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 Heather Ann Thompson, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
About Blood in the Water:
THE FIRST DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF THE INFAMOUS 1971 ATTICA PRISON UPRISING, THE STATE’S VIOLENT RESPONSE, AND THE VICTIMS’ DECADES-LONG QUEST FOR JUSTICE
On September 9, 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners took over the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York to protest years of mistreatment. Holding guards and civilian employees hostage, the prisoners negotiated with officials for improved conditions during the four long days and nights that followed.
On September 13, the state abruptly sent hundreds of heavily armed troopers and correction officers to retake the prison by force. Their gunfire killed thirty-nine men–hostages as well as prisoners–and severely wounded more than one hundred others. In the ensuing hours, weeks, and months, troopers and officers brutally retaliated against the prisoners. And, ultimately, New York State authorities prosecuted only the prisoners, never once bringing charges against the officials involved in the retaking and its aftermath and neglecting to provide support to the survivors and the families of the men who had been killed.
Drawing from more than a decade of extensive research, historian Heather Ann Thompson sheds new light on every aspect of the uprising and its legacy, giving voice to all those who took part in this forty-five-year fight for justice: prisoners, former hostages, families of the victims, lawyers and judges, and state officials and members of law enforcement. Blood in the Water is the searing and indelible account of one of the most important civil rights stories of the last century.
HEATHER ANN THOMPSON is an award-winning historian at the University of Michigan. Her most recent book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, won the Pulitzer Prize in History, the Bancroft Prize, the Ridenhour Book Prize, and the J. Willard Hurst Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other accolades. She is also the author of Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City and the editor of Speaking Out: Activism and Protest in the 1960s and 1970s. She served on a National Academy of Sciences blue-ribbon panel that studied the causes and consequences of mass incarceration in the United States and has given congressional staff briefings on the subject. She has written on the history of mass incarceration and its current impact for The New York Times, Time, The Atlantic, Salon, Newsweek, NBC, Dissent, New Labor Forum, and The Huffington Post, as well as for various top scholarly publications.
Literati is thrilled to partner with the Institute of Humanitites at the University of Michigan to have copies of Shachar Pinsker’s new book Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture available for purchase.
About Rich Brew:
A fascinating glimpse into the world of the coffeehouse and its role in shaping modern Jewish culture Unlike the synagogue, the house of study, the community center, or the Jewish deli, the café is rarely considered a Jewish space. Yet, coffeehouses profoundly influenced the creation of modern Jewish culture from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. With roots stemming from the Ottoman Empire, the coffeehouse and its drinks gained increasing popularity in Europe. The “otherness,” and the mix of the national and transnational characteristics of the coffeehouse perhaps explains why many of these cafés were owned by Jews, why Jews became their most devoted habitués, and how cafés acquired associations with Jewishness. Examining the convergence of cafés, their urban milieu, and Jewish creativity, Shachar M. Pinsker argues that cafés anchored a silk road of modern Jewish culture. He uncovers a network of interconnected cafés that were central to the modern Jewish experience in a time of migration and urbanization, from Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin to New York City and Tel Aviv. A Rich Brew explores the Jewish culture created in these social spaces, drawing on a vivid collection of newspaper articles, memoirs, archival documents, photographs, caricatures, and artwork, as well as stories, novels, and poems in many languages set in cafés. Pinsker shows how Jewish modernity was born in the café, nourished, and sent out into the world by way of print, politics, literature, art, and theater. What was experienced and created in the space of the coffeehouse touched thousands who read, saw, and imbibed a modern culture that redefined what it meant to be a Jew in the world.
Shachar M. Pinsker is Associate Professor of Hebrew Literature and Culture at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Literary Passports: The Making of Modernist Hebrew Fiction in Europe
Retired U.S. Navy admiral Michael Giorgione discusses his 2017 book based on interviews with commanders and his own experience as the commanding officer at Camp David from 1999-2001. Book sale, signing, & reception follow.
7 p.m., Ford Library, 1000 Beal. Free. 205-0555.
Hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and Dave Jibson
see our blog at Facebook/Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series
Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room, 114 S. Main St. Free. 7346652757.info@crazywisdom.net www.crazywisdom.net
Steve Hughes was born and raised in Ann Arbor, and still has a number of friends/family there. He’s also the publisher of Detroit’s longest-running zine, Stupor, and has many author friends and fans in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area.
Steve Hughes wrote Stiff with an audience in mind. As creator of The Good Tyme Writers Buffet-a literary series/potluck which runs out of a neighborhood art space-Hughes offers up each story in the collection like a dish to be passed. Just as each Buffet was thematically tied to a gallery show, so is each story in Stiff. The book serves as a kind of photo album of moments when artists were working separately and collaboratively in the same space. The process of eating, drinking, making, and working together (and apart) is what Hughes says is the central theme of the collection: finding home.
