Nicholas Delbanco is the author of thirty books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels The Years, The Count of Concord, and Spring and Fall and his nonfiction works The Art of Youth: Crane, Carrington, Gershwin, and the Nature of First Acts, The Countess of Stanlein Restored, and The Lost Suitcase: Reflections on the Literary Life. Delbanco also taught at the University of Michigan where he was former director of the MFA program and Hopwood Awards Program. He retired in 2015.
Book:
A miscellany of sorts, preeminent author and critic Nicholas Delbanco’s Curiouser and Curiouser attests to a lifelong interest in music and the visual arts as well as both “mere” and “sheer” literature. With essays ranging from the restoration of his father-in-law’s famed Stradivarius cello—known throughout the world as “The Countess of Stanlein”—to a reimagining of H. A. and Margaret Rey’s lives and the creation of their most beloved character, Curious George, Delbanco examines what it means to live and love with the arts.
Whether exploring the history of personal viewing in the business of museum-going, musing on the process of rewriting one’s earliest published work, or looking back on the twists and turns of a life that spans the greater part of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, Delbanco’s Curiouser and Curiouser invites adventurous readers to follow him down the rabbit hole as he reflects on life as a student, an observer, a writer, a lover, a father, a teacher, and most importantly, a participant in the everyday experiences of human life.
Literati is pleased to partner with the University of Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing and WCBN Radio for the latest installment of Writer to Writer, a series which puts a UM professor and member of the Sweetland faculty in conversation about writing.
This month Writer to Writer welcomes Dr. Howard Markel. Acclaimed medical historian, Dr. Howard Markel is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. He is a professor of pediatrics, psychiatry, public health management and policy, history, and English literature and language. His work reaches a wide range of audiences and has had a broad impact on national and international health policy and on the public’s understanding of medicine.
Dr. Markel serves as editor-in-chief of the health policy journal The Milbank Quarterly and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, PBS NewsHour.org, and national radio and television shows. From 2006 to 2015, he served as the principal historical consultant on pandemic preparedness for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His historical epidemiological work has influenced strategies employed by the WHO, the CDC, and the Mexican Ministry of Health.
Dr. Markel is the author, co-author, or co-editor of ten books, including the award-winning Quarantine! and the national bestseller An Anatomy of Addiction. He has written over 450 articles and book chapters for scholarly and popular publications. He was a regular contributor on NPR’s Science Friday and has appeared in several acclaimed film documentaries, including, most recently, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies on PBS.
Dr. Markel has delivered lectures across the United States and in Europe and has spoken at U.S. government agencies, departments and the White House. His work has been recognized with numerous grants, honors and awards. In 2008 he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine. In 2015 was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship.
A native of Detroit, he earned his bachelor’s (1982) and medical degrees (1986) at the University of Michigan. He completed his pediatrics residency and fellowship and Ph.D. in the history of medicine, science and technology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School. In Fall, 2018, Pantheon/Random House will publish his new book, Corn Flakes, about Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, who invented the concept of “wellness,” and his brother, cereal magnate Will Kellogg.
Nov. 7 & 21. Monthly 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. Nov. themes: “Promises” (Nov. 7) & “Revelations” (Nov. 21). The 3 teams of 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.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. $8. 764-5118.
$10 Suggested Donation
ÆPEX Contemporary Performance is excited to open its third season by bringing Hungarian-American violinist Hajnal Pivnick to Ann Arbor’s beloved Literati Bookstore.
Based in New York City, Pivnick will make her Ann Arbor debut with a solo program featuring internationally recognized composers Georg Friedrich Haas, Peter Eövös, Chrysanthe Tan, Kaija Saariaho, and Anahita Abbasi alongside poetry readings by local award-winning poet Adina Schoem (Midwestern Gothic, Palooka Press) and graduate students at the University of Michigan.
Pivnick’s performance will also feature an improvisation, which will accompany one of Schoem’s readings. This offering will expose concertgoers to the intimacy of musical creation, as Pivnick’s extemporaneous composition will be inspired by Schoem’s poem and tailored to the concert’s unique atmosphere.
You do not want to miss this special interdisciplinary presentation that brings local and national artists together in one of Ann Arbor’s most iconic cultural spaces!
