Literati is pleased to be the bookseller for this installment of the Erb Institute Purpose to Impact Speaker Series, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert.
Elizabeth Kolbert traveled from Alaska to Greenland, and visited top scientists, to get to the heart of the debate over global warming. Growing out of a groundbreaking three-part series in The New Yorker (which won the 2005 National Magazine Award in the category Public Interest), Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change brings the environment into the consciousness of the American people and asks what, if anything, can be done, and how we can save our planet. She explains the science and the studies, draws frightening parallels to lost ancient civilizations, unpacks the politics, and presents the personal tales of those who are being affected most—the people who make their homes near the poles and, in an eerie foreshadowing, are watching their worlds disappear. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change was chosen as one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year (2006) by The New York Times Book Review. Her most recent book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, a book about mass extinctions that weaves intellectual and natural history with reporting in the field, was a New York Times 2014 Top Ten Best Book of the Year and is number one on the Guardian‘s list of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of all time. The Sixth Extinction also won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in the General Nonfiction category, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle awards for the best books of 2014.
Lecture by this longtime U-M English professor, a Guggenheim fellow and prolific author. His talk highlights the annual ceremony recognizing the winners of the prestigious U-M contest for graduate and undergraduate poetry, fiction, and nonfiction writing.
RC students are usually prominent among the awardees!
3:30 p.m., Rackham Amphitheatre. Free. 764-6296.
Nicola’s Books proudly presents author Paula Hawkins In Conversation with Author Nick Petrie on Wednesday, May 17 at 7:30 PM. Included in the evening Ms. Hawkins will read excerpts from her new novel, Into the Water (which is being released May 2), take part in an audience Q&A, and sign copies of the book in her only Michigan stop on the book tour.
With over 8.5 million copies sold in the United States since its publication two years ago, and 20 million sold worldwide, Paula Hawkins’ debut The Girl on the Trainhas broken nearly every publishing record in the books. It has spent over 100 weeks and counting on the New York Times Bestseller list, including 40 weeks at #1, making it the top selling book in America for two straight years in a row, and was made into a major motion picture starring Emily Blunt. The Girl on the Train introduced Paula Hawkins as a bold, unforgettable voice in psychological literary suspense.
Now, with Into the Water, Hawkins proves that her work reaches far beyond definitions of category, delivering an urgent story that is as much about relationships and human instincts as it is about a crime. When a single mother and a teenage girl each turn up dead at the bottom of the river, just weeks apart, the ensuing investigation dredges up a complicated history, threatening to undo everyone in the close-knit community. Suspicions shift from character to character, escalating the tension until the very last page.
Nick Petrie received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington, won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, 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. Burning Bright is the follow-up to his debut The Drifter.
**If you purchased a ticket through Ticketmaster or Nicola’s Books for the original venue site (The Michigan Theater) please contact the store at 734-662-0600 for more information.
One of the country’s top regional antiquarian fairs, up to 40 dealers (including many new this year) from 12 states offering manuscripts, vintage photos and prints, antique maps, and a wide array of old, rare, curious, and fine books, including first editions, lots of collectible children’s books, fine leather bindings, modern poetry, Michigan history, travel & exploration, illustrated books, photography, antique maps, cookbooks, and more. Also, representatives of one of Michigan’s finest bookbinders exhibits its handiwork and answer questions about book preservation and restoration. Admission charge benefits the U-M Clements Library. Photo: Myra Klarman.
11 a.m.-5 p.m., Michigan Union Ballroom. $5 donation. annarborbookfair.com. 995-1891.
Celebrate spring with the fresh crop of books from the Wayne State University Press! A panel of local authors will be on hand to read from their new publications and sign copies, including Laura Thomas and Keith Taylor. Light refreshments will be served. Registration is recommended. Register online (http://gplib.evanced.info/signup/EventDetails?EventId=51672&backTo=Calendar&startDate=2017%2F05%2F01) or in person, beginning Wednesday, April 26.
Books will be available for purchase and signing.
Refreshments for this event are sponsored by the Grosse Pointe Library Foundation, as part of the ongoing Write On Pointe programming series.
At 6pm, we will hear from Ellen Stone & Jill Halpern at Cardamom Restaurant.
At 7pm, we will move across the courtyard to Bookbound Bookstore where David Pratt & Monica Rico will share their work.
Ann Arbor author David Pratt will be reading from his recent coming-of-age novel Wallaçonia. Previous works include Lambda Award winner Bob the Book, Looking After Joey and My Movie, a short story collection.
Monica Rico is a second generation Mexican American feminist and poet who will read from her upcoming chapbook Twisted Mouth of the Tulip. Sample her work at slowdownandeat.com.
This event is part of the Ann Arbor Book Festival which features a variety of book-related events from June 15 to June 17. Bookbound Bookstore will also have a booth at the Street Fair from 12pm – 5pm on June 17 (Washington Street between 4th Ave. and 5th Ave). Click here for more information about the festival.
5:00pm – Blackstone Bookstore & Cultural Center
214 W. Michigan Ave, Ypsilanti
Featuring: John Darryl Winston & Vanessa Marr
6:00pm – Ypsilanti District Library
229 W. Michigan Ave, Ypsilanti
Featuring: Whittaker Road Works anthology launch, plus kids’ activities
Literati is delighted to be the bookseller for the Chang Lecture on Art and Medicine at the University of Michigan’s Ford Auditorium, which will be delivered by Dr. David Watts.
The process of healing is a mystery that cannot be explained completely by a scientific approach. Analysis will miss the humanistic qualities that are required to address and serve the complexity of the human spirit. If Health Care Professionals are to achieve optimum healing we must attend to both the science and the humanity of health care. Poems and stories provide balance to the provider’s life and move us away from the Cold and Distant Physician into a deeper under-standing of human nature and an affection for the patient and his/her suffering.
David Watts, M.D., is a gastroenterologist and Clinical Professor at the UCSF School of Medicine, a physician writer who has published six books of poetry, four anthologies, and two books of short stories about the complexities of the Doctor-Patient Relationship. He has also written two novels, one a mystery and the other best-selling western. He is a classically trained musician, a TV and radio host, and an NPR commentator. He has taken particular interest in measures to warm the cold and distant physician and is a strong advocate for literature and humanities in the medical school curriculum.
The authors will discuss how their fiction transforms home into character. How do writers use assumptions about familiar places to find the unexpected and surprising? When is a hometown the whole trouble, and also the last, best hope for change? The authors will also talk about how the unique landscape of the upper Midwest inspires their fiction.
Kelly Fordon’s work has appeared in The Florida Review, The Kenyon Review (KRO), Rattle and various other journals. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks. The first one, On the Street Where We Live, won the 2012 Standing Rock Chapbook Award and the latest one, The Witness, won the 2016 Eric Hoffer Award for the Chapbook and was shortlisted for the Grand Prize. Her novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind, was chosen as a Michigan Notable Book, a 2016 Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, an Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist in the short story category. She works for The College for Creative Studies, Springfed Arts and The InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit.
Laura Hulthen Thomas is the author of the short fiction collection, States of Motion, published by Wayne State University Press. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including The Cimarron Review, Nimrod International Journal, Epiphany and Witness. She received her MFA in fiction writing from Warren Wilson College. She currently heads the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of Michigan’s Residential College, where she teaches fiction and creative nonfiction.
