Feb. 11, 12, 18, 19, & 21.
U-M students, nominated by their instructors, read their poems and short stories. Light refreshments.
7-8:30 p.m., U-M Shapiro Undergrad Library Lobby, 919 South University. Free. 764-7493.
Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit that also produces a weekly public radio show. Ten storytellers are selected at random to tell a 3-5 minute story–this month’s themes are “Delusions” (Feb. 5) & “Flight” (Feb 19)–judged by a 3-person team recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Seating limited, so 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.
Literati is thrilled to welcome back author Susan Dennard who will be sharing her new novel Bloodwitch, the latest in the Witchlands series.
About Bloodwitch:
Susan Dennard’s New York Times bestselling, young adult epic fantasy Witchlands series continues with the story of the Bloodwitch Aeduan.
Aeduan has teamed up with the Threadwitch Iseult and the magical girl Owl to stop a bloodthirsty horde of raiders preparing to destroy a monastery that holds more than just faith. But to do so, he must confront his own father, and his past
“Worldbuilding after my own heart. It’s so good it’s intimidating.”–Victoria Aveyard, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Queen
Susan Dennard has come a long way from small-town Georgia. Working in marine biology, she got to travel the world — six out of seven continents (she’ll get to Asia one of these days!) — before she settled down as a full-time novelist and writing instructor. She is the author of the Something Strange and Deadly series, as well as the Witchlands series, which includes the New York Times bestselling Truthwitch and Windwitch. When not writing, she can be found hiking with her dogs, slaying darkspawn on her Xbox, or earning bruises at the dojo.
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.
Bénédicte Boisseron (Afro-American and African studies) and Aliyah Khan(English, Afro-American and African studies) discuss Boisseron’s new book Afro-Dog, which investigates the relationship between race and the animal in the history and culture of the Americas and the black Atlantic, exposing a hegemonic system that compulsively links and opposes blackness and animality to measure the value of life.
Join us for an in conversation event featuring award winning author Dr. Randal Jelks, where he will discuss his most recent work, Faith and Struggle in the Lives of Four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver and Muhammad Ali. His book explores the faith stories of four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, and Muhammad Ali. Dr. Jelks will be available after the event for a book signing.
About the Book
In 1964, Muhammad Ali said of his decision to join the Nation of Islam: “I know where I’m going and I know the truth and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want to be.”
This sentiment, the brash assertion of individual freedom, informs and empowers each of the four personalities profiled in this book. Randal Maurice Jelks shows that to understand the black American experience beyond the larger narratives of enslavement, emancipation, and Black Lives Matter, we need to hear the individual stories. Drawing on his own experiences growing up as a religious African American, he shows that the inner history of black Americans in the 20th century is a story worthy of telling.
This book explores the faith stories of four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, and Muhammad Ali. It examines their autobiographical writings, interviews, speeches, letters, and memorable performances to understand how each of these figures used religious faith publicly to reconcile deep personal struggles, voice their concerns for human dignity, and reinvent their public image. For them, liberation was not simply defined by material or legal wellbeing, but by a spiritual search for community and personal wholeness.
About the Author
Randal Maurice Jelks is Professor of African and African American Studies and American Studies. He holds courtesy appointments in History, Religious Studies, and is the co-Editor of the journal American Studies. Jelks is a graduate of the University of Michigan (BA in History), McCormick Theological Seminary (Masters of Divinity) and Michigan State University (Ph.D. in Comparative Black Histories). Jelks is also clergy person in thePresbyterian Church (USA). He is the author of the two award winning books African Americans in the Furniture City: The Struggle for Civil Rights Struggle in Grand Rapids (The University of Illinois Press, 2006), which was awarded the 2006 State History Award, University and Commercial Press, Historical Society of Michigan andBenjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement: A Biography (University of North Carolina Press 2012), awarded the 2013 Lillian Smith Book Award and the 2013 Literary Award, Black Caucus of the American Library Association. His forthcoming book is titled Faith and Struggle in the Lives of Four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver and Muhammad Ali (Bloomsbury January 2019). Currently Jelks is writing a new book titled My Friends Call Me Benny: The Benjamin Mays Story for Young Readers. In addition serving as an executive producer of a two-part biographical documentary I, Too, Sing America: Langston Hughes Unfurled. Jelks has been a fellow at the National Humanities Center in Research Park Triangle, North Carolina and has held a Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at Masaryk University, Brno Czech Republic (2015), has been a Visiting Lecturer at University of Regensburg (2014), Regensburg, Germany and taught at the University of Ghana, Institute for African Studies (2001 and 2007)
Feb. 11, 12, 18, 19, & 21.
