Steve Hughes was born and raised in Ann Arbor, and still has a number of friends/family there. He’s also the publisher of Detroit’s longest-running zine, Stupor, and has many author friends and fans in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area.
Steve Hughes wrote Stiff with an audience in mind. As creator of The Good Tyme Writers Buffet-a literary series/potluck which runs out of a neighborhood art space-Hughes offers up each story in the collection like a dish to be passed. Just as each Buffet was thematically tied to a gallery show, so is each story in Stiff. The book serves as a kind of photo album of moments when artists were working separately and collaboratively in the same space. The process of eating, drinking, making, and working together (and apart) is what Hughes says is the central theme of the collection: finding home.
In Hughes’s stories, home is not just a physical structure where one arranges their stuff but the place where one most belongs. Finding that place can be a lifelong struggle. In “Ripening,” a man and woman in an illicit affair witness their genitals leave their bodies for a rendezvous. In “I Don’t Feel Sorry for Mrs. Miller,” a paperboy becomes “friendly” with one of his customers. In “Dexter’s Song,” a drug-addicted saxophone player meets a bored suburban woman who gives him her ex-boyfriend’s sax, which causes him to play better than ever. The stories in Stiff are odd and otherworldly, with themes ranging from cowboys to “burn” to “girlfriend material” to summer. And yet, at the end of the day, the characters in these stories are all just looking for a place to hang their hats and feel whole again.
Readers of contemporary fiction will enjoy this outrageous and evocative ensemble of stories.
Praise for Stiff
“Combining magical surrealism with downright grittiness, Steve Hughes’s astounding. Stiff reads as if Franz Kafka and Denis Johnson hooked up in one of the meaner sections of Detroit and spent the next year together in an abandoned pizza parlor writing short stories. Yes, it is that damn good.” –Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time
Join us for an evening with New York Times Bestselling author, Kurt Eichenwald, an acclaimed and award-winning investigative journalist (The New York Times, Newsweek, Vanity Fair) and writer of bestselling books (Conspiracy of Fools, 500 Days, The Informant). He is known for his relentless investigations and exhaustive research. A MIND UNRAVELED: A Memoir utilizes the same approach—only this time, Eichenwald turns his journalistic lens on himself. He will personalize and sign any backlist copies.
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Seating at the event will be first-come first-served. This event will be a standing-room crowd, so if you require a seat for medical reasons, please contact us in advance to make arrangements.
Praise for A MIND UNRAVELED: A Memoir
“This book will make me think differently as a doctor. Kurt Eichenwald is a tremendously talented writer. When you travel on his personal journey, it is pure gold.”
—Sanjay Gupta, MD, chief medical correspondent, CNN
“This powerful account provides an important blueprint for anyone struggling to overcome serious challenges.”
—Katie Couric
« “In this riveting personal narrative, best-selling Eichenwald (500 Days, 2012) tells his devastating story of suffering from epilepsy and waging a nearly lifelong battle against discrimination accorded those who endure this malady … Eichenwald has created a universal tale of resilience wrapped in a primal scream against the far-too-savage world. Book clubs will clamor for this tale of survival and call for compassion.”
—Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
« “[G]ripping … Meticulous but passionate, Eichenwald’s narrative is a suspenseful medical thriller about a condition that makes everyday life a mine field, a fierce indictment of a callous medical establishment, and an against-the-odds recovery saga. The result is a terrific memoir with a stinging critique of health care gone awry.”
—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
About the Book
A MIND UNRAVELED is a deeply searing account of Eichenwald’s ongoing struggle with epilepsy. Diagnosed with the disorder as a teenager, Eichenwald details the abuses he faced while incapacitated post-seizure, the discrimination he fought that almost cost him his education and employment, and the darkest moments when he contemplated suicide as the only solution to ending his physical and emotional pain. He recounts how medical incompetence would have killed him but for the heroic actions of a brilliant neurologist and the friendship of two young men who assumed part of the burden of his struggle.
Over 3.4 million Americans (65 million worldwide) have been diagnosed with epilepsy, and many more cases go undiagnosed. While it is the fourth most common neurological disorder and affects people of all ages, it is a rarely discussed condition. A MIND UNRAVELED finally gives the attention epilepsy deserves and serves as an inspirational message for not only those afflicted with the condition, but also for anyone grappling with challenges they feel compelled to keep secret. Eichenwald shows how facing his own morality ultimately made him a stronger person, and that it is possible to rise from despair to the heights of unimagined success.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
KURT EICHENWALD is a New York Times bestselling author of four previous nonfiction books. His second, The Informant, was made into a movie starring Matt Damon and directed by Steven Soderbergh. In addition to his distinguished work as a senior writer at Newsweek and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, Eichenwald spent two decades as a senior writer at The New York Times, where he was a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also a two-time winner of the George Polk Award, as well as the winner of the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism and an Emmy Award nominee. He lives in Dallas with his family.
