Calendar

Feb
21
Fri
William Lopez: Separated – Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid @ Literati
Feb 21 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, Willaim Lopez, in support of his book Separated.

About the book:

In Separated, William D. Lopez examines the lasting damage done by this daylong act of collaborative immigration enforcement in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Exploring the chaos of enforcement through the lens of community health, Lopez discusses deportation’s rippling negative effects on families, communities, and individuals. Focusing on those left behind, Lopez reveals their efforts to cope with trauma, avoid homelessness, handle worsening health, and keep their families together as they attempt to deal with a deportation machine that is militarized, traumatic, implicitly racist, and profoundly violent.

Lopez uses this single home raid to show what immigration law enforcement looks like from the perspective of the people who actually experience it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with twenty-four individuals whose lives were changed that day in 2013, as well as field notes, records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and his own experience as an activist, Lopez combines rigorous research with narrative storytelling. Putting faces and names to the numbers behind deportation statistics, Separated urges readers to move beyond sound bites and consider the human experience of mixed-status communities in the small everyday towns that dot the interior of the United States.

 

William D. Lopez is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health and the faculty director of public scholarship at the National Center for Institutional Diversity.

 

Mar
2
Mon
Respect: The Poetry of Detroit Music @ Literati
Mar 2 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome contributors to Michigan State University Press’s anthology Respect: The Poetry of Detroit Music. featuring Dawn McDuffie, Sonya Pouncy, Keith Taylor, Ken Mikowloski, Dennis Hinrichsen, Brian Gilmore, Charlie Brice, Cal Freeman, Zilka Joseph and M.L. Liebler. Free and open to the public. A signing will follow. The event is free and open to the public. 

About the book: While there have been countless books written about Detroit, none have captured its incredible musical history like this one. Detroit artists have forged the paths in many music genres, producing waves of creative energy that continue to reverberate across the country and around the world. This anthology both documents and celebrates this part of Detroit’s history, capturing the emotions that the music inspired in its creators and in its listeners. The range of contributors speaks to the global impact of Detroit’s music scene–Grammy winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, and poet laureates all come together in this rich and varied anthology.

Mar
5
Thu
Poetry at Literati: Ellen Stone: What Is In The Blood @ Literati
Mar 5 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We’re pleased to welcome Ellen Stone in support her collection What is in the Blood. The event is free and open to the public and a book signing will follow the event.

Ellen Stone was raised in the Appalachian Mountains above the north branch of the Susquehanna River in rural Pennsylvania. She taught public school in Kansas and Michigan for over thirty years. Ellen advises Poetry Club at Community High School and co-hosts a monthly poetry series in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her poems have appeared most recently in Halfway Down the Stairs, The Citron Review, Dunes Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, cahoodaloodaling, Switchback, Mantis, and are forthcoming in Choice Words: Writers on Abortion. Ellen is the author of What Is in the Blood (Mayapple Press, 2020) and The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’Cooperative Press, 2013). Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart prize and Best of the Net.

Mar
10
Tue
New Writings from University of Michigan Historians @ Literati
Mar 10 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We’re pleased to welcome faculty members from the University of Michigan’s History Department as they present their recent publications. Copies of the titles will be available for purchase.

Howard Brick, et al., At the Center: American Thought and Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century 

Joshua Cole, Lethal Provocation:  The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria 

Juan Cole, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires

Henry Cowles, The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey

Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean

Victoria Langland, et al., The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics

Alexandra Minna Stern, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination

Ellen Muehlberger, Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and Its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity

Perrin Selcer, The Cold War Origins of the Global Environment  

Julius Scott, The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution

Mar
13
Fri
Webster Reading Series: Zahir Janmohamed and Joumana Altallal @ UMMA Auditorium
Mar 13 @ 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 Zahir Janmohamed and Joumana Altallal.

Zahir Janmohamed is a fiction writer from Sacramento, California.

