Each week will feature different Detroit-based speakers and guests who will explore the given topic and engage the students through a combination of formal remarks, presentations, and public discussion. Light dinner provided; free transportation from Ann Arbor to Detroit; public welcome and encouraged to attend.
Literati is excited to welcome the Creative Writing Sub-concentration seniors in the English Department at the University of Michigan for a night of poetry and prose readings!
Each year the Creative Writing Sub-concentration selects no more than 14 students who spend their senior year working with faculty to complete a creative thesis of poetry or fiction. These collections, the same size as many MFA theses, are first attempts to create book-length manuscripts, and to prepare the writers for their work in the future.
Readers include…
Reema Baydoun transferred to the University of Michigan as a sophomore, and has since spent her time in Ann Arbor studying English and caring for her cat. As an Arab-American poet, she often spends weekends in Dearborn for inspiration and good food.
RC student Ariel Everitt hails from a one-stoplight town in Northeast Michigan and is a junior studying English and Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, where they have been a research assistant in a biogerontology lab, become a peer writing consultant, and won a Hopwood Award. Their fiction tackles the boundaries between people and genres, applying dream logic to science and human connections wherever possible. Ariel plans to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing in the near future.
Madeleine Gaudin is a writer and future Elementary School teacher originally from Austin, Texas. Formerly the Managing Arts Editor at the Michigan Daily, she wrote about movies, music, books and the wonderful hellscape of the Internet for four years before turning her attention to ghost stories and fiction about the apocalypse.
Jenny Hong is a senior studying English with a Sub-concentration in Creative Writing (Poetry). She loves cooking, blogging, and binging TV series on lazy days—and also chatting with people around campus. She is sad that she will no longer be a student in May and enroll in workshops that will give her friendly nudges to write, but she’s also pretty excited for what’s next!
Kate Velguth is a senior studying English. She’s received four Hopwood Awards, and her fiction has appeared in The Washington Square Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere.” Her thesis, a collection of short stories, is entitled The World of Hidden Things. She hopes to teach English in South Korea next year.
Maxim Vinogradov is a local playwright, Michigan student, and is very excited to be reading at Literati! You may have seen his work in productions at Theatre Nova, Slipstream Theatre Initiative, Basement Arts, Outvisible Theatre Company, and others in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. He has had the pleasure of receiving two Hopwood Awards in Drama, two Wilde Awards, the National Partners of the American Theatre Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center, and has spent this past summer in internships and residences with The Public Theater and O’Neill Theater Center. He’d love to thank the University of Michigan and Literati for this privilege, and hopes you enjoy his goofy writing!
Ellison Zak is a senior transfer student at the University of Michigan studying English, creative writing, and linguistics. Her thesis grapples with the secrets we all keep and the toll they can take on ourselves and our relationships. She spends her summers between school road tripping across the country and camping at national parks. More than anything else, she hopes to find employment after graduation.
n celebration of Literati Bookstore’s Sixth Anniversary, please join us for a reading of original poetry and prose by Literati Bookstore booksellers past and present!
A political drama by Beau Willimon, presented by RC Players. Farragut North tells the story of Stevie Bellamy, a young press secretary working for Morris, a candidate in the democratic presidential primary. . Keene Theater, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free.
Like the original Blue Beard, Heinrich Blaubart brings death to women he meets. Unlike the original Blue Beard, though, he doesn’t seek to do so; in fact, his fear of relationships makes him try to avoid women. Presented in German by students enrolled in RCHUMS 334: From the Page to the Stage. Surtitles will make it possible for even non-German speakers to follow the action on stage. April 6, 8pm-10pm and April 7, 2pm-4pm, Keene Theater. Non-perishable food items or donation at the door.
Music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, presented by Room 6 Productions. A cautionary tale of a high school honors student who falls for a cute transfer girl. He goes to great lengths to oblige her request for marijuana in the hopes of winning her affection – only to find out that his crush is actually an undercover cop planted in the school to find drug dealers. Keene Theater, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free.
