copy of The Dutch House, and reserved general admission seating for the event at Rackham. All proceeds, after the price of the book, from this ticket go directly to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation. Additional reception details and instructions will be sent to guests ahead of the event.

General admission book bundle tickets are also available and include a pre-signed copy of The Dutch House, to be picked up at the venue the evening of the event.

Surface parking in downtown Ann Arbor may be limited. A detailed map of available (and walkable) parking structures can be found here.

About The Dutch House:

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.

The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.

Ann Patchett is the author of seven novels and three works of nonfiction. She is the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, England’s Orange Prize, and the Book Sense Book of the Year, and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, Karl, and their dog, Sparky.

Additional event questions? Email John@LiteratiBookstore.com

Oct
17
Thu
Zell Visiting Writers: C.M. Burroughs: Reading and Book Signing @ U-M Museum of Art Stern Auditorium
Oct 17 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

CM Burroughs’ book of poems, The Vital System (Tupelo Press), illuminates what she calls “the protective capability of violence.” In the words of renowned French feminist scholar Hélène Cixous: “Burroughs delves into the ultra-sensitive roots of being; where sufferings and desires take shape, she gathers each breath as yet unheard and leads it to speech.”

Burroughs is an Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia College Chicago. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Cave Canem Foundation. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations.

Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including Poetry, Callaloo, jubilat, Ploughshares, VOLT, and Best American Experimental Writing 2015. Her second book, Master Suffering, will be published by Tupelo Press in 2020.

This event is free and open to the public.

The Zell Visiting Writers Series brings outstanding writers to campus each semester. The Series is made possible through a generous gift from U-M alumna Helen Zell (BA ’64, LLDHon ’13). For more information, please visit the Zell Visiting Writers Program webpage: https://lsa.umich.edu/writers

Poetry at Literati: Oliver Baez Bendorf, Susie Garcia, and David Hornibrook @ Literati
Oct 17 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome three incredible poets–Oliver Baez Bendorf, Suzi F. Garcia, & David Hornibrook–as part of our ongoing Poetry at Literati Series. A book signing will follow. The event is free and open to the public. 

Oliver Baez Bendorf’s debut full-length collection, The Spectral Wilderness (Kent State U.) was selected by Mark Doty for the Stan & Tom Wick Poetry Prize. His second book, Advantages of Being Evergreen, won CSU Poetry Center’s Open Book Poetry Competition and will be published September 10, 2019. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, BOMB, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, and elsewhere. He has been a featured reader at New Orleans Poetry Festival, The White House, Smith College, and Woodland Pattern. A recipient of honors and fellowships from CantoMundo, Lambda Literary, Vermont Studio Center, and University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Creative Writing, he is an assistant professor of creative writing at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. https://www.oliverbaezbendorf.com/

Suzi F. Garcia is the author of the chapbook, Dear Dorothy: A Home Grown Fairytale, Skull + Wind Press, 2020. The daughter of a Peruvian immigrant, raised in Arkansas, she has an MFA in Creative Writing with minors in Screen Cultures and Gender Studies. Suzi is an Executive Editor at Noemi Press, where she has worked with authors such as the Blunt Research Group, Jennifer Tamayo, Roberto Tejada, Thirii Myint, and Vanessa Villarreal. Suzi is a CantoMundo Fellow, a Macondista, and participated in the first-ever Poetry Incubator at the Poetry Foundation. She is teaching a 2019 Telluride Association Summer Program seminar. Her writing has been featured or is forthcoming from the Offing, Vinyl, Fence Magazine, and more. She has presented at PCA/ACA, AWP, and Console-ing Passions, among other national conferences.

David Hornibrook grew up in the suburbs of Detroit where he worked for many years as a caregiver and non-profit administrator. His poems have won multiple awards, including a Pushcart Prize. Hornibrook holds an MFA from the Helen Zell Writer’s Program at the University of Michigan.

Oct
18
Fri
Fiction at Literati: Jac Jemc: False Bingo @ Literati
Oct 18 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome award-winning author Jac Jemc as part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati series in support of her latest short story collection, False Bingo. A Book signing to follow. Free and open to the public. 

