June 7-10, 14-17, & 21-24. U-M Residential College drama lecturer Kate Mendeloff directs students and local actors in an alfresco production of Shakespeare’s vividly poetic love story, a romantic tragedy about “star-crossed lovers” defying their feuding families. Initially lightheartedly comic, then dire, this perennially popular drama is the heart-wrenching tale of 2 impetuous young lovers destroyed by the intransigence of their feuding families, their own mistakes, and some incredibly bad timing. The RC’s annual Shakespeare in the Arb productions have become a hugely popular local summer tradition. Director Mendeloff takes special care to make the shifting Arb environments an active force in the performance. Bring a blanket or portable chair to sit on; dress for the weather.
6:30 p.m., meet at the Peony Garden entrance at 1610 Washington Heights. $20 (Friends of Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum, $15; students, $15; seniors age 62 & over, $17; youth under age 18, $10; kids under 5, free) at the gate only. Tickets go on sale at 5:30 p.m. Space limited; come early. 998-9540.
June 16 & 17. Adults & kids of all ages invited to meet more than 50 top area cartoonists and participate in workshops on making web comics, writing and drawing minicomics, creating video games, and much more. Kids can also vote in the 6th annual Kids’ Comics Awards. Winners announced during a ceremony featuring puppets, super villains, and more. At 7 p.m. on June 15, Maris Wicks, whose science-themed work is on display this month (see Galleries), discusses “Gorillas, Guts, and Gastropods.” See a2caf.com/programming for full schedule.
11 a.m.-6 p.m. (Sat.) & 12:30-5:30 p.m. (Sun.), AADL Downtown. Free. 327-4200.
Celebration of Chelsea-area authors with brief talks by children’s writers Marilyn Kuehl and David Brzezinski, teen writer S.D. Grimm, nonfiction writers Alex Weddon, Kate Bancroft, and Patrice Johnson, poets Jennifer Burd and Katherine Edgren, and fiction writers Harold Fischel, Lakota Grace, Doris Lemcke, & Patricia Stebelton. Signings.
12:30-3 p.m., CDL, 221 S. Main, Chelsea. Free admission. 475-8732.
June 7-10, 14-17, & 21-24. U-M Residential College drama lecturer Kate Mendeloff directs students and local actors in an alfresco production of Shakespeare’s vividly poetic love story, a romantic tragedy about “star-crossed lovers” defying their feuding families. Initially lightheartedly comic, then dire, this perennially popular drama is the heart-wrenching tale of 2 impetuous young lovers destroyed by the intransigence of their feuding families, their own mistakes, and some incredibly bad timing. The RC’s annual Shakespeare in the Arb productions have become a hugely popular local summer tradition. Director Mendeloff takes special care to make the shifting Arb environments an active force in the performance. Bring a blanket or portable chair to sit on; dress for the weather.
6:30 p.m., meet at the Peony Garden entrance at 1610 Washington Heights. $20 (Friends of Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum, $15; students, $15; seniors age 62 & over, $17; youth under age 18, $10; kids under 5, free) at the gate only. Tickets go on sale at 5:30 p.m. Space limited; come early. 998-9540.
June 16 & 17. Adults & kids of all ages invited to meet more than 50 top area cartoonists and participate in workshops on making web comics, writing and drawing minicomics, creating video games, and much more. Kids can also vote in the 6th annual Kids’ Comics Awards. Winners announced during a ceremony featuring puppets, super villains, and more. At 7 p.m. on June 15, Maris Wicks, whose science-themed work is on display this month (see Galleries), discusses “Gorillas, Guts, and Gastropods.” See a2caf.com/programming for full schedule.
11 a.m.-6 p.m. (Sat.) & 12:30-5:30 p.m. (Sun.), AADL Downtown. Free. 327-4200.
June 7-10, 14-17, & 21-24. U-M Residential College drama lecturer Kate Mendeloff directs students and local actors in an alfresco production of Shakespeare’s vividly poetic love story, a romantic tragedy about “star-crossed lovers” defying their feuding families. Initially lightheartedly comic, then dire, this perennially popular drama is the heart-wrenching tale of 2 impetuous young lovers destroyed by the intransigence of their feuding families, their own mistakes, and some incredibly bad timing. The RC’s annual Shakespeare in the Arb productions have become a hugely popular local summer tradition. Director Mendeloff takes special care to make the shifting Arb environments an active force in the performance. Bring a blanket or portable chair to sit on; dress for the weather.
6:30 p.m., meet at the Peony Garden entrance at 1610 Washington Heights. $20 (Friends of Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum, $15; students, $15; seniors age 62 & over, $17; youth under age 18, $10; kids under 5, free) at the gate only. Tickets go on sale at 5:30 p.m. Space limited; come early. 998-9540.
Performance to be determined!
7 p.m. Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry.
Talk by local writer Beverly Jenkins, recipient of the 2017 Romance Writers of America Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award. She sets her African American historical romance novels in the decades after emancipation to emphasize black history after slavery.
7-8:30 p.m., AADL Malletts Creek, 3090 E. Eisenhower (between Stone School & Packard). Free. 327-4200.
Local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal host an open house for writers to connect with one another and/or work on their projects.
Literati is honored and especially excited to host author, bookseller, and number one human being Lillian Li who will be sharing her debut novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant.
About Number One Chinese Restaurant:
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2018 by The Millions and Cosmopolitan
An exuberant and wise multigenerational debut novel about the complicated lives and loves of people working in everyone’s favorite Chinese restaurant.
The Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland, is not only a beloved go-to setting for hunger pangs and celebrations; it is its own world, inhabited by waiters and kitchen staff who have been fighting, loving, and aging within its walls for decades. When disaster strikes, this working family’s controlled chaos is set loose, forcing each character to confront the conflicts that fast-paced restaurant life has kept at bay.
Owner Jimmy Han hopes to leave his late father’s homespun establishment for a fancier one. Jimmy’s older brother, Johnny, and Johnny’s daughter, Annie, ache to return to a time before a father’s absence and a teenager’s silence pushed them apart. Nan and Ah-Jack, longtime Duck House employees, are tempted to turn their thirty-year friendship into something else, even as Nan’s son, Pat, struggles to stay out of trouble. And when Pat and Annie, caught in a mix of youthful lust and boredom, find themselves in a dangerous game that implicates them in the Duck House tragedy, their families must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice to help their children.
Generous in spirit, unaffected in its intelligence, multi-voiced, poignant, and darkly funny, Number One Chinese Restaurant looks beyond red tablecloths and silkscreen murals to share an unforgettable story about youth and aging, parents and children, and all the ways that our families destroy us while also keeping us grounded and alive.
Lillian Li received her BA from Princeton and her MFA from the University of Michigan. She is the recipient of a Hopwood Award in Short Fiction, as well as Glimmer Train‘s New Writer Award. Her work has been featured inGuernica, Granta , and Jezebel. She is from the D.C. metro area and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Number One Chinese Restaurant is her first novel.
