Calendar

Nov
12
Thu
Laura Kasischke @ Concordia University, Krieger Hall, Room 109
Nov 12 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

RC Creative Writing alum and professor Laura Kasischke  is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, 2012. Kasischke has published nine novels, three of which have been made into feature films—The Life Before Her Eyes, Suspicious River, White Bird in a Blizzard—and nine books of poetry, most recently The Infinitesimals. She has also published the short story collection If a Stranger Approaches You. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several Pushcart Prizes and numerous poetry awards and her writing has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Harper’s and The New Republic. Laura Kasischke is Allan Seager Collegiate Professor of English Language & Literature at the University of Michigan.

Jan
18
Mon
Nicolas Petrie @ Nicola's Books
Jan 18 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Nicholas Petrie received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington, won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at U-M, and his story “At the Laundromat” won the 2006 Short Story Contest in the The Seattle Review, a national literary journal. A husband and father, he runs a home-inspection business in Milwaukee. The Drifter is his first novel.

Feb
17
Wed
RC Creative Writing Alumna Carrie Smith @ Aunt Agatha's
Feb 17 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

RC Creative Writing alumna Carrie Smith and three-time Hopwood winner discusses her debut crime novel, Silent City, a police procedural whose lead character, an NYPD detective, is cancer survivor returning to work.

 

Feb
27
Sat
29th Annual Storytelling Festival @ The Ark
Feb 27 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Feb. 27 & 28 (different programs). Performances for adults (Sat.) & families (Sun.) by top-notch storytellers from around the country and the state. Headliners are 2 storytellers whose commentaries have been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Kevin Kling is a Minneapolis storyteller who specializes in autobiographical tales about everything from growing up in Minnesota and eating things before knowing what they are to hopping freight trains and getting his play banned in Czechoslovakia. Bill Harley is a Massachusetts songwriter and storyteller with an off-center point of view whose stories paint vibrant and hilarious pictures of growing up, schooling, and family life. Opening act is Yvonne Healy, a Brighton-based raconteur named Top Irish Storyteller in the USA whose repertoire includes weird Irish legends, outrageous family tales, and more.
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.

 

 

Feb
28
Sun
29th Annual Storytelling Festival @ The Ark
Feb 28 @ 1:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Feb. 27 & 28 (different programs). Performances for adults (Sat.) & families (Sun.) by top-notch storytellers from around the country and the state. Headliners are 2 storytellers whose commentaries have been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Kevin Kling is a Minneapolis storyteller who specializes in autobiographical tales about everything from growing up in Minnesota and eating things before knowing what they are to hopping freight trains and getting his play banned in Czechoslovakia. Bill Harley is a Massachusetts songwriter and storyteller with an off-center point of view whose stories paint vibrant and hilarious pictures of growing up, schooling, and family life. Opening act is Yvonne Healy, a Brighton-based raconteur named Top Irish Storyteller in the USA whose repertoire includes weird Irish legends, outrageous family tales, and more.
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.

 

 

Mar
12
Sat
Voices from the Middle West Festival @ Residential College, East Quad
Mar 12 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm

Created by Midwestern Gothic in partnership with the Residential College, Voices of the Middle West is a festival celebrating writers from all walks of life as well as independent presses and journals that consider the Midwestern United States their home. The Festival will take place on March 12th, starting at 10am, at East Quad. The festival includes panels and a book fair, and is free to the public. Ross Gay is the keynote speaker.

The goal of the festival is to bring together students and faculty of the university, as well as writers and presses from all over the Midwest, in order to provide a perspective of this region and to showcase the magnificent work being produced here, the stories that need to be told…the voices that need to be heard. Truly, this is a celebration of the Midwest voice, and it is the festival’s aim to create an ideal environment for any and all to come and take an active part, to discover and discuss how rich our literary tradition is.

More information at http://midwestgothic.com/voices/

 

 

 

Apr
24
Sun
Jennifer Burd and Laszlo Slomovits: Receiving the Shore @ Nicola's Books
Apr 24 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Jennifer Burd has published lyric poetry and haiku in a variety of print and online journals. She is the author of a book of poems, Body and Echo, and a book of creative nonfiction, Daily Bread: A Portrait of Homeless Men & Women of Lenawee County, Michigan. She has co-written (with Laszlo Slomovits) a children’s play based on Patricia Polacco’s picture book I Can Hear the Sun, which was produced in 2015 by Ann Arbor’s Wild Swan Theater. Jennifer received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, and she teaches online courses through the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She works as an editor and writer for HighScope Educational Research Foundation in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Laszlo Slomovits is one of the twin brothers in Ann Arbor’s nationally-known children’s folk music duo, Gemini (GeminiChildrensMusic.com).  A fine singer and multi-instrumentalist, Laszlo has given concerts throughout the U.S. and a number of his award-winning songs are featured in songbooks music teachers use throughout the country.  In addition to his music for children, Laszlo has set to music the work of many poets. His recordings of these song-settings include five CDs of the poetry of ancient Sufi mystics, Rumi and Hafiz as well as “White Picture” by the Holocaust-era Czech poet Jiri Orten and “Cry of Freedom,” the poetry of contemporary American poet Linda Nemec Foster.

Jun
15
Wed
Greg Jobin-Leeds, Dey Hernandez, and Jorge Diaz: When We Fight @ Crazy Wisdom
Jun 15 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Crazy Wisdom Book and Performance Event — Come join the co-authors Greg Jobin-Leeds, Dey Hernández, Jorge Diaz and movement leaders for a multi-media hour of art, theatre and lively conversation. Longtime social activist Greg Jobin-Leeds joins forces with AgitArte-a collective of innovative artists and organizers-to capture the stories, philosophies, tactics, and art of six of today’s most pressing movements: immigrant rights, the LGBTQ movement, the fight for quality public education, the prison justice movement, the struggle for economic power, and the environmental movement.
Recently published by The New Press, WHEN WE FIGHT was highly praised by Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman and Thom Hartmann.

Jan
26
Thu
Carrie Smith: Forgotten City @ Aunt Agatha's
Jan 26 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

RC Creative Writing alumna Carrie Smith joins our book club to talk about and sign her new novel Forgotten City. Everyone is welcome.

Feb
26
Sun
Ann Arbor Storytellers Guild @ AADL Free Space (3rd floor)
Feb 26 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
All invited to listen to guild members swap stories or bring their own to tell.
2-4 p.m., Ann Arbor District Library Freespace (3rd floor), 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 971-5763.
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