Literati is thrilled to welcome author Megan Griswold who will be sharing her new book The Book of Help.
About The Book of Help:
The Book of Help traces one woman’s life-long quest for love, connection, and peace of mind. A heartbreakingly vulnerable and tragically funny memoir-in-remedies, Megan Griswold’s narrative spans four decades and six continents — from the glaciers of Patagonia and the psycho-tropics of Brazil, to academia, the Ivy League, and the study of Eastern medicine.
Megan was born into a family who enthusiastically embraced the offerings of New Age California culture — at seven she asked Santa for her first mantra and by twelve she was taking weekend workshops on personal growth. But later, when her newly-wedded husband calls in the middle of the night to say he’s landed in jail, Megan must accept that her many certificates, degrees and licenses had not been the finish line she’d once imagined them to be, but instead the preliminary training for what would prove to be the wildest, most growth-insisting journey of her life.
Megan Griswold went to Barnard College, received an MA from Yale, and went on to earn a licentiate degree from the Institute of Taoist Education and Acupuncture. She has trained and received certifications as a doula, shiatsu practitioner, yoga instructor, personal trainer, and in wilderness medicine, among others. She has worked as a mountain instructor, a Classical Five Element acupuncturist, a freelance reporter, an NPR All Things Considered commentator and an off-the grid interior designer. She resides (mostly) in a yurt in Kelly, Wyoming.
Join local poet Douglas Smith for a reading of his works. Award-winning Michigan playwright Brian Cox calls Smith “…a poet who creates an awareness that burrows into you and changes how you see.”
Literati is excited to welcome back author Polly Rosenwaike who will be reading and discussing her new short story collection Look How Happy I’m Making You.
About Look How Happy I’m Making You:
“A beautifully written and beautifully conceived series of stories about, well, conception…Among the thousands of books for prospective and new parents, I doubt any will make you feel more understood and less alone than this one.”–ANTHONY DOERR, author of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
A candid, ultimately buoyant debut story collection about the realities of the “baby years,” whether you’re having one or not.
The women in Polly Rosenwaike’s Look How Happy I’m Making You want to be mothers, or aren’t sure they want to be mothers, or–having recently given birth–are overwhelmed by what they’ve wrought. Sharp and unsettling, wry and moving in its depiction of love, friendship, and family, this collection expands the conversation about what having a baby looks like.
One woman struggling with infertility deals with the news that her sister is pregnant. Another woman nervous about her biological clock “forgets” to take her birth control while dating a younger man and must confront the possibility of becoming a single parent. Four motherless women who meet in a bar every Mother’s Day contend with their losses and what it would mean to have a child.
Witty, empathetic, and precisely observed, Look How Happy I’m Making You offers the rare, honest portrayal of pregnancy and new motherhood in a culture obsessed with women’s most intimate choices.
POLLY ROSENWAIKE has published stories, essays, and reviews in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013, The New York Times Book Review, Glimmer Train, New England Review, The Millions, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The fiction editor for Michigan Quarterly Review, she lives in Ann Arbor with the poet Cody Walker and their two daughters.
ONE PAUSE POETRY SALON is (literally) a greenhouse for poetry and poets, nurturing an appreciation for written art in all languages and encouraging experiments in creative writing.
We meet every Weds in the greenhouse at Argus Farm Stop on Liberty St. The poems we read each time are unified by form (haiku, sonnet, spoken word), poet, time / place (Tang Dynasty, English Romanticism, New York in the 70s) or theme / mood (springtime, poems with cats, protest poems). We discuss the poems and play writing games together, with time for snacks and socializing in between.
Members are encouraged to share their own poems or poems they like – they may or may not relate to the theme of the evening. This is not primarily a workshop – we may hold special workshop nights, but mostly we listen to and talk about poems for the sake of inspiring new writing.
Whether you are a published poet or encountering poetry for the first time, we invite you to join us!
$5 suggested donation for food, drinks and printing costs.
8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.
