RC students perform Melissa Ross’ 2011 Off-Broadway drama about a dysfunctional family reunion. The 3 children of a broken and dying man quarrel with each other and with the world in a self-confounding effort to rediscover lost family connections. Also Fiday, same time and place.
Literati is pleased to welcome Chris Dombrowski in support of his memoir Body of Water: A Sage, a Seeker, and the World’s Most Alluring Fish.
Chris Dombrowski was playing a numbers game: two passions—poetry and fly-fishing; two children, one of them in utero; and an income hovering perilously close to zero. Enter, at this particularly challenging moment, a miraculous email: can’t go, it’s all paid for, just book a flight to Miami. Thus began a journey that would lead to the Bahamas and to David Pinder, a legendary bonefishing guide. Bonefish are prized for their elusiveness and their tenacity. And no one was better at hunting them than Pinder, a Bahamian whose accuracy and patience were virtuosic. He knows what the fish think, said one fisherman, before they think it. By the time Dombrowski meets Pinder, however, he has been abandoned by the industry he helped build. With cataracts from a lifetime of staring at the water and a tiny severance package after forty years of service, he watches as the world of his beloved bonefish is degraded by tourists he himself did so much to attract. But as Pinder’s stories unfold, Dombrowski discovers a profound integrity and wisdom in the guide’s life.
“A brilliant book. Destined to be a classic.”—Jim Harrison
Born in Michigan, Chris Dombrowski earned his MFA from the University of Montana. His publications include two collections of poems, By Cold Water (2009) and Earth Again (2013). His poetry and nonfiction have been widely published in leading journals and magazines. Also a well-established fly-fishing guide, Dombrowski lives in Missoula, Montana.
Reading by Art Academy of Cincinnati creative writing professor poet Matt Hart, an award-winning poet who has 2 new books, the book-length serial poem Radiant Action, a philosophical meditation on life in our time and the timelessness of the desire to be always in awe, and the companion collection Radiant Companion. The program begins with open mike readings.
Literati is pleased to once again partner with the University of Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing in support of their Word2: Writer to Writer programming. Professor Philip J. Deloria is this installment’s featured guest.
Sweetland’s Word Squared: 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,Word² pairs one esteemed University professor with a Sweetland faculty member for a conversation about writing.
Word² sessions 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, Word² gives you the chance.
Professor Deloria is the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor of American Culture and History, former LSA Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, and past Director of the Program in American Culture and the AC Native American Studies program. He has served as president of the American Studies Association, a council member of the Organization of American Historians, and a Trustee of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. He holds a joint appointment in the Department of American Culture and the Department of History.
Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for the Zell Visiting Writers Series at the University of Michigan. More information about the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, including a full calendar of visiting writers, can be found here. The November 17th installment of ZVWS will feature award-winning author Colm Tóibín.
Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet. His seventh novel, Brooklyn, was recently adapted into a major motion picture, and his most recent novel, Nora Webster, received the Hawthornden Prize in 2015. Tóibín has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize on three different occasions, and been awarded the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year, the Lamda Literary Award, the Costa Novel Award, and the Irish PEN Award, among many others. A celebrated essayist as well, Tóibín’s latest nonfiction book, On Elizabeth Bishop, offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of the American poet, who was one of his most important literary influences.
Literati is pleased to welcome Terri Tate in support of her memoir A Crooked Smile.
In A Crooked Smile, Terri Tate shares the compelling story of her journey through cancer diagnosis, multiple surgeries, and the inner path of self-discovery. With her wry ability to illuminate the profound and the absurd, she invites us to experience her ride on the emotional roller-coaster of fear and hope; personal experiences with nearly every spiritual practice ever devised; and her discovery that miracles, healing, and guidance can come to us in the most unexpected ways.
“Thrilling in its insight and first-rate storytelling! Terri writes like a dream, she describes dark material in a way that is totally honest, yet also jaunty and visceral, and makes it easy to read about.I laughed out loud while reading this book, over and over, and marked up it up like a student.”–Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author of Bird by Bird and Traveling Mercies
Terri Tate is a clinical nurse specialist, teacher, and humorist. Terri was first diagnosed with oral cancer in 1991, and is now a nationally recognized speaker; a consultant and therapist who uses lessons from her own struggle to help support anyone facing life challenges; and a stand-up comedienne with a popular one-woman show, Shopping As a Spiritual Path
Literati is thrilled to welcome Thylias Moss in support of her latest collection, Wannabe Hoochie Mama of Realities’ Red Dress Code.