About the book: The mundane becomes sinister in a disquieting story collection from the author of The Grip of It. In Jemc’s dislocating second story collection, sinister forces–some supernatural, some of this earth, some real and some not–work their ways into everyday life.

Jac Jemc is the author of My Only Wife, a finalist for the 2013 PEN / Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award, and A Different Bed Every Time. She has been the recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Professional Development Grants, and in 2014 was named one of 25 Writers to Watch by the Guild Literary Complex and one of Newcity’s Lit 50 in Chicago. She recently completed a stint as the writer in residence at the University of Notre Dame and currently teaches at Northeastern Illinois University and StoryStudio Chicago, as well as online at Writers & Books and the Loft Literary Center, and she is the web nonfiction editor for Hobart.

Webster Reading Series: Mariya Zilberman and Karolina Leetunova @ UMMA Auditorium
Oct 18 @ 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.

This week’s reading features Karolina Letunova and Mariya Zilberman.

Born and raised in a Siberian coal town, Karolina Letunova writes fiction. She is working on her first novel.

Mariya Zilberman is an Ann Arbor-based poet. She immigrated to the United States from Minsk, Belarus and grew up in Maryland.

 

Oct
21
Mon
James Poniewozik: Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America @ AADL Downtown (First Floor Lobby)
Oct 21 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Literati Bookstore is pleased to be on hand to booksell as James Poniewozik visits the Ann Arbor District Library’s downtown branch. The event will take place in the lobby and is free and open to the public.

About the book: In his new book  Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of AmericaNew York Times’s James Poniewozik argues that what made Donald Trump isn’t simply business or politics or populism. To understand President Trump, Poniewozik states, we need to understand modern television itself. In this new book, he breaks down the medium in fresh, piercing ways, finding the parallels between television’s forty-year fracturing and Trump’s ascendancy from gossip item to reality star. Poniewozik traces the culture’s growing fascination with antiheroes and celebrity and demonstrates just how far that has extended into Trump’s presidency.

James Poniewozik has been the chief television critic of the New York Times since 2015. He was previously the television and media critic for Time and a media columnist for SalonThis event includes a signing with books for sale.

Nic Stone: Jackpot @ AADL Downtown (Fourth Floor Meeting Room)
Oct 21 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

AADL hosts best-selling YA author Nic Stone to discuss her latest title, Jackpot. What would winning the lottery mean to you? Nic Stone provides a close view at this thought through the eyes of teenager Rico in Jackpot. Taking care of her little brother, working every day to help her mother with the bills, and keeping up with her schoolwork is Rico’s life these days, and she is feeling anything but lucky. But can a winning lottery ticket change everything?

Nic Stone is the author of the New York Times bestselling Dear MartinHer second novel, Odd One Out, was hailed as “essential reading” in a starred review from BooklistJackpot, her third novel, is a life-affirming story about the humanity in people, no matter how little or how much is in their bank account. In January 2020, Nic will debut in the middle grade arena with Clean Getaway.

This event is in partnership with Literati Bookstore and includes a signing with books for sale.

Oct
22
Tue
Clara Parkes: Vanishing Fleece: Adventures in American Wool @ AADL Downtown (First Floor Lobby)
Oct 22 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Clara Parkes, best-selling author on knitting and wool, comes to AADL to discuss her new book Vanishing Fleece: Adventures in American Woola fast-paced account of the year Parkes spent transforming a 676-pound bale of fleece into saleable yarn, and the people and vanishing industry she discovered along the way. Vanishing Fleece is a travel guide seen through the lens of wool, while telling an inspiring story about American culture.

Author of six books, including the New York Times bestsellingKnitlandia, Clara Parkes has dedicated her life to figuring ourt what makes yarn tick and finding the right words to write about it. Through her writings, workshops and appearances, Clara champions the notion of paying closer attention to what you knit and where it came from. She lives in Portland, Maine.

This event includes a signing with books for sale.

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