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.
Neutral Zone and Literati Bookstore are partnering to present an Open Mic Night for writers ages 19 and under! Poets, storytellers, short story writers…. everyone is invited to take to the mic in a safe and welcoming environment. The event is free and open to the public.
Literati is pleased to welcome Jason Corey and Stephen Rush for an evening of music in celebration of their recent publications.
Jason Corey is an Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Music at the University of Michigan He is a recipient of the Paul D. Fleck Fellowship at The Banff Centre in Banff, Canada, where he has worked as an Audio Research Associate. He has presented his research at conferences in Europe, Canada, and the United States. His research and education have been supported by the Audio Engineering Society Educational Foundation (New York), Bang & Olufsen A/S (Denmark), McGill University Stern Fellowship for Doctoral Studies in Music, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Pioneer Electronic Corporation (Japan), and TC Electronic A/S (Denmark). Professor Corey has been a member of the Audio Engineering Society since 1995, and is also a member of the Acoustical Society of America, the International Computer Music Association, College Music Society, and the Society for Music Perception and Cognition.
Stephen Rush is Professor of Music at the University of Michigan, where he founded the Digital Music Ensemble, which he has directed for 25 years. He has had over 200 premieres in five continents and released over 30 CDs, as well as a book on Jazz theology, Better Get It In Your Soul. His new book is Free Jazz, Harmolodics, and Ornette Coleman. Rush has premiered and recorded his classical and jazz compositions worldwide and performed with Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Grimes, Steve Swell, Eugene Chadbourne, Pauline Oliveros, his band “Yuganaut”, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, and the late Peter Kowald. His music has been performed by Leonard Slatkin, Neeme Jaarvi (Detroit Symphony Orchestra) and recorded by members of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.
All writers welcome to share and discuss their poetry and short fiction. Sign up for new participants begins at 6:45 p.m.
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.
Laura Kasischke was raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, 2012, for Space, in Chains. She has published nine novels, one short story collection, and eight books of poetry, most recently The Infinitesimals. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several Pushcart Prizes and numerous poetry awards and her writing has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Harper’s and The New Republic. She has a son and step-daughter and lives with her family and husband in Chelsea, Michigan. She is Allan Seager Colleagiate Professor of English Language & Literature at the University of Michigan.
Storytellers Guild members present a program of old tales and personal stories for grownups.
Free; donations accepted.annarborstorytelling.org, facebook.com/annarborstorytellers.
Literati is pleased to welcome Geneviève Zubrzycki in support of her latest work, Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion, and Secularism in Quebec.
The province of Quebec used to be called the priest-ridden province by its Protestant neighbors in Canada. During the 1960s, Quebec became radically secular, directly leading to its evolution as a welfare state with lay social services. What happened to cause this abrupt change? Genevieve Zubrzycki gives us an elegant and penetrating history, showing that a key incident sets up the transformation. Saint John the Baptist is the patron saint of French Canadians, and, until 1969, was subject of annual celebrations with a parade in Montreal. That year, the statue of St. John was toppled by protestors, breaking off the head from the body. Here, then is the proximate cause: the beheading of a saint, a symbolic death to be sure, which caused the parades to disappear and other modes of national celebration to take their place. The beheading of the saint was part and parcel of the so-called Quiet Revolution, a period of far-reaching social, economic, political, and cultural transformations. Quebec society and the identity of its French-speaking members drastically reinvented themselves with the rejection of Catholicism. Zubrzycki is already acknowledged as a leading authority on nationalism and religion; this book will significantly enlarge her stature by showing the extent to which a core feature of the Quiet Revolution was an aesthetic revolt. A new generation rejected the symbols of French Canada, redefining national identity in the process (and as a process) and providing momentum for institutional reforms. We learn that symbols have causal force, generating chains of significations which can transform a Catholic-dominated conservative society into a leftist, forward-looking, secular society.
Geneviève Zubrzycki is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia at the University of Michigan. Born and raised in Quebec City, she was educated at McGill University and the Université de Montréal before obtaining her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Her work examines politics and religion, nationalism, as well as national mythology and the politics of commemorations. Her publications include the award-winning The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland (University of Chicago Press, 2006); Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion and Secularism in Quebec (University of Chicago Press, 2016); and National Matters: Nationalism, Culture and Materiality (forthcoming, Stanford University Press.). She is now completing a third monograph on the current revival of Jewish communities in Poland and non-Jewish Poles’ interest in all things Jewish. She has published articles on the topic in Comparative Studies in History and Society and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Her scholarship was awarded prizes from the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, the Polish Studies Association, and from the American Sociological Association’s sections on Sociology of Culture, Political Sociology, Sociology of Religion, and Collective Behavior and Social Movements.
BRYCE HAYES POPE is a writer from New York. This past summer, she was a Donor Relations intern at PEN America and a volunteer at MoMA. She once showed Donna Tartt where the bathroom was. She enjoys reading (duh), yoga, Seinfeld, and not cooking.
SIERRA BROWN hails from Florida. She walks quickly and drinks too much coffee. When not writing poetry, Sierra plays with Madam the cat and hopes for a world without capitalism. You will find Sierra’s poems in Blue Mesa Review and Salamander.
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.
