Talk by U-M English professor Linda Gregerson, an award-winning poet. The Russel Award is the U-M’s highest honor, awarded annually to a faculty member who is especially distinguished in his or her field. Reception follows.
4:30-5:30 p.m., Rackham Amphitheater. Free. 615-0520.
Literati is pleased to be the bookseller for the second annual Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. Lecture in Native American Studies, featuring author Joy Harjo.
Joy Harjo is an internationally known poet, writer, and performer of the Mvskoke Creek nation. Her work has won many awards including the 2015 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, among many others. Harjo has written eight books of poetry, including How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems and She Had Some Horses. Her recent collection, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (W.W. Norton, 2015), was shortlisted for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize and added to ALA’s 2016 Notable Books List. Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave (W.W. Norton, 2012) won several awards including the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award. Joy Harjo is also a renowned musician. She plays her saxophone internationally, both solo and with her bands Arrow Dynamics and Poetic Justice, and has set her poetry to music in melodic spoken-word form. She has five CDs of music and poetry including the award-winning album, Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears. Her album, Winding Through the Milky Way won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year in 2009. Paul Winter, Grammy award winning saxophonist, has hailed Harjo as “a poet of music just as she is a poet of words.”
This event is free and open to all. A catered reception and booksigning will follow the event.
“Slugg: A Boy’s Life in the Age of Mass Incarceration” is a blueprint for survival and a demonstration of the power of love, sacrifice, and service. The son of a Kingpin and the prince of a close-knit crime family, Tony Lewis Jr.’s life took a dramatic turn after his father’s arrest in 1989. Washington D.C. stood as the murder capital of the country and Lewis was cast into the heart of the struggle, from a life of stability and riches to one of chaos and poverty. How does one make it in America, battling the breakdown of families, the plague of premature death and the hopelessness of being reviled, isolated, and forgotten? Tony Lewis’ astonishing journey answers these questions and offers, for the first time, a close look at the familial residue of America’s historic program of mass incarceration.
Conversation between Harvard social sciences professor Matthew Desmond, author of the bestseller Evicted: Poverty & Profit in an American City, and veteran journalist and nonfiction writer Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here, an award-winning 1991 best-seller about 2 young boys growing up in Chicago’s public housing. Q&A. Reception follows.
4-6 p.m., Rackham Amphitheatre. Free. 936-3518.
Literati is pleased to be the bookseller for Diana Butler Bass’s visit to Ann Arbor. Diana is the Lenten speaker at First United Methodist Church in downtown Ann Arbor, and will speak on the topic of “Relocating Faith: Finding God in the Horizons of Nature and Neighbor.” This event is free and open to all. For more information, and to RSVP, please click here.
Diana Butler Bass is an author, speaker, and independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture. She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University. After a dozen years teaching undergraduates, she became a full-time writer, independent researcher, educator, and consultant. Her work has been cited in the national media, including TIME Magazine, USA TODAY, and the Washington Post, and she has appeared on CNN, FOX, PBS, and NPR. Diana is the author of nine books. Her most recent book is Grounded: Finding God in the World — A Spiritual Revolution. She comments on religion, politics, and culture in a variety of media.
U-M Ford School of Public Policy professor Shobita Parthasarathy discusses her new book. The culminating event of a day-long public symposium on “Patents, Social Justice, and Public Responsibility” (for information, see fordschool.umich.edu/events/2017/patents-social-justice-and-public-responsibility.)
4-5:30 p.m. Palmer Commons Forum Room, 100 Washtenaw. Free. 615-3893
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.
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.
