Calendar

Oct
28
Mon
Q and A with Agent Mollie Glick @ Angell Hall, Room 3154
Oct 28 @ 9:00 am – 10:00 am

Mollie Glick is a literary agent at Creative Artists Agency. She graduated from Brown University and began her career as a literary scout, advising foreign publishers regarding the acquisition of rights to American books. She then worked in the editorial department at the Crown imprint of Random House, before becoming an agent in 2003. Glick joined CAA in 2016, following eight years at Foundry Literary + Media.

Glick represents many top authors and thought leaders, including Vice President Joe Biden; Senator Kamala Harris; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller; MacArthur Grant-recipient astrophysicist Sara Seager; National Book Award-nominee Ali Benjamin; NYT Top 50 Memoirs of the Past 50 Years recipient Patricia Lockwood; #1 NYT bestselling author Mark Manson; and NYT bestselling novelists Carol Rifka Brunt; Jonathan Evison; Sarah McCoy and Nic Stone.

Glick lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two young sons.

Oct
29
Tue
Jeff Morrison: Guardians of Detroit: Architectural Sculpture in the Motor City @ Chelsea District Library
Oct 29 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Detroit is home to gargoyles, grotesques, and guardians that silently watch over the city from their posts high above the sidewalks and streets. Author and photographer Jeff Morrison will discuss the symbolism behind the ornamentation and hear some of the untold stories of the artists, artisans, and architects involved in its creation, all drawn from his book The Guardians of Detroit: Architectural Sculpture in the Motor City. Copies of the book and coloring book will be available for purchase before and after the presentation.

Oct
30
Wed
Ruth Behar: Jewish Cuba: Immigrant Memories, Anthropological Journeys, Fictional Recreations @ Kempf House Museum
Oct 30 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm

Description:Ruth Behar — storyteller, author, poet, educator, and public speaker

Dr. Behar will present a multilayered view of the Jews of Cuba, weaving together various forms of storytelling, from history and ethnography to fiction and poetry.

U-M Author’s Forum: Ellen Muehlberger: Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and Its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity @ Osterman Common Room (1022)
Oct 30 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Ellen Muehlberger (history, classical studies, Middle East studies) and Deborah Dash Moore (Judaic studies, history) discuss Muehlberger’s latest book, followed by Q & A.

Late antiquity saw a proliferation of Christian texts dwelling on the emotions and physical sensations of dying—not as a heroic martyr in a public square or a judge’s court but as an individual, at home in a bed or in a private room. In sermons, letters, and ascetic traditions, late ancient Christians imagined the last minutes of life and the events that followed death in elaborate detail. This book traces how, in late ancient Christianity, death came to be thought of as a moment of reckoning: a physical ordeal whose pain is followed by an immediate judgment of one’s actions by angels and demons and, after that, fitting punishment. This emphasis on the experience of death ushered in a new ethical sensibility among Christians, in which one’s death was to be imagined frequently and anticipated in detail. This was initially meant as a tool for individuals: preachers counted on the fact that becoming aware of a judgment arriving at the end of one’s life tends to sharpen one’s scruples. But, as this book argues, the change in Christian sensibility toward death did not just affect individuals. Death imagined as the moment of reckoning created a fund of images and ideas within late ancient Christian culture about just what constituted a human being and how variances in human morality should be treated. This had significant effects on the Christian adoption of power in late antiquity, especially in the case of power’s heaviest baggage: the capacity to authorize violence against others

Poetry Salon: One Pause Poetry @ Argus Farm Stop
Oct 30 @ 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm

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.

 

 

 

Oct
31
Thu
African Emerican Literature and Culture Now: Symposium @ 3222 Angell Hall
Oct 31 @ 9:00 am – 6:00 pm

The African American Literature and Culture Now symposium brings together a group of leading scholars in African American humanistic fields to identify and discuss the central questions that animate 21st-century Black Studies.

Held over two days, the symposium features a keynote lecture, “The End of Black Studies,” from Stephen Best (Berkeley), three panels comprised of guest speakers and Michigan respondents, a writing workshop for graduate students and postdocs, and a concluding roundtable focused on teaching. Over the course of the symposium, conversations will range across a number of vital topics including: nation/diaspora; political activism; historicity; gender/sexuality; and cross-media cultural production.

In addition to keynote speaker Stephen Best, the symposium’s guest speakers are Margo Crawford (UPenn), Madhu Dubey (UIC), Erica Edwards (Rutgers), Emily Lordi (UMass/Vanderbilt), Kevin Quashie (Brown), and Courtney Thorsson (Oregon).

Nov
1
Fri
Poetry at Literati: Molly Spencer: If the house @ Literati
Nov 1 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome poet and Ford School of Public Policy professor Molly Spencer in support of her collection, If the house, winner of the 2019 Brittingham Prize judged by Carl Philips. A book signing will follow. The event is free and open to the public. 