Joumana Altallal is an Iraqi-Lebanese poet and educator. Before moving to Ann Arbor, she lived in Charlottesville, Virginia.

 

Mar
17
Tue
Sweetland Writer to Writer: TBA @ Literati
Mar 17 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Sweetland’s Writer to Writer series lets you hear directly from University of Michigan professors about their challenges, processes, and expectations as writers and also as readers of student writing. Each semester, Writer to Writer pairs one esteemed University professor with a Sweetland faculty member for a conversation about writing.

Writer to Writer sessions take place at the Literati bookstore and are broadcast live on WCBN radio. These conversations offer students a rare glimpse into the writing that professors do outside the classroom. You can hear instructors from various disciplines describe how they handle the same challenges student writers face, from finding a thesis to managing deadlines. Professors will also discuss what they want from student writers in their courses, and will take questions put forth by students and by other members of the University community. If there’s anything you’ve ever wanted to ask a professor about writing, Writer to Writer gives you the chance.

J

Mar
20
Fri
Webster Reading Series: Sarah Duffett and Michael M. Weinstein @ UMMA Auditorium
Mar 20 @ 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 Sarah Duffett and Michael M. Weinstein.

Sarah Duffett is a writer from New England and the cohost of the Webster Reading Series. She currently lives in Ann Arbor.

Michael M. Weinstein is a poet, teacher, translator, and cohost of the Webster Reading Series. Originally from New York, he now lives in Ann Arbor.

 

Mar
24
Tue
Susan J. Douglas: In Our Prime @ Literati
Mar 24 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome Susan J. Douglas back to the store in support her new book In Our Prime: How Older Women Are Reinventing the Road Ahead. The event is free and open to the public, a book signing will follow. 

About the book: 

Susan Douglas knows that you are not alone. She declares it is time now for the largest female generation over fifty to reinvent what it means to be an older woman and to challenge the outdated stereotypes–think doddering or shrewish–that Hollywood and TV have assigned them. She zones in on how the anti-aging cosmetics industry targets older and younger women alike with their products, and how Big Pharma ads equate getting older with disease and decline. Douglas exposes the ageism that mature women face at work and why conservatives’ decades-long attacks on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare disproportionately affect women.

Susan J. Douglas is Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication and Media at the University of Michigan. The author most recently of In Our Prime as well as the groundbreaking works Where the Girls AreThe Rise of Enlightened Sexism, and The Mommy Myth, she lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Mar
31
Tue
Faith A. Pennick: D’Angelo’s Voodoo @ Literati
Mar 31 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome filmmaker, writer and University of Michigan alumna Faith Pennick in support of her 33 1/3rd series entry, D’Angelo’s Voodoo. The event is free and open to the public, a book signing will follow. 

About the book: Voodoo, D’Angelo’s much-anticipated 2000 release, set the standard for the musical cycle ordained as “neo-soul,” a label the singer and songwriter would reject more than a decade later. The album is a product of heightened emotions and fused sensibilities; an amalgam of soul, rock, jazz, gospel, hip-hop, and Afrobeats. D’Angelo put to music his own pleasures and insecurities as a man-child in the promised land. It was both a tribute to his musical heroes: Prince, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, J Dilla…and a deconstruction of rhythm and blues itself.

Despite nearly universal acclaim, the sonic expansiveness of Voodoo proved too nebulous for airplay on many radio stations, seeping outside the accepted lines of commercial R&B music. Voodoo was Black, it was definitely magic, and it was nearly overshadowed by a four-minute music video featuring D’Angelo’s sweat-glistened six-pack abs. “The Video” created an accentuated moment when the shaman lost control of the spell he cast.

Faith Pennick is a Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based filmmaker and writer. Her most recent film is Weightless, a documentary short about plus-sized female scuba divers. Her other films include the documentary Silent Choices and narrative short film Running on Eggshells. Pennick is also a contributing writer to pop culture website The Learned Fangirl.

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