Calendar

Sep
12
Thu
Zell Visiting Writers Series: Gala Mukomolova: Roundtable @ Hopwood Room, 1176 Angell Hall
Sep 12 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

(This description is for the talk at 5:30 pm)

Gala Mukomolova’s full-length poetry book, Without Protection (Coffee House Press 2019), explores her complex identity―Jewish, post-Soviet, refugee, New Yorker, lesbian― through a Russian fable.

Mukomolova is a Moscow-born, Brooklyn-raised poet and essayist. She is the author of the chapbook One Above One Below: Positions and Lamentations (YesYes Books 2018). She received her MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her past residencies include Vermont Studio Center, Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists and The Pink Door. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, PEN American, PANK and elsewhere. She writes articles on astrology for NYLON and is cohost of the podcast Big Dyke Energy.

This event is free and open to the public. Onsite book sales will be provided by Literati Bookstore.

The Zell Visiting Writers Series brings outstanding writers to campus each semester. UMMA is pleased to be the site for most of these events. The Series is made possible through a generous gift from U-M alumna Helen Zell (BA ’64, LLDHon ’13). For more information, please visit the Zell Visiting Writers Program webpage: https://lsa.umich.edu/writers

For any questions about the event or to share accommodation needs, please email asbates@umich.edu– we are eager to help ensure that this event is inclusive to you. The building, event space, and restrooms are wheelchair accessible. Diaper changing tables are available in nearby restrooms. Gender-inclusive restrooms are available on the second floor of the Museum, accessible via the stairs, or in nearby Hatcher Graduate Library (Floors 3, 4, 5, and 6). The Hatcher Library also offers a reflection room (4th Floor South Stacks), and a lactation room (Room 13W, an anteroom to the basement women’s staff restroom, or Room 108B, an anteroom of the first floor women’s restroom). ASL interpreters and CART services are available upon request; please email asbates@umich.edu at least two weeks prior to the event.

Braylon Edwards and Tom VanHaaren: Doing It My Way @ Nicola's Books
Sep 12 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Braylon Edwards and Tom VanHaaren are stopping in for a signing of their new book, Braylon’s autobiography, Doing It My Way. Please read signing information below.

Signing Information

No ticket is needed, but to join the signing line and have your book signed, you will need to purchase a copy from Nicola’s Books (either in-store or at the event) to receive a signing line ticket. Already bought your book from Nicola’s Books, but want to join the signing line? Simply bring your Nicola’s Books receipt to the store, and we will give you a signing line ticket.

About the Book

Braylon Edwards has heard all the talk—that he’s only out for himself, only about the money; he’s a bust, a bad guy, a troublemaker, a typical wide receiver who doesn’t get it. He’s also heard the cheering fans, heard them singing “The Victors” after wins in the Big House, and cherished the smiles he saw in the crowd. All of it leaves an impression, just as Edwards has left his mark in return. In this frank, unflinching autobiography, Edwards reveals the heartbeat behind the padded armor and shares how football helped him find his place and gave him a voice. He details his transformative time in Ann Arbor, how he felt when he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns, what was going through his head when he got traded to the Jets, and lays bare all the bumps, bruises, and unexpected turns along the way.

About the Author

Braylon Edwards played college football at the University of Michigan, where he received unanimous All-American honors and became the first receiver in Big Ten Conference history to record three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons. He played in the NFL for the Cleveland Browns, New York Jets, San Francisco 49ers, and Seattle Seahawks.

Tom VanHaaren has covered college football and recruiting for ESPN since 2011. A Michigan native, Tom started his career in 2009, focusing on Michigan Wolverines football and recruiting. Tom, his wife, Laura, and their three children currently reside in southeast Michigan.

Salmon Rushdie in Conversation with Rich Fahle @ Rackham Auditorium
Sep 12 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Tickets on sale now. Purchase here.

Literati Bookstore is honored to welcome renown, Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie to Rackham Auditorium on the campus of the University of Michigan in support of his latest novel, Quichotte. The author will be joined in conversation by Rich Fahle of PBS Books

Tickets are general admission and include a pre-signed hardcover copy of Quichotte, to be picked up at the venue the evening of the event. Literati will have additional copies of Salman Rushdie’s previous titles available for purchase. Parking in downtown Ann Arbor on Thursday evenings can be difficult. Surface spots are sparse, but a detailed map of available parking structures can be found here.

About the book: 

A dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age—a tour de force that is as much an homage to an immortal work of literature as it is to the quest for love and family, by Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie

Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen.” Meanwhile, his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.

Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirize the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse. And with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of Rushdie’s work, the fully realized lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction.

Salman Rushdie is the author of twelve novels—Grimus, Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and The Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, Luka and the Fire of Life, andTwo Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights—and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published four works of nonfiction—Joseph Anton, The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands, and Step Across This Line—and co-edited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.