In Hughes’s stories, home is not just a physical structure where one arranges their stuff but the place where one most belongs. Finding that place can be a lifelong struggle. In “Ripening,” a man and woman in an illicit affair witness their genitals leave their bodies for a rendezvous. In “I Don’t Feel Sorry for Mrs. Miller,” a paperboy becomes “friendly” with one of his customers. In “Dexter’s Song,” a drug-addicted saxophone player meets a bored suburban woman who gives him her ex-boyfriend’s sax, which causes him to play better than ever. The stories in Stiff are odd and otherworldly, with themes ranging from cowboys to “burn” to “girlfriend material” to summer. And yet, at the end of the day, the characters in these stories are all just looking for a place to hang their hats and feel whole again.
Readers of contemporary fiction will enjoy this outrageous and evocative ensemble of stories.
Praise for Stiff
“Combining magical surrealism with downright grittiness, Steve Hughes’s astounding. Stiff reads as if Franz Kafka and Denis Johnson hooked up in one of the meaner sections of Detroit and spent the next year together in an abandoned pizza parlor writing short stories. Yes, it is that damn good.” –Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time
Lecture by U-M Afroamerican and African studies professor and former RC director Angela Dillard.
4 p.m., Rackham Amphitheatre (4th floor). Free. 615-6667.
NYC-based writer (and Ann Arbor native) Brigit Young offers tips on revising your written work and how to get published. Q&A. In conjunction with the end of National Novel Writing Month, a nonprofit promotion challenging teens and adults to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of November.
6:30-8 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200.
Join us for an evening with New York Times Bestselling author, Kurt Eichenwald, an acclaimed and award-winning investigative journalist (The New York Times, Newsweek, Vanity Fair) and writer of bestselling books (Conspiracy of Fools, 500 Days, The Informant). He is known for his relentless investigations and exhaustive research. A MIND UNRAVELED: A Memoir utilizes the same approach—only this time, Eichenwald turns his journalistic lens on himself. He will personalize and sign any backlist copies.
Ticket Information
No tickets. Open seating, first come first served.
Event Details
Seating at the event will be first-come first-served. This event will be a standing-room crowd, so if you require a seat for medical reasons, please contact us in advance to make arrangements.
Praise for A MIND UNRAVELED: A Memoir
“This book will make me think differently as a doctor. Kurt Eichenwald is a tremendously talented writer. When you travel on his personal journey, it is pure gold.”
—Sanjay Gupta, MD, chief medical correspondent, CNN
“This powerful account provides an important blueprint for anyone struggling to overcome serious challenges.”
—Katie Couric
« “In this riveting personal narrative, best-selling Eichenwald (500 Days, 2012) tells his devastating story of suffering from epilepsy and waging a nearly lifelong battle against discrimination accorded those who endure this malady … Eichenwald has created a universal tale of resilience wrapped in a primal scream against the far-too-savage world. Book clubs will clamor for this tale of survival and call for compassion.”
—Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
« “[G]ripping … Meticulous but passionate, Eichenwald’s narrative is a suspenseful medical thriller about a condition that makes everyday life a mine field, a fierce indictment of a callous medical establishment, and an against-the-odds recovery saga. The result is a terrific memoir with a stinging critique of health care gone awry.”
—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
About the Book
A MIND UNRAVELED is a deeply searing account of Eichenwald’s ongoing struggle with epilepsy. Diagnosed with the disorder as a teenager, Eichenwald details the abuses he faced while incapacitated post-seizure, the discrimination he fought that almost cost him his education and employment, and the darkest moments when he contemplated suicide as the only solution to ending his physical and emotional pain. He recounts how medical incompetence would have killed him but for the heroic actions of a brilliant neurologist and the friendship of two young men who assumed part of the burden of his struggle.
Over 3.4 million Americans (65 million worldwide) have been diagnosed with epilepsy, and many more cases go undiagnosed. While it is the fourth most common neurological disorder and affects people of all ages, it is a rarely discussed condition. A MIND UNRAVELED finally gives the attention epilepsy deserves and serves as an inspirational message for not only those afflicted with the condition, but also for anyone grappling with challenges they feel compelled to keep secret. Eichenwald shows how facing his own morality ultimately made him a stronger person, and that it is possible to rise from despair to the heights of unimagined success.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
KURT EICHENWALD is a New York Times bestselling author of four previous nonfiction books. His second, The Informant, was made into a movie starring Matt Damon and directed by Steven Soderbergh. In addition to his distinguished work as a senior writer at Newsweek and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, Eichenwald spent two decades as a senior writer at The New York Times, where he was a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also a two-time winner of the George Polk Award, as well as the winner of the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism and an Emmy Award nominee. He lives in Dallas with his family.
One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends – a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including prose by David Wade and poetry by Will Brewbaker and Talin Tahajian.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State. Free. 764-6330.
Nov. 30 & Dec. 1. RC student Maddie Lukomski directs RC students in Tanya Barfield’s 2014 LAMBDA award-winning emotionally searing 2-character play about a deeply committed but ultimately doomed interracial lesbian relationship.
8 p.m., Keene Theatre, East Quad, 701 East University. Free; donations welcome. 763-0176.
