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.
June 5 & 19. 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 the monthly theme. June themes: “Endings” (June 5) & “Impostor” (June 19). The 3-person judging teams are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Space 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. $8. 764-5118.
Literati is thrilled to welcome author Nick Dybek who will reading and discussing his new novel, The Verdun Affair.
About The Verdun Affair:
“The Verdun Affair is ravishingly beautiful, and as much about love as about war. Nick Dybek is a storyteller of great power.” –Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and Circling the Sun
“The Verdun Affair is an intensely gripping story set in the immediate aftermath of war. From a still-smoldering battlefield, Nick Dybek conjures a sweeping saga of secrets, lies, mistaken identity, love and betrayal. This is the kind of book you can’t put down.” — Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn
A sweeping, romantic, and profoundly moving novel, set in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and Los Angeles in the 1950s, about a lonely young man, a beautiful widow, and the amnesiac soldier whose puzzling case binds them together even as it tears them apart.
In 1921, two young Americans meet in Verdun, the city in France where one of the most devastating battles of the war was waged. Tom is an orphan from Chicago, a former ambulance driver now gathering bones from the battlefield; Sarah is an expatriate from Boston searching for the husband who wandered off from his division and hasn’t been seen since. Quickly, the two fall into a complicated affair against the ghostly backdrop of the ruined city. Months later, Sarah and Tom meet again at the psychiatric ward of an Italian hospital, drawn there by the appearance of a mysterious patient the doctors call Douglas Fairbanks (after the silent film actor)–a shell-shocked soldier with no memory of who he is. At the hospital, Tom and Sarah are joined by Paul, an Austrian journalist with his own interest in the amnesiac.
Each is keeping a secret; each has been shaken by the horrors of war. Decades later, Tom, now a successful screenwriter, encounters Paul by chance in LA, still grappling with the questions raised by this gorgeous and incisive novel: How to begin again after unfathomable trauma? How to love after so much loss? And who, in the end, was Douglas Fairbanks?
From the bone-strewn fields of Verdun to the bombed-out cafés of Paris, from the riot-torn streets of Bologna to the riotous parties of 1950s Hollywood, The Verdun Affair is a riveting tale of romance, grief, and the far-reaching consequences of a single lie.
Nick Dybek is a recipient of a Granta New Voices selection, a Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and a Maytag Fellowship. He received a BA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He teaches at Oregon State University. He is the author of When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man and The Verdun Affair.
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.
Petra Kuppers will read from her short story collection Ice Bar at Aut Bar/Common Language Bookstore. Visit with post-apocalyptic science fiction and psychedelic fantasy, featuring a cast of queer, vulnerable, beautiful characters. Disability becomes an invitation to new lives, new stories, new opportunities.
Advance Praise for Ice Bar:
Ice Bar’s tales, like the best myths, both chill us and warm us as they expose our as-yet unexamined psyches, and reinventing our time, place, and positions in it. This book’s insights are offered up by a rare talent, a serious and generous intelligence. These are the stories we have been waiting to read, by the writer we’ve long needed.
–Laura Kasischke
The worlds of Kuppers’ stories are worlds with not only mermaids, ghosts and other non-human beings, but also worlds full of disabled people, queer people, and people of color whose narratives are not about their disability, sexuality, gender, or race alone.
–Sami Schalk
Aut Bar Patio/Common Language Bookstore, 315 Braun Ct, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104. Free. 7342392634. petra@umich.edu http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/ice-bar.html
Paul Selig, who says he receives “clairaudient dictation from unseen intellects called Guides,” reads from his new book. Signing.
6-7:30 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757.
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.
Literati is excited to welcome author Mark Beyer who will be reading and discussing his new novel, Hired Man.
About Hired Man:
What would you do if a dying stranger begged you to save his daughter and then paid you seven figures to do it? When suburban dad Terry Holbrook stops to help the quickly dying driver of an icy car wreck on a dark, lonely country road, he can’t believe the bloody check thrust into his hands is worth the paper it’s printed on. Yet, in no time, Terry and his family are swept into a dangerous vortex of powerful Detroit drug dealers, vicious blackmailers, homicidal white supremacists and the dead man’s vengeful family. Enter Pearce Butler, a “ghost” who operates both inside and outside the law. But is his true motive to mete out justice? Or simply to get to the money first? From word one, Hired Man speeds like a bullet train through ever-tightening coils of suspense toward a climax as riveting as any in crime fiction.
Mark Beyer is a Detroit-based writer, creative director, and video producer. He and his wife, Linda, live in Beverly Hills, MI. His fiction has been published in the L.A. Reader. Hired Man is his first nove
Benefitting The Humane Society of Huron Valley Bountiful Bowls Program
Join us for a talk and signing with Stephanie Feldstein, the Population and Sustainability Director at the Center for Biological Diversity, for her book, The Animal Lover’s Guide to Changing the World: Practical Advice and Everyday Actions for a More Sustainable, Humane, and Compassionate Planet. It’s an inspiring, accessible, and empowering book for everyone who loves animals and wants to live a more animal-friendly life, even if they aren’t ready to join a movement or give up bacon. 20% of the sales of the book will go to the Humane Society of Huron Valley’s Bountiful Bowls Program, benefitting Washtenaw County and Plymouth residents who are having difficulty meeting the nutritional needs of their dog or cat due to financial burden.
About the Author
Stephanie Feldstein is the Population and Sustainability Director at the Center for Biological Diversity, where she heads a national program that addresses the connection between human population growth, overconsumption, and the wildlife extinction crisis. She created the innovative Take Extinction Off Your Plate campaign, and her work has been featured in The Huffington Post, NPR, Salon, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and more.
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.
