Nicola’s Books proudly presents author Paula Hawkins In Conversation with Author Nick Petrie on Wednesday, May 17 at 7:30 PM. Included in the evening Ms. Hawkins will read excerpts from her new novel, Into the Water (which is being released May 2), take part in an audience Q&A, and sign copies of the book in her only Michigan stop on the book tour.
With over 8.5 million copies sold in the United States since its publication two years ago, and 20 million sold worldwide, Paula Hawkins’ debut The Girl on the Trainhas broken nearly every publishing record in the books. It has spent over 100 weeks and counting on the New York Times Bestseller list, including 40 weeks at #1, making it the top selling book in America for two straight years in a row, and was made into a major motion picture starring Emily Blunt. The Girl on the Train introduced Paula Hawkins as a bold, unforgettable voice in psychological literary suspense.
Now, with Into the Water, Hawkins proves that her work reaches far beyond definitions of category, delivering an urgent story that is as much about relationships and human instincts as it is about a crime. When a single mother and a teenage girl each turn up dead at the bottom of the river, just weeks apart, the ensuing investigation dredges up a complicated history, threatening to undo everyone in the close-knit community. Suspicions shift from character to character, escalating the tension until the very last page.
Nick Petrie received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington, won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, 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. Burning Bright is the follow-up to his debut The Drifter.
**If you purchased a ticket through Ticketmaster or Nicola’s Books for the original venue site (The Michigan Theater) please contact the store at 734-662-0600 for more information.
One of the country’s top regional antiquarian fairs, up to 40 dealers (including many new this year) from 12 states offering manuscripts, vintage photos and prints, antique maps, and a wide array of old, rare, curious, and fine books, including first editions, lots of collectible children’s books, fine leather bindings, modern poetry, Michigan history, travel & exploration, illustrated books, photography, antique maps, cookbooks, and more. Also, representatives of one of Michigan’s finest bookbinders exhibits its handiwork and answer questions about book preservation and restoration. Admission charge benefits the U-M Clements Library. Photo: Myra Klarman.
11 a.m.-5 p.m., Michigan Union Ballroom. $5 donation. annarborbookfair.com. 995-1891.
Celebrate spring with the fresh crop of books from the Wayne State University Press! A panel of local authors will be on hand to read from their new publications and sign copies, including Laura Thomas and Keith Taylor. Light refreshments will be served. Registration is recommended. Register online (http://gplib.evanced.info/signup/EventDetails?EventId=51672&backTo=Calendar&startDate=2017%2F05%2F01) or in person, beginning Wednesday, April 26.
Books will be available for purchase and signing.
Refreshments for this event are sponsored by the Grosse Pointe Library Foundation, as part of the ongoing Write On Pointe programming series.
At 6pm, we will hear from Ellen Stone & Jill Halpern at Cardamom Restaurant.
At 7pm, we will move across the courtyard to Bookbound Bookstore where David Pratt & Monica Rico will share their work.
Ann Arbor author David Pratt will be reading from his recent coming-of-age novel Wallaçonia. Previous works include Lambda Award winner Bob the Book, Looking After Joey and My Movie, a short story collection.
Monica Rico is a second generation Mexican American feminist and poet who will read from her upcoming chapbook Twisted Mouth of the Tulip. Sample her work at slowdownandeat.com.
This event is part of the Ann Arbor Book Festival which features a variety of book-related events from June 15 to June 17. Bookbound Bookstore will also have a booth at the Street Fair from 12pm – 5pm on June 17 (Washington Street between 4th Ave. and 5th Ave). Click here for more information about the festival.
5:00pm – Blackstone Bookstore & Cultural Center
214 W. Michigan Ave, Ypsilanti
Featuring: John Darryl Winston & Vanessa Marr
6:00pm – Ypsilanti District Library
229 W. Michigan Ave, Ypsilanti
Featuring: Whittaker Road Works anthology launch, plus kids’ activities
The authors will discuss how their fiction transforms home into character. How do writers use assumptions about familiar places to find the unexpected and surprising? When is a hometown the whole trouble, and also the last, best hope for change? The authors will also talk about how the unique landscape of the upper Midwest inspires their fiction.
Kelly Fordon’s work has appeared in The Florida Review, The Kenyon Review (KRO), Rattle and various other journals. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks. The first one, On the Street Where We Live, won the 2012 Standing Rock Chapbook Award and the latest one, The Witness, won the 2016 Eric Hoffer Award for the Chapbook and was shortlisted for the Grand Prize. Her novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind, was chosen as a Michigan Notable Book, a 2016 Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, an Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist in the short story category. She works for The College for Creative Studies, Springfed Arts and The InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit.
Laura Hulthen Thomas is the author of the short fiction collection, States of Motion, published by Wayne State University Press. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including The Cimarron Review, Nimrod International Journal, Epiphany and Witness. She received her MFA in fiction writing from Warren Wilson College. She currently heads the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of Michigan’s Residential College, where she teaches fiction and creative nonfiction.
