These 2 award-winning mystery writers discuss their new books. Black’s Murder in St. Germain is the latest in her series of mysteries featuring the Paris-based PI Aimee Leduc, and Hellman’s thriller War, Spies, and Bobbysox is a thriller about a farm girl locked in a dangerous love triangle with 2 German prisoners in an Illinois prison camp during WWII. Signing.
7 p.m., Aunt Agatha’s, 213 S. Fourth Ave. Free. 769-1114
Literati is pleased to celebrate Sara Schaff’s debut story collection, Say Something Nice About Me.
In the twelve stories in this engrossing collection, Sara Schaff introduces us to characters at turning points in their lives; in doing so, she charts the way we take risks—or create illusions—in the face of the unknown. A newly blended family’s vacation is upended by one daughter’s mythmaking and another’s eagerness to believe her. A young couple on the verge of breaking up take one last trip together, only to have their reconciliation disrupted by uninvited guests. A woman faces accusations of theft by the very people who think they have saved her from a troubled past. In beautiful prose that is sometimes dark, sometimes humorous, Schaff’s stories grapple with class, sexuality, and relationships in ways that feel revelatory and yet deeply true. Awkward, flawed, and hopeful, these characters’ stories hum with the regrets and desires that drive us—sometimes closer to our goals, sometimes heartbreakingly further away.
“The stories in Sara Schaff’s collection intertwine in complex and fascinating patterns. They are all explorations of the meaning of human connection—what is a mother, a father, a child, a wife, a sister, a friend, a lover? How does it feel to wear the roles we choose to take on? The roles that are forced upon us? Say Something Nice About Me is a thoughtful and provoking book, the beginning to a great career!”—Dan Chaon
Sara Schaff‘s writing has appeared in FiveChapters, Hobart, Southern Indiana Review, Carve Magazine, The Rumpus and elsewhere. She graduated from Brown University, received her MFA from the University of Michigan, and has taught at Oberlin College, the University of Michigan, and in China, Colombia, and Northern Ireland, where she also studied storytelling.
Nancy Chen Long is a 2017 NEA Creative Writing fellow, is author of Light into Bodies (University of Tampa Press, 2017), winner of the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. You’ll find her newer work inNinth Letter, Crab Orchard Review, Zone 3, Briar Cliff Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering Technology and an MBA, worked as an electrical engineer, software consultant, and project manager, and more recently earned an MFA. She works in Research Technologies at Indiana University.
Christine Rhein is the author of Wild Flight, a winner of the Walt McDonald First Book Prize in Poetry (Texas Tech University Press). Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals, includingThe Gettysburg Review and The Southern Review, and have won awards from Michigan Quarterly Review and Green Mountains Review. Her work has also been selected for Poetry Daily, The Writer’s Almanac,Best New Poets 2007 and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017. A former automotive engineer, Christine lives in Brighton, Michigan.
Books:
Light into Bodies
Taken as a whole, Light into Bodies grapples with issues of identity, the fluid and evolving nature of identity, and how identity can be contextual. It explores individual identity and how that identity changes through time and influence. The book is divided into three parts. The first section inhabits the landscape of childhood, that of a biracial, multiethnic child as she grapples with understanding the world and her place in it based on what she sees and what she’s been taught. The second section moves from childhood and family-of-origin into the world of the adult: relationships, marriage, divorce, and expectations of identity and behavior based on relationship roles. The third section opens up to the larger world and identity in that world, societal expectations and assumptions with respect to identity, the concept of home, memory and time, origins and creation. Recurring juxtapositions of sometimes seemingly disparate things, such as science and religion, myth and math, East and West, coupled with a mix of various poetic forms and styles, strive to work against the declaration of a monolithic identity. The book ends with a nod to the idea that we are multi-dimensional with multiple identities, to the idea that identity is a personal journey and that we have a right and an obligation to identify our own selves.
Wild Flight
Soaring across extensive terrain, from the working world of Detroit to American suburbia and pop culture, from the European landscape of World War II to the current war in Iraq, Christine Rhein opens her personal world to the world at large. In poems that explore the historical, social, and scientific as well as the poignant and humorous, Rhein relishes life’s juxtapositions.
Literati is pleased to be the bookseller for the Adrian District Library’s event with Eric Litwin, author of the original Pete the Cat series. Eric will be in concert, with a book signing to follow!
Get ready to sing, dance, and laugh. Eric’s dynamic performances are fully interactive. He sings, plays the guitar and brings books to life. Mr. Eric will share his Pete the Cat books as well as The Nuts and Groovy Joe. It is big, musical, literary FUN!
Contact the Adrian District Library at 517-265-2265 or cchesher@adrianmi.gov for more information.
Literati is pleased to welcome Anna Lena Phillips Bell and Monica Rico in support of their recent collections.
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In her debut collection, Anna Lena Phillips Bell explores the foothills of the Eastern U.S., and the old-time Appalachian tunes and Piedmont blues she was raised to love. With formal dexterity—in ballads and sonnets, Sapphics and amphibrachs—the poems in Ornament traverse the permeable boundary between the body and the natural world.