Thylias Moss, one of American poetry’s great innovators, is a national taxonomist and secular preacher who catalogues our culture and responds in gorgeous outrage to its injustices. This career-spanning volume conveys the hypnotic spectrum of her full poetic output, from Hosiery Seams on a Bowlegged Woman, her 1983 debut, to Slave Moth, her acclaimed 2006 novel in verse, to more than fifty pages of new poems. Whether in early or recent writing, Moss makes no promises of smooth sailing: even when her poems begin with beloved cultural icons (Robert Frost, Doctor Who, the Statue of Liberty), they insist on new perspectives, truths, and realities. She is a fearless reimaginer of poetry’s possibilities, a writer who seems made for (and by) the digital age—its blitz of interactivity and reinvention—a futuristic archivist always compelled by the current moment. Arranged chronologically, this volume offers us Moss as she has evolved through the past three decades, recognizable yet unpredictable, ever “a poet of fierce intelligence and radiant intensity” (Martín Espada). Wannabe Hoochie Mama of Realities’ Red Dress Code is an indispensable book, a record of who this essential writer has been and where she may be heading.
Thylias Moss is a multi-racial Professor Emerita in the departments of English and Art & Design at the University of Michigan. Her eight previous books of poetry include Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and Slave Moth, named Best Poetry Book of 2004 by Black Issues Book Review. Moss is a recipient of the fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations, among other honors. She lives in Michigan.
Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for the Zell Visiting Writers Series at the University of Michigan. More information about the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, including a full calendar of visiting writers, can be found here. The November 29th installment of ZVWS will feature the singular Eileen Myles and playwright Lisa Kron in conversation with Holly Hughes.
Eileen Myles is an award-winning American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. Novelist Dennis Cooper has described Myles as “one of the savviest and most restless intellects in contemporary literature.” In 2012 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete Afterglow (a memoir), which gives both a real and fantastic account of a dog’s life.
Lisa Kron is an actress and playwright, best known for writing the lyrics and book to the musical Fun Home, for which she won both the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Born in Ann Arbor, Kron teaches playwriting part-time at Yale University and New York University.
Literati is pleased to welcome Scott Savitt in support of his memoir, Crashing the Party: An American Reporter in China.
It’s 1983. Scott Savitt, one of the first American exchange students in Beijing, picks up his guitar and begins strumming “Blackbird.” He’s soon surrounded by Chinese students who know every word to every Beatles song he plays. Scott stays on in Beijing, working as a reporter for Asiaweek Magazine. The city’s first nightclubs open; rock ‘n’ roll promises democracy. Promoted to foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times then United Press International, Scott finds himself drawn into China’s political heart. His girlfriend is the assistant to Bette Bao Lord, the wife of the U.S. ambassador. He interviews people who will become leaders of the democracy movement.
Later, at 25 years old, Scott is the youngest accredited foreign correspondent in China, with an intimate knowledge of Beijing’s backstreets. But as the seven-week occupation of Tiananmen Square ends in bloodshed on June 4, 1989, his greatest asset is his flame-red 500cc Honda motorcycle — giving Scott the freedom to witness first-hand what the Chinese government still denies ever took place. After Tiananmen, Scott founds the first independent English language newspaper in China, Beijing Scene. He knows that it’s only a matter of time before the authorities move in, and sure enough, in 2000 he’s arrested, flung into solitary confinement and, after a month in jail, deported.
Scott Savitt is the in-house Chinese-English translator for numerous human rights organizations and the New York Times. His articles have been published in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and many other newspapers and magazines. He is a former visiting scholar at Duke University.
Bob Brill writes fiction and poetry.
His novellas, short stories and 150 poems have
appeared in over 45 print journals, online magazines,
and anthologies. His most recent publications are
2 poems in Water Music: The Great Lakes State
Poetry Anthology, and his first book of poems, Hello
Goodbye, Selected Poems.
and
Marilyn Churchill is a visual artist and poet who
packs stunning pictures and words into her new book
Memory Stones. Her poetry has been published in
many journals, most recently in Third Wednesday and
Peninsula Poets, and she has won prizes for poetry
and fiction in Current Magazine contests.