One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends – a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including prose by David Wade and poetry by Will Brewbaker and Talin Tahajian.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State. Free. 764-6330.
Join us for a book signing featuring four acclaimed Michigan picture book authors! Maria Dismondy will be signing copies of her newest book, A Fruit Salad Friend, as well as her other popular back list titles. Lisa Wheeler is the author of the award-winning Dino-Sports series, as well as The Christmas Boot and her newest release A Hug is for Holding Me. They will be joined by Hindi and Hollywood film screenwriter Supriya Kelkar, who will be releasing her newest book The Many Colors of Harpreet Singh and Lisa Rose who will share her Star Powers books.
Storytelling by this New Jersey-based author and playwright, a Moth GrandSLAM winner whose stories have been featured on NPR and The Moth podcast. Hors d’oeuvres at 6 p.m. Reception and desserts.
6:30-9 p.m., EMU Sponberg Theatre, Quirk Hall, Ypsilanti. Tickets $18 (students, $10) at tinyurl.com/ycmyq7z5. 487-0978.
Literati is thrilled to welcome astrophysicist Adam Becker who will be presenting his new book What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics
About What Is Real?:
The untold story of the heretical thinkers who dared to question the nature of our quantum universe
Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity’s finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation and dismissed questions about the reality underlying quantum physics as meaningless. A mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, Copenhagen endured, as Bohr’s students vigorously protected his legacy, and the physics community favored practical experiments over philosophical arguments. As a result, questioning the status quo long meant professional ruin. And yet, from the 1920s to today, physicists like John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics. What Is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth.
Adam Becker is a science writer with a PhD in astrophysics. He has written for the BBC and New Scientist, and is a visiting scholar at University of California, Berkeley’s Office for History of Science and Technology. He lives in Oakland, California.
Literati is proud to be partnering with the Helen Zell Writers Program to host poet Elizabeth Alexander at University of Michigan Museum of Art Apse
Elizabeth Alexander is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. She has recently been appointed President of the Andrew H. Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder in the arts and humanities. She composed and recited “Praise Song for the Day” for President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration. She is the author of six books of poetry–including American Sublime, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize–and is the first winner of the Jackson Prize for Poetry and a National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellow. She was the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University for 15 years and chaired the African American Studies Department.
Literati is thrilled to welcome author Alyson Hagy in support of her novel, Scribe.
About Scribe:
A haunting, evocative tale about the power of storytelling
A brutal civil war has ravaged the country, and contagious fevers have decimated the population. Abandoned farmhouses litter the isolated mountain valleys and shady hollows. The economy has been reduced to barter and trade.
In this craggy, unwelcoming world, the central character of Scribe ekes out a lonely living on the family farmstead where she was raised and where her sister met an untimely end. She lets a migrant group known as the Uninvited set up temporary camps on her land, and maintains an uneasy peace with her cagey neighbors and the local enforcer. She has learned how to make paper and ink, and she has become known for her letter-writing skills, which she exchanges for tobacco, firewood, and other scarce resources. An unusual request for a letter from a man with hidden motivations unleashes the ghosts of her troubled past and sets off a series of increasingly calamitous events that culminate in a harrowing journey to a crossroads.
Drawing on traditional folktales and the history and culture of Appalachia, Alyson Hagy has crafted a gripping, swiftly plotted novel that touches on pressing issues of our time–migration, pandemic disease, the rise of authoritarianism–and makes a compelling case for the power of stories to both show us the world and transform it.
Alyson Hagy was raised on a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She is the author of seven previous works of fiction, most recently Boleto. She lives in Laramie, Wyoming.
This award-winning local writer reads from and discusses Tazia and Gemma, her new novel that spans 1911-1961, moving forward in time with the story of an unwed pregnant Italian immigrant and then backward with the story of her daughter’s search for her father. Writer Deepak Singh calls it a “moving story of racial and religious conflicts.” Followed by a menorah lighting and sufganiyot (doughnuts).
7-8:30 p.m., JCC, 2935 Birch Hollow Dr. Free. Preregistration required. 971-0990.
U-M classical studies professor Ian Fielding and U-M French professor Peggy McCracken discuss Fielding’s book examining the importance of Ovid’s poetry of exile to the Latin poets writing in the social upheaval of the 4th-6th centuries, as the Roman Empire gradually collapsed.
5:30 p.m., 100 U-M Hatcher Grad Library Gallery, enter from the Diag. Free. 763-8994.