ÆPEX Contemporary Performance is a concert presenting organization dedicated to presenting the music of underrepresented and rarely performed twentieth and twenty-first century composers to audiences across Michigan. Since our debut in December 2015, ÆPEX has produced fourteen concerts and community music events at venues in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Detroit, and Kalamazoo. Learn more about our past and future programs and make a donation to support ÆPEX at aepexcontemporary.org. ÆPEX Contemporary Performance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Postponed from September. This civil rights icon and Georgia congressman is joined by writer Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell to discuss March, the graphic novel trilogy Lewis wrote with their help. It chronicles Lewis’s role in the civil rights movement, and the final book recently won the National Book Award.
7 p.m., Hill Auditorium. Free. 668-8463.
Harry Dolan is the national bestselling author of Bad Things Happen, Very Bad Men, and The Last Dead Girl. He graduated from Colgate University, where he majored in philosophy and studied fiction-writing with the novelist Frederick Busch. A native of Rome, New York, he now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Book:
“A new master mystery writer emerges.”–Forbes Magazine One cryptic clue leads a desperate man into a labyrinthine puzzle of murder in the electrifying new novel from national bestselling author Harry Dolan. There’s a killer, and he wears a crooked hat. Private investigator Jack Pellum has spent two years searching for the man who he believes murdered his wife–a man he last saw wearing a peacoat and a fedora. Months of posting fliers and combing through crime records yield no leads. Then a local writer commits suicide, and he leaves a bewildering message that may be the first breadcrumb in a winding trail of unsolved murders . . . Michael Underhill is a philosophical man preoccupied by what-ifs and could-have-beens, but his life is finally coming together. He has a sweet and beautiful girlfriend, and together they’re building their future home. Nothing will go wrong, not if Underhill has anything to say about it. The problem is, Underhill has a dark and secret past, and it’s coming back to haunt him. These two men are inexorably drawn together in a mystery where there is far more than meets the eye, and nothing can be taken for granted. Filled with devious reversals and razor-sharp tension, The Man in the Crooked Hat is a masterwork from “one of America’s best new crime writers” (Lansing State Journal).
Widely published Cleveland performance poet Siaara Freeman, who rose to national prominence in 2014 at the Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam in Detroit with a searing performance of her autobiographical poem “The Drug Dealer’s Daughter,” reads from her debut collection Good Morning, Hood Warning. Many of her poems are in the voice of a persona called “Urban Girl.” The program begins with open mike readings.
7-8:30 p.m., Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea, 123 W. Washington. Free. 994-6663.
Literati is thrilled to partner with Current Magazine for an evening of Poetry and Fiction!
Come celebrate the submissions and winners of Current Magazine’s Poetry and Fiction contest.
Meet Current’s editor and contributors, and hear readings from the winners. Special guests Molly Raynor and Anthony Zick will be reading their work as well. If time permits there will be an open mic at the end.
Drew Philp’s work has been published both nationally and internationally and has appeared in publications, including BuzzFeed, The Detroit Free Press, Metrotimes, Corp! Magazine, the Bakersfield Californian, and the Michigan Daily. He lives in Detroit with his dog, Gratiot. A $500 House in Detroit is his first book.
Book:
Drew Philp, an idealistic college student from a working-class Michigan family, decides to live where he can make a difference. He sets his sights on Detroit, the failed metropolis of abandoned buildings, widespread poverty, and rampant crime. Arriving with no job, no friends, and no money, Philp buys a ramshackle house for five hundred dollars in the east side neighborhood known as Poletown. The roomy Queen Anne he now owns is little more than a clapboard shell on a crumbling brick foundation, missing windows, heat, water, electricity, and a functional roof. A $500 House in Detroit is Philp’s raw and earnest account of rebuilding everything but the frame of his house, nail by nail and room by room. “Philp is a great storyteller… and his] engrossing” (Booklist) tale is also of a young man finding his footing in the city, the country, and his own generation. We witness his concept of Detroit shift, expand, and evolve as his plan to save the city gives way to a life forged from political meaning, personal connection, and collective purpose. As he assimilates into the community of Detroiters around him, Philp guides readers through the city’s vibrant history and engages in urgent conversations about gentrification, racial tensions, and class warfare. Part social history, part brash generational statement, part comeback story, A $500 House in Detroit “shines in its depiction of] the ‘radical neighborliness’ of ordinary people in desperate circumstances” (Publishers Weekly). This is an unforgettable, intimate account of the tentative revival of an American city and a glimpse at a new way forward for generations to come.
Nov. 29: Reading by Zilka Joseph, a local poet whose work is notable for its vividly figured explorations of the natural world. Her latest book, Sharp Blue Search of Flame, is a collection of dark, brooding poems that reflect her Jewish Indian roots and her personal experiences living in Eastern and Western cultures. Followed by a poetry and short fiction open mike.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