Rich Fahle is Executive Producer of PBS Books and also the Chief Strategy Officer at 24G, a Detroit-based digital experience agency. He has worked with books and authors for more than 20 years. He was a Vice President at Borders Group, and prior to that, communications director at C-SPAN, where he helped launch Book TV.

Questions? Email John@literatibookstore.com 

Story Night for Grown Ups: Beverly Black, Steve Daut, Jill Halpern, and Laura Lee Hayes @ Crazy Wisdom
Sep 12 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Tellers will be Beverly Black, Steve Daut, Jill Halpern,and Laura Lee Hayes – Storytelling has power. Much more than just talking about personal experiences, today’s professional, passionate and playful storytellers can grab your attention and hold you spellbound with each word and each gesture. Hosted by Steve Daut and Laura Lee Hayes. Mark your calendars and join us for Story Night in the Crazy Wisdom Tea Room

 

 

Sep
13
Fri
Amanda Goldblatt: Hard Mouth, in conversation with Elizabeth Allen @ Nicola's Books
Sep 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Amanda Goldblatt will join Elizabeth Ellen in conversation to discuss her debut title, Hard Mouth.

About the Book

For ten years, Denny’s father has battled cancer. The drawn-out loss has forged Denny into a dazed, antisocial young woman. On the clock, she works as a lab tech, readying fruit flies for experimentation. In her spare time, only her parents, an aggressively kind best friend, and her blowhard imaginary pal Gene—who she knows isn’t real—ornament her stale days in the DC suburbs.

Now her father’s cancer is back for a third time, and he’s rejecting treatment. Denny’s transgressive reaction is to flee. She begins to dismantle her life, constructing in its place the fantasy of perfect detachment. Unsure whether the impulse is monastic or suicidal, she rents a secluded cabin in the mountains. When she discovers life in the wilderness isn’t the perfect detachment she was expecting—and that she isn’t as alone as she’d hoped—Denny is forced to reckon with this failure while confronting a new life with its own set of pleasures and dangerous incursions.

Morbidly funny, subversive, and startling, Hard Mouth, the debut novel from 2018 NEA

Creative Writing Fellow Amanda Goldblatt, unpacks what it means to live while others are dying.

About the Author

AMANDA GOLDBLATT is a writer and teacher living in Chicago. She is a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, and her fiction and essays have appeared in such journals as The Southern Review, NOON, Fence, Diagram, Hobart, and American Short Fiction. Hard Mouth is her debut novel.

About the Conversationalist

Elizabeth Ellen is the author of the novel Person/a, chosen by Lithub as a ‘best work of experimental literature’ for 2017. Her writing has been featured in such places as American Short Fiction, Salon, Bennington Review, BOMB, Joyland and Catapult. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for her story, “Teen Culture,” included in her most recent collection Saul Stories. In 2018, she published her poetry collection Elizabeth Ellen. She is the founder of Short Flight/Long Drive books (SF/LD) and is deputy editor at Hobart literary journal. Her first story collection—Fast Machine—is an indie cult classic. She lives in Ann Arbor.

Millenials Are Killing – Revival! @ Riverside Arts Center - Off Center Studio
Sep 13 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Missed “Millennials Are Killing” earlier this summer? Fabulous news! These murderous buds are bringing you two extra performances – same cast, same place, at Riverside Arts Center’s “Off Center” studio! Please note that we will be starting one half hour earlier than our previous performances, at 7:30 PM!

Five directionless twenty-somethings – high-maintenance free spirit Jess, impish heartbreaker Joshua, timid gossip Amanda, softhearted activist Nick, and strange newcomer Michael – are content to pass their evenings together in listless, alcoholic stupors. Surely they can have nothing to do with the series of terrible disappearances and deaths happening around their college town?

“Millennials Are Killing” is the newest play to be workshopped by Ann Arbor playwright and director Skyler Tarnas. Tickets will be $10 at the door, $7 for students. The “Off Center” studio can be accessed directly off of Huron Street in Ypsilanti, and is directly under the marquee! There will be a sign on the door and a chalkboard out front!

Show Dates and Times:
Friday, September 13th – 7:30 PM
Saturday, September 14th – 7:30 PM

CAST:
Jessica: Laurie Perrin
Joshua: Kyle Stefek
Amanda: Allison Burley
Nicholas: Sebastien Butler
Michael: Mitchell Salley
Mom: Grey Hendry

The History of Physics in 13 Songs, From Galileo to Dark Matter @ East Quad Keene Theater
Sep 13 @ 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm

Join us for a 45-minute interdisciplinary musical performance that highlights the turning points in the history of physics.

The show combines fragments (excerpts from writings by some of the most prominent physicists in history) read and interpreted by a narrator (a role played by Lynnae Lehfeldt in the premiere), with original songs, based on each fragment, composed by Alberto Rojo, and performed by Alberto Rojo (guitar and voice), Michael Gould (percussion), and Dave Haughey (cello). The project explores the intersection between the arts and the sciences, and postulates that art and science are not antagonistic alternatives in the search for truth; rather, there is a broad territory of coexistence.