U-M students, nominated by their instructors, read their poems and short stories. Today includes RC writing student Jazzaray James. Light refreshments.
7-8:30 p.m., U-M Shapiro Undergrad Library Lobby, 919 South University. Free. 764-7493.
Literati is thrilled to host author Rachel DeWosking who will be visitng to share her latest YA novel Someday We Will Fly:
About Someday We Will Fly:
From the author of Blind, a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story set during World War II in Shanghai, one of the only places Jews without visas could find refuge.
Warsaw, Poland. The year is 1940 and Lillia is fifteen when her mother, Alenka, disappears and her father flees with Lillia and her younger sister, Naomi, to Shanghai, one of the few places that will accept Jews without visas. There they struggle to make a life; they have no money, there is little work, no decent place to live, a culture that doesn’t understand them. And always the worry about Alenka. How will she find them? Is she still alive?
Meanwhile Lillia is growing up, trying to care for Naomi, whose development is frighteningly slow, in part from malnourishment. Lillia finds an outlet for her artistic talent by making puppets, remembering the happy days in Warsaw when her family was circus performers. She attends school sporadically, makes friends with Wei, a Chinese boy, and finds work as a performer at a “gentlemen’s club” without her father’s knowledge.
But meanwhile the conflict grows more intense as the Americans declare war and the Japanese force the Americans in Shanghai into camps. More bombing, more death. Can they survive, caught in the crossfire?
Rachel DeWoskin spent her twenties in China as the unlikely star of a nighttime soap opera that inspired her memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing. She is the author of Repeat After Me and Big Girl Small, which received the American Library Association’s Alex Award for an adult book with special appeal to teen readers; Rachel’s conversations with young readers inspired her to write her first YA novel, Blind. Rachel is on the faculty of the University of Chicago, where she teaches creative writing. She lives in Chicago with her husband, playwright Zayd Dohrn, and their two daughters.
Rachel and her family spent six summers in Shanghai while she researched Someday We Will Fly.
Join us for a talk and signing with Arjun Alva. Arjun is a 6th Grader at Forsythe Middle School here in Ann Arbor. Arjun has always loved writing. It took him around 6 months to write “Adventures of Jimmy Hailbuster”. He is presently writing his second book.
Feb. 23 & 24 (different programs). Performances for adults (Sat.) & families (Sun.) by 3 top storytellers from around the country. Headliner is Hand Christian Andersen Storytelling Center (NYC) director Laura Simms, an internationally celebrated veteran storyteller whose repertoire includes both traditional tales and personal narratives. Also, playwright and performance artist Edgar Oliver, a celebrated NYC raconteur best known for his mesmerizing one-man show about his childhood in Savannah with his songster and his mentally ill mother, and Ivory D. Williams, a veteran Detroit storyteller known for his engaging, interactive renditions of traditional African and African American tales.
7:30 p.m. (Sat.) & 1 p.m. (Sun.), The Ark, 316 S. Main. Tickets $20 (Sat.) & $10 (Sun. family concert) in advance at the Michigan Union Ticket Office (mutotix.com) & theark.org, and at the door. To charge by phone, call 763-TKTS.