Molly Spencer‘s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Blackbird, Copper NickelFIELD​, The Georgia ReviewGettysburg ReviewNew England ReviewPloughsharesPrairie Schooner, and other journals. Her critical writing has appeared at Colorado ReviewKenyon Review OnlineTupelo Quarterly, and The Rumpus. She holds an MPA from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop, and is a Poetry Editor at The Rumpus. Her collection, If the house, won the 2019 Brittingham Prize judged by Carl Phillips, and is forthcoming from the University of Wisconsin Press in October of 2019. A second collection, Relic and the Plum, won the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition judged by Allison Joseph, and will be out in September of 2020. Molly teaches at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

Webster Reading Series: Annesha Sengupta and Bryan Byrdlong @ UMMA Auditorium
Nov 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.

This week’s reading features Annesha Sengupta and Bryan Byrdlong.

Annesha Sengupta is a writer from Richmond, VA.

Bryan Byrdlong is a Haitian/African-American writer from Chicago, Illinois. He recently graduated from Venderbilt University where he received an undergraduate English/Creative Writing degree. He currently studies and teaches English at the University of Michigan.

 

Nov
3
Sun
Almost Country with John Knott @ Nicola's Books
Nov 3 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

John Knott shares his essays, which present a story of getting to know a place intimately and learning to deal with challenges from the human and natural worlds, from developers and county officials to windstorms, a hatch of seventeen-year cicadas, flying squirrels in the attic, and a bullfrog that takes up residence for the winter in the basement floor drain.

About the Author

John R. Knott, Jr., was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on July 9, 1937, the son of John R. Knott and Wilma Henshaw Knott.  He graduated from Central High School in 1955 and did his undergraduate work at Yale University, graduating magna cum laude with high honors in English in 1959.  In 1959-60 he held a Carnegie Fellowship at Yale, taking one graduate course and teaching undergraduate English.  During that year he married Anne Percy Knott of Memphis.  He went to Harvard University for his graduate work with a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (1960-61), earning a Ph.D. in English in 1965 after serving as a Teaching Fellow in General Education and in English.  He remained at Harvard as an Instructor in English for two years before joining the Department of English of the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor in 1967.  By that time he and his wife Anne had four children: Catherine Henshaw Knott, Ellen Dent Knott, Walker Percy Knott, and Anne Minor Knott.

At Michigan John Knott was promoted to Associate Professor in 1971 and Professor in 1976.  He specialized in English Renaissance literature for much of his career, teaching a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses, including Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare, and the Puritan imagination.  He twice received recognition for his teaching in the form of LSA Excellence in Education awards.  He published numerous articles and chapters and three scholarly books on Renaissance literature: Milton’s Pastoral Vision (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971); The Sword of the Spirit (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980), with the help of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities; and Discourses of Martyrdom in English Literature: 1563-1694 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), with the help of a Michigan Humanities Award.  In the 1990’s his teaching and research interests gradually shifted to literature and the environment.  He published a critical book that grew out of a course he developed in the literature of the American wilderness, Imagining Wild America (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2001) and subsequently Imagining the Forest: Narratives of the Upper Midwest (University of Michigan Press, 2012).  He has edited or co-edited several collections dealing with the environment, including The Huron River: Voices from the Watershed (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2000) and Michigan: Our Land, Our Water Our Heritage (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2008, in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy.

John Knott’s service at Michigan has included Assoc. Dean (1977-80) and Acting Dean (1980-81) of LSA; Chair of the Department of English (1982-87); Interim Director of the Humanities Institute (1987-88); and Interim Director of the Program in the Environment (2001-2).  As chair of English he started the MFA program in creative writing.  He served on the planning committee for the Institute for the Humanities and acted as interim director during its startup year.  Several years before his retirement from the faculty in 2006 he chaired the planning and implementation committees that established the joint LSA/SNRE Program in the Environment, which replaced the SNRE undergraduate program, and directed the program for its first year and a half.

Nov
4
Mon
Q and A with Editor Parneshia Jones @ Angell Hall, Room 3154
Nov 4 @ 9:00 am – 10:00 am

Parneshia Jones is the author of Vessel: Poems (Milkweed Editions), winner of the Midwest Book Award. After studying creative writing at Chicago State University, earning an MFA from Spalding University, and studying publishing at Yale University, Jones has been honored with the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Margaret Walker Short Story Award, and the Aquarius Press Legacy Award. Named one of the “25 Writers to Watch” by the Guild Complex and one of “Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago” by Newcity Magazine, her work has been anthologized in She Walks in Beauty: A Woman’s Journey Through Poems, edited by Caroline Kennedy and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, edited by Nikky Finney; and featured on PBS Newshour, the Academy of American Poets, and espnW. A member of the Affrilachian Poets, she serves on the board of Cave Canem and Global Writes. She currently holds positions as Sales and Community Outreach Manager and Poetry Editor at Northwestern University Press. Parneshia Jones lives in Chicago.

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