The Hummingbird Global Writers’ Circle is an international reading series started by Dr. Debotri Dhar, CEW Visiting Scholar (2015-17) and Lecturer in Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. The aim of this literary initiative is to bring writers and communities together in different parts of the world to foster a love of books, to discuss the craft of writing, and to promote creative dialogue and global understanding in small ways. The name was inspired by the tiny hummingbird which builds its home with just a few drops of nectar, a root here, a leaf there, and a little bit of sky.
The Circle’s themed readings by established and emerging writers are free and open to the community. The theme for the first event of the Circle is feminism/ gender, to be held on Monday August 21 (3-5 pm) at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
The writer-speakers for this session are Linda Gregerson, Laura Hulthen Thomas, Mike Ferro and Debotri Dhar (writer bios below), who will read from their poetry and fiction, followed by conversation /Q&A.
Light refreshments will be served. All members of the community are welcome to attend, however, RSVP is required. If you wish to hear our speakers read from their work, share tips, and engage in conversation, please RSVP to debotri@umich.edu.
Started in 2003, the Kerrytown BookFest is an event celebrating those who create books and those who read them. The primary goal is to highlight the area’s rich heritage in the book and printing arts while showcasing local and regional individuals, businesses, and organizations. Since 2003 we have been growing, sharing, and discovering more and more about the rich book culture in our region.
The BookFest features authors, storytellers, publishers bookbinders, book artists, book illustrators, poets, letterpress printers, wood engravers, calligraphers, papermakers, librarians, teachers, publishers, new, used, and antiquarian booksellers and many others associated with books and their diverse forms, structure, and content.
More information at kerrytownbookfest.org
10:30 AM – Main Tent
Community Book Award Winner Presentation – James and Robin Agnew
11:00 AM – Main Tent – “Women in History” with Laurel Huber Davis, Theresa Kaminski, Greer Macallister and Pamela Toler with Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende as moderator
11:00 AM – Kerrytown Concert House –
“Terror in the City of Champions” with Tom Stanton moderated by D.E. Johnson
11:00 AM – Kerrytown Tent –
Mother Goose
11:45 AM – Kerrytown Tent – “Everyone Loves Dogs!” with Cartoonist Dave Coverly and Stacie Grissom and Morgane Chang from Bark Box and a FUNDRAISER for the Humane Society of Huron Valley Bountiful Bowls Program – Please bring dry dog or cat food or cat litter on the day of the event for donation to the program
12:15 PM – Main Tent – “Historical Suspense” with James R. Benn, Anna Lee Huber and Deanna Raybourn moderated by Nancy Herriman
12:15 PM – Kerrytown Concert House – “The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek” with Howard Markel
1:00 PM – Kerrytown Tent – “Fantasy and Adventure” with Middle Grade author Ted Sanders and moderated by Molly McCaffrey
1:30 PM – Main Tent –
“Literary Leanings” with Peter Ho Davies, Simon Van Booy moderated by Douglas Trevor
1:30 PM – Kerrytown Concert House –
“Civil Rights in 1960’s Detroit” with Stephen M. Ward and the story of James and Grace Lee Boggs
2:15 PM – Kerrytown Tent –
“YA Authors From Michigan!” with Erica Chapman, Kristin Bartley Lenz, Heather Meloche and Darcy Woods moderated by Patrick Flores-Scott
2:45 PM – Main Tent – “Short Stories from ‘Bob Seger’s House'” with Ellen Airgood, Loren D. Estelman, Gordon Henry and Michael Zadoorian moderated by M.L. Liebler
2:45 PM – Kerrytown Concert House – “A $500 Dollar House in Detroit” with Drew Philip and moderated by Desiree Cooper
3:30 PM – Kerrytown Tent –
“Page Turning Thrillers” with David Bell, Karen Dionne and Stephen Mack Jones moderated by Elizabeth Heiter
4:00 pm – Main Tent – “Poetic Musings” with Robert Fanning, Cindy Hunter Morgan, Keith Taylor and Z.G. Tomaszewski moderated by Zilka Joseph
4:00 pm – Kerrytown Concert House – “Washtenaw Literacy Volunteer Workshop” – Learn about becoming a volunteer for Washtenaw Literacy
A U-M Residential College creative writing alumna, Laura Hulthen Thomas heads the undergraduate creative writing program at the Residential College, where she teaches fiction and creative nonfiction.
A U-M Residential College creative writing alumna, Laura Kasischke’s book of poems, Space, in Chains, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She teaches writing at U-M English and the Residential College.
Set in Michigan small towns both real and fictional, the stories in Laura Hulthen Thomas’s State of Motion take place against a backdrop of economic turmoil and the domestic cost of the war on terror. As familiar places, privilege, and faith disappear, what remains leaves these broken characters wondering what hope is left.
Laura Kasischke’s Where Now: New and Selected Poems showcases her probing vision that subverts the so-called “normal.” A lover of fairy tales, Kasischke’s command of the symbolic includes a keen attention to sound in her exploration of the everyday—whether reflections on loss or the complicated realities of childhood and family.
Many RC creative writing alums will read.
