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.
Readings by featured poets, preceded by a poetry open mike.
Reading by TBA
7-9 p.m. (sign-up begins at 6:30 p.m.), Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry.
Literati is pleased to welcome Dustin M. Hoffman in support of his debut short-story collection, One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist. Dustin will be joined for this reading by Chris McCormick, author of Literati Cultura selection Desert Boys.
Rare voices in fiction, the lives of the working class consume this collection. Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist brings to life the narratives of midwestern blue-collar workers. In these sixteen stories, author Dustin M. Hoffman invites readers to peek behind the curtain of the invisible-but-ever-present “working stiff” as he reveals their lives in full complexity, offering their gruff voices—so often ignored—without censorship.
The characters at the heart of these stories work with their hands. They strive to escape invisibility. They hunt the ghost of recognition. They are painters, drywall finishers, carpenters, roofers, oil refinery inspectors, and hardscapers, all aching to survive the workday. They are air force firemen, snake salesmen, can pickers, ice-cream truck drivers, and Jamaican tour guides, seething forth from behind the scenes. They are the underemployed laborers, the homeless, the retired, the fired, the children born to break their backs. One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist initiates readers into the secret nightmares and surprising beauty and complexity of a sweat-stained, blue-collar world.
Dustin M. Hoffman is the author of the story collection One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist (University of Nebraska Press), winner of the 2015 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. He spent ten years painting houses in Michigan before getting his MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University and his PhD in creative writing from Western Michigan University. His stories have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Phoebe, Puerto del Sol, Fourteen Hills, Witness, Quarterly West, The Journal, Gargoyle, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Indiana Review, and a bunch of other neat places. He lives in South Carolina and teaches creative writing and literature at Winthrop University.
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Desert Boys is the winner of the 2017 Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association. This series of powerful, intertwining stories illuminates Daley Kushner’s world – the family, friends and community that have both formed and constrained him, and his new life in San Francisco. Back home, the desert preys on those who cannot conform: an alfalfa farmer on the outskirts of town; two young girls whose curiosity leads to danger; a black politician who once served as his school’s confederate mascot; Daley’s mother, an immigrant from Armenia; and Daley himself, introspective and queer. Meanwhile, in another desert on the other side of the world, war threatens to fracture Daley’s most meaningful – and most fraught – connection to home, his friendship with Robert Karinger.
A luminous debut, Desert Boys by Chris McCormick traces the development of towns into cities, of boys into men, and the haunting effects produced when the two transformations overlap. Both a bildungsroman and a portrait of a changing place, the book mines the terrain between the desire to escape and the hunger to belong.
Chris McCormick was raised in the Antelope Valley. He earned his B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.F.A. at the University of Michigan, where he was the recipient of two Hopwood Awards. His fiction and essays have appeared in the Atlantic, Tin House, Ploughshares, Lit Hub, and The Offing. He lives in Ann Arbor.
Richard Retyi and Brian Peters are Ann Arbor Stories, a podcast featuring stories of Ann Arbor’s distant and not so distant past, produced in partnership with the Ann Arbor District Library. Join them at Literati Bookstore for two all new live stories from Ann Arbor’s past, including photos, spoken word and music, as well as a Q&A session with the creators.
Learn more about the podcast and share your own memories of Ann Arbor as well. Check out Ann Arbor stories at aadl.com/annarborstories or visit them on Twitter and Instagram at @annarborstories.
On July 10, local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal are joined by marketing specialist Leslie McGraw to discuss the ins and outs of self-publishing. For adult and teen (grade 6 & up) fiction and nonfiction writers. Also, Kourvo and Neal host an open house for writers to connect with one another and/or work on their projects at 7 p.m. on July 24.
7-8:45 p.m., AADL Traverwood Branch, 3333 Traver at Huron Pkwy. Free. 327-4555.
Literati is thrilled to launch Live from Cairo, the debut novel by Ian Bassingthwaighte. Ian will be joined in conversation by Lillian Li, author of the novel The Duck House, forthcoming from Henry Holt in 2018.
From a hugely talented, award-winning young author, a brilliant, lively debut novel about an impulsive American attorney, a methodical Egyptian translator, and a disillusioned Iraqi-American resettlement officer trying to protect a refugee who finds herself trapped in Cairo during the turbulent aftermath of the January 25 revolution. Cairo, 2011. President Mubarak has just been ousted from power. The oldest city in the world is reeling from political revolution, its consequent hopes and fears, its violence, triumphs, and defeats. But for the people actually living there, daily life has not slowed down but become wilder, more dangerous, and, occasionally, freeing.
Live from Cairo is the exuberant, dazzling story of these people: Dalia, a strong-willed Iraqi refugee who finds herself trapped in Egypt after her petition to resettle in America with her husband is denied. Charlie, her foolhardy attorney, whose frustration with the legal bureaucracy and complicated feelings for Dalia have led him to forge a not entirely legal plan to get her out. Aos, Charlie’s fastidious translator and only friend, who spends his days trying to help people through the system and his nights in Tahrir Square protesting against it. And Hana, a young and disenchanted Iraqi-American resettlement officer; she is the worker assigned to Dalia’s case, deciding whether to treat her plight as merely one more piece of paperwork, or as a full-blooded human crisis. As these individuals come together, a plot is formed to help Dalia. But soon laws are broken, friendships and marriages are tested, and lives are risked—all in an effort to protect one person from the dangerous sweep of an unjust world.
A vibrant portrait of a city in all its teeming chaos and glory, Live from Cairo is an exhilarating, electrifying debut, and a stunning testament to the unconquerable desire of people to rise above tragedy to seek love, friendship, humor, and joy.
Ian Bassingthwaighte was a Fulbright Grantee in Egypt in 2009, where he worked in a legal aid office that served refugees from Iraq, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa. He has been honored with Hopwood Awards for both novel writing and short fiction. He was also named as a finalist for the Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative. His work has appeared in Esquire, National Geographic, the Chicago Tribune, The Sun, Tin House, The Rumpus, and many other publications. Live from Cairo is his first novel.