The movements are as follows Galileo (The Book of the Universe); Isaac Newton (From the Principia); Pierre Maupertuis (Least Action); Rudolf Clausius (The Limiting Condition); Ludwig Boltzmann (Atomic movements); James Clerk Maxwell (From letters to Faraday); Marie Curie (Radioactivity); Albert Einstein (From the 1905 paper); Max Planck (The quantum of action); Werner Heisenberg (Analogies); J. S. Bell (Remote Instruments); Richard Feynman (Trees are made of air); Vera Rubin (Dark Matter)

 

Sep
14
Sat
Millenials Are Killing – Revival! @ Riverside Arts Center - Off Center Studio
Sep 14 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Missed “Millennials Are Killing” earlier this summer? Fabulous news! These murderous buds are bringing you two extra performances – same cast, same place, at Riverside Arts Center’s “Off Center” studio! Please note that we will be starting one half hour earlier than our previous performances, at 7:30 PM!

Five directionless twenty-somethings – high-maintenance free spirit Jess, impish heartbreaker Joshua, timid gossip Amanda, softhearted activist Nick, and strange newcomer Michael – are content to pass their evenings together in listless, alcoholic stupors. Surely they can have nothing to do with the series of terrible disappearances and deaths happening around their college town?

“Millennials Are Killing” is the newest play to be workshopped by Ann Arbor playwright and director Skyler Tarnas. Tickets will be $10 at the door, $7 for students. The “Off Center” studio can be accessed directly off of Huron Street in Ypsilanti, and is directly under the marquee! There will be a sign on the door and a chalkboard out front!

Show Dates and Times:
Friday, September 13th – 7:30 PM
Saturday, September 14th – 7:30 PM

CAST:
Jessica: Laurie Perrin
Joshua: Kyle Stefek
Amanda: Allison Burley
Nicholas: Sebastien Butler
Michael: Mitchell Salley
Mom: Grey Hendry

Sep
15
Sun
Shachar Pinsker: A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture @ AADL Malletts Creek
Sep 15 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Shachar Pinsker, professor, Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies, University of Michigan discusses his book A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture.  The book explores the ways in which cafes provide a window into understanding modern Jewish culture and modernity. Through its focus on Jewish cafe culture in six cities: Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, Berlin, New York, and Tel Aviv, we see how Jews who migrated to cities gravitated towards cafes as important spaces and sites for producing Jewish culture. It is a story of the global aspects of Jewish modernity, what it means to be part of the public sphere, and the ways in which cafes present an important backdrop to the changes and challenges of modernity.

This event includes a book signing and books will be for sale. This event is in partnership with the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor (CHAA), an organization of scholars, cooks, food writers, nutritionists, collectors, students, and others interested in the study of culinary history and gastronomy. Their mission is to promote the study of culinary history through regular programs open to members and guests, through the quarterly newsletter Repast, and through exchanges of information with other such organizations.

Sep
16
Mon
Alexandra Minna Stern: Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate @ Literati
Sep 16 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome University of Michigan professor Alexandra Minna Stern to discuss her new book, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right is Warping the American Imagination, which Kirkus calls “An important study that extends the knowledge from other recent books that have demonstrated a stubbornly pervasive network of white nationalists.” 

About the book: What is the alt-right? What do they believe, and how did they take center stage in the American social and political consciousness?

From a loose movement that lurked in the shadows in the early 2000s, the alt-right has achieved a level of visibility that has allowed it to expand significantly throughout America’s cultural, political, and digital landscapes. Racist, sexist, and homophobic beliefs that were previously unspeakable have become commonplace, normalized, and accepted—endangering American democracy and society as a whole. Yet in order to dismantle the destructive movement that has invaded our public consciousness, we must first understand the core beliefs that drive the alt-right.

To help guide us through the contemporary moment, historian Alexandra Minna Stern excavates the alt-right memes and tropes that have erupted online and explores the alt-right’s central texts, narratives, constructs, and insider language. She digs to the root of the alt-right’s motivations: their deep-seated fear of an oncoming “white genocide” that can only be remedied through swift and aggressive action to reclaim white power. As the group makes concerted efforts to cast off the vestiges of neo-Nazism and normalize their appearance and their beliefs, the alt-right and their ideas can be hard to recognize. Through careful analysis, Stern brings awareness to the underlying concepts that guide the alt-right and animate its overlapping forms of racism, xenophobia, transphobia, and anti-egalitarianism. She explains the key ideas of “red-pilling,” strategic trolling, gender essentialism, and the alt-right’s ultimate fantasy: a future where minorities have been removed and “cleansed” from the body politic and a white ethnostate is established in the United States. By unearthing the hidden mechanisms that power white nationalism, Stern reveals just how pervasive this movement truly is.

Professor Stern is the author of the prize-winning book Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America, (University of California Press, 2005) and Telling Genes: The Story of Genetic Counseling in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) is a Choice 2013 Outstanding Academic Title in Health Sciences.

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