Performance by this award-winning local slam poet, community activist, and Neutral Zone literary arts director. Raynor is known for her emotional honesty, particularly in exploring how past trauma affects present action. The program begins with open mike readings.
7-8:30 p.m., Sweetwaters, 123 W. Washington. Free. 994-6663.
U-M English professor emeritus Richard Tillinghast reads from his latest book, Journeys into the Mind of the World, an essay collection that purports to explore “the mind of the world” by examining chosen locations-Ireland, England, India, the Middle East, Tennessee, and Hawaii-and their unique historical, cultural, artistic, religious, and ethnic dimensions. Also, widely published Detroit poet Kevin Gerard Rashid reads from his work, which is known for its blend of sharp observations, humor, and lyricism. Followed by a poetry and short fiction open mike.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757.
Toastmasters is an international group devoted to helping each other grow in our abilities to give speeches. The Sweetwaters Toastmasters Club meets twice monthly. We are a fun and friendly group! Toastmasters also helps you develop leadership skills if you wish to do that. Come as many times as you want for free, and decide later if you want to join. In the meantime, come make new friends and have fun!
Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea on Washington Street, 123 West Washington Street. Free. 323-286-3999. https://www.facebook.com/groups/TMSweet/
Every Wed. Members read and discuss poems around themes TBA. Followed by collaborative writing games and exercises. Attendees invited to read their poems. Snacks & socializing.
8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.
*All tickets become available at least four weeks before the show, at 3pm ET.
*Seating is not guaranteed and is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Please be sure to arrive at least 10 minutes before the show. Admission is not guaranteed for late arrivals. All sales final.
Literati is thrilled to welcome author Michael Zadoorian who will be sharing his latest novel, Beautiful Music.
About Beautiful Music:
Set in early 1970s Detroit, a divided city still reeling from its violent race riot of 1967, Beautiful Music is the story of one young man’s transformation through music. Danny Yzemski is a husky, pop radio-loving loner balancing a dysfunctional homelife with the sudden harsh realities of freshman year at a high school marked by racial turbulence.
But after tragedy strikes the family, Danny’s mother becomes increasingly erratic and angry about the seismic cultural shifts unfolding in her city and the world. As she tries to hold it together with the help of Librium, highballs, and breakfast cereal, Danny finds his own reason to carry on: rock and roll. In particular, the drum and guitar-heavy songs of local legends like the MC5 and Iggy Pop. In the vein of Nick Hornby and Tobias Wolff, yet with a style very much Zadoorian’s own, Beautiful Music is a touching story about the power of music and its ability to save one’s soul.
Michael Zadoorian is the author of the critically praised The Leisure Seeker–now a film starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland, released by Sony Pictures Classics this year. Zadoorian is a recipient of a Kresge Artist Fellowship in the Literary Arts, the Columbia University Anahid Literary Award, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and the Michigan Notable Book Award. His other books are Second Hand: A Novel,and the story collection The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit. His fiction has appeared in the Literary Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, American Short Fiction, Witness, Great Lakes Review, and the North American Review. He lives with his wife in the Detroit area.
Join us for a talk and signing with two acclaimed up-and-coming Michigan authors! Detroit author Michael Ferro is celebrating the release of his debut novel Title 13, named a “Most Anticipated Small Press Book of 2018” by literary blog Big Other. He’ll be joined by Ann Arbor writer R.J. Fox, author of the memoirs Love and Vodka and Tales from the Dork Side, speaking about his newest release, Awaiting Identification.
MICHAEL A. FERRO‘s fiction and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. He won the Jim Cash Creative Writing Award for Fiction, received an Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train for their New Writers Award, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Born and bred in Detroit, Michael has lived, worked, and written throughout the Midwest; he currently resides in rural Ann Arbor, Michigan. TITLE 13 is his first novel.
R.J. FOX is an English and video production teacher who uses his own dream of making movies to inspire his students to follow their dreams. He has previously worked in public relations and as a journalist. He is the author of Love & Vodka. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
All invited to listen to guild members swap stories or bring their own to tell.
2-4 p.m., AADL Downtown 3rd floor freespace rm. Free. annarborstorytelling.org, 997-5388.
Literati is excited to host author Scott Stern who will be discussing his latest book The Trials of Nina McCall Smith: Sex, Survelliance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison “promiscous” Women.
About The Trials of Nina McCall Smith:
The nearly forgotten story of the American Plan, one of the largest and longest-lasting mass quarantines in American history, told through the lens of one young woman’s story.
In 1918, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, Nina McCall was told to report to the local health officer to be examined for sexually transmitted infections. Confused and humiliated, Nina did as she was told, and the health officer performed a hasty (and invasive) examination and quickly diagnosed her with gonorrhea. Though Nina insisted she could not possibly have an STI, she was coerced into committing herself to the Bay City Detention Hospital, a facility where she would spend almost three miserable months subjected to hard labor, exploitation, and painful injections of mercury.
Nina McCall was one of many women unfairly imprisoned by the United States government throughout the twentieth century. The government locked up tens, probably hundreds, of thousands of women and girls–usually without due process–simply because officials suspected these women were prostitutes, carrying STIs, or just “promiscuous.”
This discriminatory program, dubbed the “American Plan,” lasted from the 1910s into the 1950s, implicating a number of luminaries, including Eleanor Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Earl Warren, and even Eliot Ness, while laying the foundation for the modern system of women’s prisons. In some places, vestiges of the Plan lingered into the 1960s and 1970s, and the laws that undergirded it remain on the books to this day.
Scott Stern tells the story of this almost forgotten program through the life of Nina McCall. Her story provides crucial insight into the lives of countless other women incarcerated under the American Plan. Stern demonstrates the pain and shame felt by these women and details the multitude of mortifications they endured, both during and after their internment. Yet thousands of incarcerated women rioted, fought back against their oppressors, or burned their detention facilities to the ground; they jumped out of windows or leapt from moving trains or scaled barbed-wire fences in order to escape. And, as Nina McCall did, they sued their captors. In an age of renewed activism surrounding harassment, health care, prisons, women’s rights, and the power of the state, this virtually lost chapter of our history is vital reading.
Scott W. Stern is a graduate of Yale University, with a BA and MA in American Studies, summa cum laude. His thesis, on the American Plan, won Yale’s Norman Holmes Pearson Prize. A native of Pittsburgh, Stern is continuing his studies at Yale Law School.
Every Wed. Members read and discuss poems around themes TBA. Followed by collaborative writing games and exercises. Attendees invited to read their poems. Snacks & socializing.
8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.
