ToastMasters at SweetWaters is an opportunity to practice your personal and/or professional speaking as well as Leadership in a fun friendly atmosphere.
The club is open to everyone. Attendees have the opportunity to speak, give and receive feedback about speaking, presentations and current events.
We typically have 2-4 prepared speeches followed by (Kind and constructive evaluations) to provide feedback and growth. Attendees will have an opportunity for impromptu speaking as well.
Sweetwaters Cafe, 123 W Washington. Free. chrisjriley@hotmail.com
All adults and teens in grade 6 & up invited to learn about this nonprofit (also known as NaNoWriMo) encouraging teens and adults to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of November. Refreshments.
4-5 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200.
Halloween-themed storytelling program by Ann Arbor Storytellers Guild members.
6-8 p.m., Serendipity Books, 113 Middle, Chelsea. Free. 475-7148.
Irina Khutsieva is RC Artist in Residence.
The theater world in Russia is lively as ever, with a range of styles and interests represented by innovative and original work. But that world is also under significant threat as the Russian state puts increasing pressure on theaters and especially directors. The substance of the great art of theater is communication, respect, reverence, and an unflagging belief in humanity. Theater thrives on humanity the way flowers feed on soil, sun, and water. It in turn produces the conditions for humanity to grow. Theater produces and nurtures community and brings people together. In her lecture, Irina Khutsieva will expound on the relationship between theater, state and society in today’s Russia.
Irina Khutsieva is a stage director and acting instructor in Moscow, Russia. Trained at “GITIS,” the Russian Academy of Theatrical Art, she has more than 30 years of experience in Russian theater. She now directs her own studio theater, the Chamber Theater, Moscow, founded in 2004. Khutsieva has staged more than 50 plays in Russia, Germany, and the U.S. She has worked at one of Russia’s most distinguished theater academies – the Shchepkin Higher Theatre Institute, associated with the State Academic Maly Theatre of Russia. She also has extensive experience teaching college drama majors. A specialist and practitioner of the Stanislavski Method, she incorporates the principles and traditions of Russian psychological theater and has also developed her own staging and teaching methods. In recent years, she has directed a major gala performance shown on Russian national TV and has run workshops for professional actors in regional towns throughout Russia.
This local poet, organizer of the long-running Ann Arbor Poetry reading series, reads from …And Pharaoh Hardened His Heart: Poems for the Trump Years, his new chapbook of poems chronicling fascism, cruelty, gaslighting, narcissism, and the psychological endurance it takes to stay sane and compassionate in contemporary America. Signing.
7 p.m., Bookbound, 1729 Plymouth. Free. 369-4345
Readings by 7 authors being published by this AADL imprint. Books include Tracy Gallup’s Paint the Night (picture book), Zac Gorman’s So Thirsty (all-ages comic), Linda Jeffries’ We Thought We Knew You (adult fiction), Brad and Kirstin Northrup’s Akeina the Crocodile (picture book), V.W. Shurtliff’s Setting the Record Straight (teen fantasy), and Tevah Platt, Willa Thiel, and Becky Grover’s Snail, I Love You (picture book).
1-3 p.m., AADL Downtown 1st fl. lobby. Free. 327-4200.
Reading by this local poet, a Neutral Zone advisor.
7 p.m. Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry.
Local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal are joined by a representative from Cherry Lake Press and San Diego-based children’s nonfiction writer Virginia Loh-Hagan to discuss how to plan, write, and publish a children’s book. From noon-2 p.m., Loh-Hagan discusses literacy strategies for struggling readers (preregistration required at registrations@aadl.org). 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 Oct. 15.
7-8:45 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200
U-M Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies Consciousness Next! Series presents Dr. Julia Mossbridge, whose recent book The Premonition Code: The Science of Precognition, How Sensing the Future Can Change Your Life (with Theresa Cheung) was published on October 16.
The presentation will feature examples of precognitive experiences—where an individual has knowledge about the future that s/he could not have obtained via “normal” channels—and will cover what makes a precognition something other than coincidence. Dr. Julia Mossbridge, who contends that receiving accurate information about future events is neither unscientific nor uncommon, will explain how the scientific evidence for precognition, combined with what we know about consciousness and the nature of time, makes precognition a reasonable phenomenon to investigate further through research and application.
Mossbridge is a fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a visiting scholar at Northwestern University in the Department of Psychology. Her book Transcendent Mind, published by the American Psychological Association in 2017, is one of the first academic books to examine paranormal experiences (nonlocal, physically transcendent dimensions of consciousness). Her research focus is precognition and its ramifications for creativity and healing, the time-consciousness relationship, and further capacities of consciousness that are coherent with an emergent, more integral conception of mind.
The U-M Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies (PCCS) is directed by music professor and consciousness theorist Ed Sarath. It brings together colleagues from a wide range of fields to explore creativity and its underpinnings in consciousness and ramifications thereof for emergent models of education, spirituality, sustainability, social justice, and peace.
The PCCS Consciousness Next! series examines a range of phenomena and ideas that unite cutting-edge scientific research and age-old spiritual wisdom.
Storytelling by Michigan veterans. Also, live entertainment by the Concordia University Choir & Band and others TBA.
7 p.m., Hill Auditorium. Free, but tickets required in advance at eventbrite.com (search for “Stories of Service”). (518) 481-0552.
