Calendar

May
8
Wed
Fiction at Literati: Susan Choi, plus conversation with Lillian Li @ Literati
May 8 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Literati is so excited to welcome author Susan Choi who will be reading and discussing her new novel Trust Exercise. Susan will be joined for a post-reading conversation with author Lillian Li.

About Trust Exercise:
In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed–or untoyed with–by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.

The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls–until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true–though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place–revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.

Susan Choi is the author of the novels My EducationA Person of InterestAmerican Woman, and The Foreign Student. Her work has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award and the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction. With David Remnick, she co-edited Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. She’s received NEA and Guggenheim Foundation fellowships. She lives in Brooklyn.

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 in Guernica, 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.

Aug
20
Tue
The Missing Piece: A Collection of Kidney Transplant Stories @ AADL Downtown (Fourth Floor)
Aug 20 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

The University of Michigan Transplant Center and Wolverines For Life present several authors/contributors of The Missing Piece: A Collection of Kidney Transplant Storiesas they  share their experience as kidney donors or recipients.

The Missing Piece is a window into the world of kidney transplant recipients and donors. These powerful, first-hand accounts, written by patients at Michigan Medicine, provide frank glimpses into the highs and the lows experienced by those struggling with a life-altering illness. The contributing authors discuss the coping techniques that worked and those that did not; how they knew when it was time to consider dialysis; and, how they shared their experiences and news with family, friends, and even complete strangers in a quest for a donation from a living donor.

Attendees are encouraged to ask authors questions about their transplant experience, get a copy of their book signed, and join the organ donor registry to help support future transplant recipients.

If you are unable to attend but would still like to join the Michigan Organ Donor Registry, please visit www.golm.org/go/wfl. This event, a partnership with University of Michigan Transplant Center and Wolverines For Life, includes a book signing and books will be for sale at the event. 

This event will be recorded

Aug
22
Thu
Book Club Bonanza: Celebrating Literati’s Monthly Book Clubs @ Literati
Aug 22 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

A special joint meeting of our monthly Literati, Poetry, and Feminist Book Clubs! 

Each club will meet in our second-floor events space to discuss August’s picks as usual. As always, you can purchase book club selections for 15% off the retail price. 

During the event, each club’s moderator will also talk about their monthly book club to all guests–each club’s mission, selection process, upcoming picks for the fall, and more. Guests from these three book clubs will then have the opportunity to meet & greet over provided refreshments. 

This a great opportunity to come to your normal book club while learning about our other book clubs, or–if you’re new to our book clubs–a chance to go through a complete meeting for one of them while learning about (and meeting participants from) all 3! 

Feminist Book Club

We strive to foster a fun, thoughtful, and safe environment in which to discuss current issues surrounding feminism and equality.

This month, we’ll discuss The Old Drift, by Namwali Serpente

Poetry Book Club

Next to fostering a greater appreciation for poetry by reading poems aloud and sharing reflections, our other primary goal is to ensure that the book club space is safe, inclusive, and exciting

This month’s pick is A Piece of Good News, by Katie Peterson.

Literati Book Club

This month’s pick is Orange World and Other Stories, by Karen Russell!

Aug
27
Tue
Stories from North Star Reach @ Literati
Aug 27 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Listen to teenage campers, counselors and staff share stories about the impact camp has had on their lives.

North Star Reach is a medically-supported camp on 105-acres in Pinckney, Michigan, serving children with serious health challenges and their families. Since 2016, through activity-packed residential summer camp and weekend spring and fall family camp programs, we have hosted more than 1,500 campers, including children living with sickle cell anemia, congenital heart disorders, and organ transplants. We are a not-for-profit organization dependent upon generous donors to serve all children at no cost to their families. To learn more about North Star Reach, visit www.northstarreach.org.

Sep
6
Fri
Randall Monroe in Conversation with Jim Ottaviani @ Rackham Auditorium
Sep 6 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE TICKETS

Literati Bookstore is thrilled to welcome Randall Munroe to Rackham Auditorium in downtown Ann Arbor in support of his latest book, How to: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems. The program will feature a presentation, conversation, and Q&A. A book signing will follow. Detailed instructions for the book signing to come.

Tickets are general admission and include a hardcover copy of How to, to be picked up at the venue the evening of the event. Literati will have additional copies of Randall Munroe’s previous titles available for purchase. Parking in downtown Ann Arbor on Friday evenings can be difficult. Surface spots are sparse, but a detailed map of available (and walkable) parking structures can be found here.

For any task you might want to do, there’s a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It’s full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.

Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you’re a baby boomer or a 90’s kid by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and powering your house by destroying the fabric of space-time. And if you want to get rid of the book once you’re done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapor, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth’s mantle, or launching it into the Sun.

By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn’t just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, Munroe invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.

Randall Munroe is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer, the science question-and-answer blog What If, and the popular webcomic xkcd. A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full-time. He lives in Massachusetts.

Event Questions? Email john@literatibookstore.com

Sep
12
Thu
Zell Visiting Writers Series: Gala Mukomolova: Roundtable @ Hopwood Room, 1176 Angell Hall
Sep 12 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

(This description is for the talk at 5:30 pm)

Gala Mukomolova’s full-length poetry book, Without Protection (Coffee House Press 2019), explores her complex identity―Jewish, post-Soviet, refugee, New Yorker, lesbian― through a Russian fable.

Mukomolova is a Moscow-born, Brooklyn-raised poet and essayist. She is the author of the chapbook One Above One Below: Positions and Lamentations (YesYes Books 2018). She received her MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her past residencies include Vermont Studio Center, Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists and The Pink Door. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, PEN American, PANK and elsewhere. She writes articles on astrology for NYLON and is cohost of the podcast Big Dyke Energy.

