All poets invited to compete in a poetry slam judged by a randomly chosen panel from the audience. The program begins with a poetry open mike and (occasionally) a short set by a featured poet.
8-11 p.m. (sign-up begins at 7:30 p.m.), $5 suggested donation. A2poetry.com.
Literati welcomes contributors from Great Lakes Review Issue 6 to read from their work!
The Great Lakes Review publishes fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry from Toronto, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Hamilton and the rest of the Great Lakes region. To celebrate issue 6, the journal is hosting a reading with four of the contributors from Michigan on Jan. 18. They include:
Michael Zadoorian is the author of two novels, The Leisure Seeker (William Morrow, 2009) and Second Hand (W.W. Norton, 2000), and a story collection, The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit (Wayne State University Press, 2009). He is a recipient of a Kresge Artist Fellowship in the Literary Arts, Columbia University’s Anahid Literary Award, the Michigan Notable Book award, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award and was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been published in The Literary Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, American Short Fiction, North American Review and Detroit Noir.
Michael Steinberg is the founding editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. He’s written and co-authored five books and a stage play. Still Pitching won the 2004 ForeWord Magazine/Independent Press Memoir of the Year. Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs From Michiganwas a finalist for the 2000 Foreword Magazine Independent Press Anthology of the Year, as well as for the 2000 Great Lakes Book Sellers Award. Another anthology, The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction (with Robert Root), is in its sixth edition. Steinberg is currently Nonfiction Writer-in-Residence in the Solstice/Pine Manor College MFA program. http://www.mjsteinberg.net
Lynn Pattison, former teacher of the Gifted & Talented in Kalamazoo Public Schools, attended the University of Michigan and WMU. Pattison’s poems have appeared in The Notre Dame Review, Rhino, Atlanta Review, Harpur Palate, Rattle and Poetry East, among others, and been anthologized in several venues. Nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, she is the author of two chapbooks: tesla’s daughter (March St. Press, 2005); Walking Back the Cat (Bright Hill Press, 2006) and a book, Light That Sounds Like Breaking (Mayapple Press, 2006).
Robert James Russell is the author of the novel Mesilla (Dock Street Press), and the chapbookDon’t Ask Me to Spell It Out (WhiskeyPaper Press). He is a founding editor of the literary journalsMidwestern Gothic and CHEAP POP. You can find him online at robertjamesrussell.com.
To purchase a copy of issue 6, visit http://greatlakesreview.org/current-issue.
Nicholas Petrie received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington, won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at U-M, and his story “At the Laundromat” won the 2006 Short Story Contest in the The Seattle Review, a national literary journal. A husband and father, he runs a home-inspection business in Milwaukee. The Drifter is his first novel.
Reading by Fire Historical and Cultural Arts Collaborative (Kalamazoo) cofounder Denise Miller, author of the recent CORE, a collection of poems based on the stories of African American sharecroppers of the Great Migration. The program begins with open mike readings.
Monthly open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit storytelling organization that also produces a weekly public radio show. Each month 10 storytellers are selected at random from among those who sign up to tell a 3-5 minute story on the monthly theme. The 3 judges are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Space limited, so it’s smart to arrive early. January theme: Strict. $8. Doors open, and sign up start at 6.
U-M Professors Tiya Miles and Martha Jones discuss Miles’ new book The Cherokee Rose, a novel that examines a little-known aspect of America’s past—slaveholding by Southern Creeks and Cherokees—and its legacy in the lives of three young women who are drawn to the Georgia plantation where scenes of extreme cruelty and equally extraordinary compassion once played out.
Anne Carson was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the MacArthur “Genius” Award. She is the author of red doc>; Nox; Glass, Irony and God; The Autobiography of Red; The Beauty of the Husband; Decreation; Economy of the Unlost; Eros the Bittersweet; Grief Lessons; If Not, Winter; Men in the Off Hours;and Plainwater.
Local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal host an open house for writers to connect with one another and/or work on their projects.
When the 17th c. British philosophers founded modern natural history, they proposed finding a poet to compile a poetic account of everything that existed in nature. This witty, learned, and satirical collection follows a year’s worth of submissions by one such researcher-poet, along with revisions and comments written in the margins between the poet and the editor. As their relationship unravels, Natural History becomes a tool of the heartbroken and obsessed.
“Holly Painter is a trickster poet, you never know where she’s going next. Sometimes she wants to lick your ear. Over the page she might chew your leg off.” — John Newton
Holly has an MFA from the University of Canterbury. She is originally from Michigan where she interned at 826Michigan and currently lives in Singapore with her wife and son.
PLEASE NOTE: The Open Mic & Share Poetry Series will be on hiatus in January 2016.
We will resume on February 11 at 7pm; featured poet TBA.
One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. Tonight: poet Hanae Jonas and fiction writer Emily Chew.
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.