“Ornament is a kind of tribute album. The poet, who is also a banjo player, pays tribute in many poems to the old-time music of the Carolinas, and like the music, her poems are marked by bursts of lyric beauty, deft storytelling, and haunting set pieces.”—Geoffrey Brock, author of Voices Bright Flags and judge
“Bell’s formal virtuosity and luscious wordplay have the lightest of touches. The poems feel as if a winged being brushed by, leaving her readers subtly changed. Whether she’s writing about slugs mating or wasps returning to a nest destroyed, she is in sync with the wild world, yet burnished by love.”—Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst
“Brilliantly melding influences from Blues and Appalachian music to Dickinson and Frost, the adept, bold poems of Ornament offer praise and homage to the beleaguered, beautiful environments of the American southeast and of a poet’s soul. This is the kind of carefully built and deeply understood poetry that engages experience in a transformation so thorough it becomes kinetic, changing our felt sense of how the world moves.”—Annie Finch, 1990 winner of the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award
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The Twisted Mouth of the Tulip is Monica Rico’s debut chapbook. Praise for the book:
“How fine it is to have Monica Rico’s poems in the world. They are fierce, smart, fleshy and transcendent, animal and incarnate. Somewhere in Ms. Rico’s cloud of witnesses, Jim Harrison, hungry and hirsute, sits to the comida –a feast of gamy feeds, green shoots, buckets of wine and usquebaugh — tamales and cajeta, dulce de leche fresh from the word horde.”—Tom Lynch
“Monica Rico celebrates food and birds and the work her people do in Saginaw, Michigan. She celebrates the lives of Mexican Americans and then celebrates the influence of Jim Harrison. But there is also a beautiful and redemptive anger in her poems. “I am a simple little bird,” she writes, “brown and white like a sparrow/common enough that no one/will notice the nails/I’ve stomped into my shoes.” Watch out, reader! Monica Rico has walked into town! Her poems will tell you necessary things you didn’t know you needed.” – Keith Taylor
This UK mystery writer discusses her popular series of novels, including the recent The Chalk Pit, featuring forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway Signing.
7-8:30 p.m., AADL multipurpose room, 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-4555, 769-1114
Michael P. Spradlin is a New York Times bestselling author. His books include Into the Killing Seas, the Youngest Templar trilogy, the Wrangler Award Winner, and several other novels and picture books. He holds a black belt in television remote control and is fluent in British, Canadian, Australian, and several other English-based languages. He lives in Lapeer, Michigan. Visit him online at michaelspradlin.com.
Book:
Survive the war. Outlast the enemy. Stay alive.
That’s what Henry Forrest has to do. When he lies about his age to join the Marines, Henry never imagines he’ll face anything worse than his own father’s cruelty. But his unit is shipped off to the Philippines, where the heat is unbearable, the conditions are brutal, and Henry’s dreams of careless adventuring are completely dashed.
Then the Japanese invade the islands, and US forces there surrender. As a prisoner of war, Henry faces one horror after another. Yet among his fellow captives, he finds kindness, respect, even brotherhood. A glimmer of light in the darkness. And he’ll need to hold tight to the hope they offer if he wants to win the fight for his country, his freedom . . . and his life.
Michael P. Spradlin’s latest novel tenderly explores the harsh realities of the Bataan Death March and captivity on the Pacific front during World War II.
BINC – Book Industry Charitable Foundation
The Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) grew out of the wish of bookstore employees to establish a fund to help their colleagues experiencing an unexpected financial crisis. As a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit, we are dedicated to assisting bookstore employees across the country in their time of greatest need. The Foundation typically helps brick and mortar bookstore employees who have a personal financial need arising from severe hardship and/or emergency circumstances.
Since our inception in 1996, the Foundation has given over $5 million in tax-free financial assistance grants and higher education scholarships. Whether you’re a bookseller, a friend of the book industry or someone looking to make a difference, we hope you will take the opportunity to learn more about the Book Industry Charitable Foundation.
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.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), $10. 764-5118.
Reading by Siena Heights University English professor Saleem Peeradina, a Chelsea-based poet who recently published Final Cut and Heart’s Beast: New and Selected Poems.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
Literati is pleased to welcome Ryan White in support of his new book, Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way.
In Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way, acclaimed music critic Ryan White has crafted the first definitive account of Buffett’s rise from singing songs for beer to his emergence as a tropical icon and CEO behind the Margaritaville industrial complex, a vast network of merchandise, chain restaurants, resorts, and lifestyle products all inspired by his sunny but disillusioned hit “Margaritaville.”
Filled with interviews from friends, musicians, Coral Reefer Band members past and present, and business partners who were there, this book is a top-down joyride with plenty of side trips and meanderings from Mobile and Pascagoula to New Orleans, Key West, down into the islands aboard the Euphoria and the Euphoria II, and into the studios and onto the stages where the foundation of Buffett’s reputation was laid.
Buffett wasn’t always the pied piper of beaches, bars, and laid-back living. Born on the Gulf Coast, the son of a son of a sailing ship captain, Buffett scuffed around New Orleans in the late sixties, flunked out of Nashville (and a marriage) in 1971, and found refuge among the artists, dopers, shrimpers, and genuine characters who’d collected at the end of the road in Key West. And it was there, in those waning outlaw days at the last American exit, where Buffett, like Hemingway before him, found his voice and eventually brought to life the song that would launch Parrot Head nation.
And just where is Margaritaville? It’s wherever it’s five o’clock; it’s wherever there’s a breeze and salt in the air; and it’s wherever Buffett sets his bare feet, smiles, and sings his songs.
Ryan White, the author of Springsteen: Album by Album and Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way, has twice been named one of the top feature writers in the country by the Society for Features Journalism. He spent sixteen years at The Oregonian covering sports, music, and culture. He’s written for The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, The Sacramento Bee, The Dallas Morning News, and Portland Monthly. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
