Chinese Instrumental Music Ensemble, RCHUMS 252, under direction of Xiaodong Wei Hottmann, featuring erhu (fiddle), dizi (flute), pipa (lute), and percussion
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. johnsonest121314@gmail.com.johnsonest121314@gmail.com
Students from RCHUMS 334: Rites of Reading: The Animal Story, with instruction from RC faculty, Elizabeth Goodenough, will present their creations. Thursday, December 13th, 6-7:30pm at Hatcher Graduate Library Gallery. Free.
All-ages storytelling program with stories about migration, movement, exile, and belonging, featuring U-M Afroamerican and African outreach coordinator Elizabeth James, EMU Students Organize for Syria president Ahnas Alzahabi, and AADL storyteller Laura Raynor.
7-8:30 p.m., AADL Downtown multipurpose rm., 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-4200.
Join us for an inspiring evening of original spoken word poetry and live music by Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti youth artists! Teen poets and musicians from the Neutral Zone will perform along with the featured poets of the evening: Anika Love, Lilly Kujawski, and Ann Arbor Youth Poet Laureate Aldo Leopoldo Pando Girard. The teen performers are working under the guidance of the featured poets for two months of collaborative workshops to generate and polish material. The culmination of these efforts will be a poignant multimedia production not to be missed. The event will also serve as the official release for I Name This Body MINE, a collection of the featured poets’ original work. Book copies will be available for purchase that evening. At the heart of this book and show is reclamation: reclaiming the parts of us that are shamed and silenced, rewriting our trauma narratives, and reshaping our current reality by daring to imagine alternatives thereto. Come dream a new day with us!
Mendelssohn Theater, 911 N. University. $10-$50. jucomora@umich.edu https://conta.cc/2OX5YDl
Local writer Rebecca Fortes, a U-M creative writing grad, leads a workshop to help participants tell their family and/or personal immigration stories.
Noon-1:30 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200.
Join us for a holiday book signing with John U. Bacon. His book, The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism, became a national best seller when it was release on November 7, 2017. Copies of this and his previous work will be available.
About the Book
After steaming out of New York City on December 1, 1917, laden with a staggering three thousand tons of TNT and other explosives, the munitions ship Mont-Blanc fought its way up the Atlantic coast, through waters prowled by enemy U-boats. As it approached the lively port city of Halifax, Mont-Blanc‘s deadly cargo erupted with the force of 2.9 kilotons of TNT—the most powerful explosion ever visited on a human population, save for HIroshima and Nagasaki. Mont-Blanc was vaporized in one fifteenth of a second; a shockwave leveled the surrounding city. Next came a thirty-five-foot tsunami. Most astounding of all, however, were the incredible tales of survival and heroism that soon emerged from the rubble.
This is the unforgettable story told in John U. Bacon’s The Great Halifax Explosion: a ticktock account of fateful decisions that led to doom, the human faces of the blast’s 11,000 casualties, and the equally moving individual stories of those who lived and selflessly threw themselves into urgent rescue work that saved thousands.
The shocking scale of the disaster stunned the world, dominating global headlines even amid the calamity of the First World War. Hours after the blast, Boston sent trains and ships filled with doctors, medicine, and money. The explosion would revolutionize pediatric medicine; transform U.S.-Canadian relations; and provide physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who studied the Halifax explosion closely when developing the atomic bomb, with history’s only real-world case study demonstrating the lethal power of a weapon of mass destruction.
Mesmerizing and inspiring, Bacon’s deeply-researched narrative brings to life the tragedy, brvery, and surprising afterlife of one of the most dramatic events of modern times.
About the Author
John U. Bacon has worked nearly three decades as a writer, a public speaker, and a college instructor, winning awards for all three.
Bacon earned an honors degree in history (“pre-unemployment”) from the University of Michigan in 1986, and a Master’s in Education in1994. In 2005-06, the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship named him the first recipient of the Benny Friedman Fellowship for Sports Journalism.
He started his journalism career covering high school sports for The Ann Arbor News, then wrote a light-hearted lifestyle column before becoming the Sunday sports feature writer for The Detroit News in 1995. He earned numerous state and national awards for his work, including “Notable Sports Writing” in The Best American Sports Writing in 1998 and 2000.
After Bacon covered the 1998 Nagano Olympics, he moved from the sports page to the Sunday front page, roaming the Great Lakes State finding fresh features, then left the paper in 1999 to free-lance for some two dozen national publications, including stories on Formula One racing in Australia for The New York Times, on Japanese hockey for ESPN Magazine, and on Hemingway’s Michigan summer home for Time.
He has authored ten books on sports, business, health, and history, five of which are New York Times best sellers
Local storyteller Jim Glenn performs the 2nd part of his storytelling program on the history of English, which ranges from Shakespeare and the King James Bible to the beginnings of American English. For grade 8-adult.
7-8:30 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200.
Nov. 6 & 20. 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 themes of “Roads” (Dec. 4) & “Joy” (Dec. 18). The 3-person judging teams are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Seating 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. General admission tickets $10 in advance only at themoth.org beginning a week before each event. 764-5118.
Local flavor and fragrance expert Michelle Krell Kydd, creator of the award-winning smell and taste blog Glass Petal Smoke, discusses incorporating scents with storytelling, an idea inspired by the protagonist of the urban fantasy series by German writer Walter Moers.
6:30-8:45 p.m., AADL Downtown 4th-floor meeting rm., 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-4200.
