Local poet Scott Beal, an award-winning U-M creative writing grad, reads from his recently published debut collection, which deploys familiar characters from Rapunzel to Perseus and whimsically surreal tall tales to explore the varied and violent forces that shape human identities. MacArthur-winning poet and former U-M English professor Alice Fulton praises Beal’s “revelatory” tales for their “surprising linguistic and narrative moves [that] elicit the unbidden traumas and dazzling weirdness of lived experience. Refreshments. Signing.
8-9 p.m., Neutral Zone, 310 E. Washington.
Children’s book author Chris Van Allsburg will give a presentation and sign in support of his latest work, The Misadventures of Sweetie-Pie.
Van Allsburg is a Michigan native and U-M alum. He is the winner of two Caldecott Medals, for Jumanji and The Polar Express, as well as the recipient of a Caldecott Honor Book for The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. He has also been awarded the Regina Medal for lifetime achievement in children’s literature. In 1982, Jumanji was nominated for a National Book Award and was made into a popular feature film, as was its sequel, Zathura. Van Allsburg was formerly an instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design, and lives in Rhode Island with his wife and two children.
Seating will be limited. Details forthcoming from literatibookstore,com
Jon Michael Darga, a 2014 RC Creative Writing (honors) graduate, answers your questions about how to pursue a creative career in publishing.
Jon wrote his senior thesis on women and the medieval modern in The Lord of the Rings . He was happily fixated on semicolons and Oxford commas as the editor of last year’s RC Review. Interning with Midwestern Gothic literary magazine and publishing press, Jon co-created theVoices of the Middle West annual festival, organized book tours, and came to realize his love of all things publishing. After attending the Columbia Publishing Course, Jon now works as an agent’s assistant at Park Literary in New York City.ago Reader’s Pure Fiction Issue and Midwestern Gothic, among other places. He is also an editor at the Great Lakes Review where he coordinates the online Narrative Map essay project.
Katie Hartsock is the author of a poetry chapbook, Hotels, Motels, and Extended Stays, published by Toadlily Press in their 2014 Quartet Series. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Crab Orchard Review, DIAGRAM, Massachusetts Review, Measure, Michigan Quarterly Review, RHINO, and Southwest Review; and in the anthology Down to the Dark River: Poems about the Mississippi River (Louisiana Literature Press, 2015). She holds a MFA from the University of Michigan and will receive a PhD in Comparative Literary Studies from Northwestern University in summer 2015. Her full-length manuscript has been a finalist for the Yale Series of Younger Poets and the New Criterion Poetry Prize.
RC Writing alumna and U-M professor Laura Kasischke has published eight collections of poetry and eight novels. Her novels include Suspicious River (1996), White Bird in a Blizzard (1999), and The Life Before Her Eyes(2002). They have been translated widely, and adapted for film. She has been the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the DiCastagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, several Pushcart Prizes, the Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, and the Beatrice Hawley Award. Her other collections of poetry include Space, in Chains, Lilies, Without, Gardening in the Dark, Wild Brides, Housekeeping in a Dream, Fire and Flower and What It Wasn’t. Her poems and stories have been published in Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic , The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Iowa Review and elsewhere.
Note: rescheduled from February 11
U-M English professor and renowned poet Mattawa and highly acclaimed Latino poet Espada discuss Espada’s work. In conjunction with Espada’s reading on Mar. 17.
Midwestern author Stuart Dybek will be keynote speaker at the second annual Voices of the Middle West festival on Saturday, March 21, 2015, at the University of Michigan Residential College, 721 E. University Ave. in Ann Arbor.
The free festival features panel discussions by authors and publishers, an open mic event, and an all-day bookfair showcasing literary journals and independent presses from all over the Midwest, with issues and books for sale.
Stuart Dybek, a lifelong Midwesterner and author of The Coast of Chicago, Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, and Paper Lantern, will give a keynote address at 5 pm. A public reception and book signing will follow.
The festival will bring together U-M students and faculty with writers and presses from all over the Midwest to showcase the rich, magnificent work being produced here in the Midwest, the stories that need to be told, the voices that need to be heard. Panel discussions on fables in Midwestern literature, gender parity in publishing, and other literary discussions will feature outstanding regional authors Laura Kasischke, CJ Hribal, Caitlin Horrocks, Anne Valente, Marcus Wicker, Matt Bell, and more. The festival’s authors will read at Literati Bookstore, 124 East Washington Street in Ann Arbor, on Friday, March 20th beginning at 6 PM.
More information at http://midwestgothic.com/voices/
Author’s Forum Presents: Making Callaloo in Detroit: A Conversation with the RC’s Lolita Hernandez and Laura Thomas
Anna Clark’s new book, Michigan Literary Luminaries, will be published on May 4 by The History Press. Celebrate the release on Saturday, May 30 at Signal-Return (1345 Division Street, Suite 102), which is hosting this event. “Our agenda is simple: drink, food, music, laughter, joy.”
Poet Bob Clifford is an RC creative writing alum (’79) and is former associate director and coordinator of academic programs, where he designed and implemented an academic program for over 600 student-athletes and monitored compliance of Big Ten and NCAA regulations. He is currently the associate athletic director at Oregon State University. Clifford will be at Nicola’s Books for the release of his latest collection of poetry, Gasping for Air.
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.