This event is free and open to the public. Onsite book sales will be provided by Literati Bookstore.

The Zell Visiting Writers Series brings outstanding writers to campus each semester. UMMA is pleased to be the site for most of these events. The Series is made possible through a generous gift from U-M alumna Helen Zell (BA ’64, LLDHon ’13). For more information, please visit the Zell Visiting Writers Program webpage: https://lsa.umich.edu/writers

For any questions about the event or to share accommodation needs, please email asbates@umich.edu– we are eager to help ensure that this event is inclusive to you. The building, event space, and restrooms are wheelchair accessible. Diaper changing tables are available in nearby restrooms. Gender-inclusive restrooms are available on the second floor of the Museum, accessible via the stairs, or in nearby Hatcher Graduate Library (Floors 3, 4, 5, and 6). The Hatcher Library also offers a reflection room (4th Floor South Stacks), and a lactation room (Room 13W, an anteroom to the basement women’s staff restroom, or Room 108B, an anteroom of the first floor women’s restroom). ASL interpreters and CART services are available upon request; please email asbates@umich.edu at least two weeks prior to the event.

Salmon Rushdie in Conversation with Rich Fahle @ Rackham Auditorium
Sep 12 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Tickets on sale now. Purchase here.

Literati Bookstore is honored to welcome renown, Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie to Rackham Auditorium on the campus of the University of Michigan in support of his latest novel, Quichotte. The author will be joined in conversation by Rich Fahle of PBS Books

Tickets are general admission and include a pre-signed hardcover copy of Quichotte, to be picked up at the venue the evening of the event. Literati will have additional copies of Salman Rushdie’s previous titles available for purchase. Parking in downtown Ann Arbor on Thursday evenings can be difficult. Surface spots are sparse, but a detailed map of available parking structures can be found here.

About the book: 

A dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age—a tour de force that is as much an homage to an immortal work of literature as it is to the quest for love and family, by Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie

Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen.” Meanwhile, his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.

Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirize the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse. And with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of Rushdie’s work, the fully realized lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction.

Salman Rushdie is the author of twelve novels—Grimus, Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and The Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, Luka and the Fire of Life, andTwo Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights—and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published four works of nonfiction—Joseph Anton, The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands, and Step Across This Line—and co-edited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.

Rich Fahle is Executive Producer of PBS Books and also the Chief Strategy Officer at 24G, a Detroit-based digital experience agency. He has worked with books and authors for more than 20 years. He was a Vice President at Borders Group, and prior to that, communications director at C-SPAN, where he helped launch Book TV.

Questions? Email John@literatibookstore.com 

Story Night for Grown Ups: Beverly Black, Steve Daut, Jill Halpern, and Laura Lee Hayes @ Crazy Wisdom
Sep 12 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Tellers will be Beverly Black, Steve Daut, Jill Halpern,and Laura Lee Hayes – Storytelling has power. Much more than just talking about personal experiences, today’s professional, passionate and playful storytellers can grab your attention and hold you spellbound with each word and each gesture. Hosted by Steve Daut and Laura Lee Hayes. Mark your calendars and join us for Story Night in the Crazy Wisdom Tea Room

 

 

Sep
19
Thu
Zell Visiting Writers Series: Wayetu Moore: Roundtable @ Hopwood Room, 1176 Angell Hall
Sep 19 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

(This description is for the talk at 5:30 pm)

Wayétu Moore’s debut novel She Would Be King reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years. It was named a best book of 2018 by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Entertainment Weekly & BuzzFeed.

Moore is the founder of One Moore Book, a non-profit organization that creates and distributes culturally relevant books for underrepresented readers. Her first bookstore opened in Monrovia, Liberia in 2015. Her writing can be found in The Paris Review, Frieze Magazine, Guernica, The Atlantic Magazine and other publications. She has been featured in The Economist Magazine, NPR, NBC, BET and ABC, among others, for her work in advocacy for diversity in children’s literature.

She is a graduate of Howard University, University of Southern California and Columbia University. Moore is a founding faculty member of Randolph College MFA program and a Distinguished Visiting Writer at Syracuse University.

This event is free and open to the public.

The Zell Visiting Writers Series brings outstanding writers to campus each semester. The Series is made possible through a generous gift from U-M alumna Helen Zell (BA ’64, LLDHon ’13). For more information, please visit the Zell Visiting Writers Program webpage: https://lsa.umich.edu/writers

For any questions about the event or to share accommodation needs, please email asbates@umich.edu– we are eager to help ensure that this event is inclusive to you. The building, event space, and restrooms are wheelchair accessible. A lactation room (Angell Hall #5209), reflection room (Haven Hall #1506), and gender-inclusive restroom (Angell Hall 5th floor) are available on site. ASL interpreters and CART services are available upon request; please email asbates@umich.edu at least two weeks prior to the event.

Jonathan Safran Foer in Conversation @ Rackham Auditorium
Sep 19 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Please register your attendance here.

The University of Michigan School for Environtment, Sustainbale Food Systems Initiative and Literati Bookstore are thrilled to welcome Jonathan Safran Foer to Rackham Auditorium on the campus of the University of Michigan in support of his landmark book We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast.

Join New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) to learn how saving the planet begins on our breakfast plates. With a reading and discussion of his new book, We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, Safran Foer will highlight small behavioral changes that could help move the needle on climate change.

Literati Bookstore will be on-hand to sell copies of the book.

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