Following the devastation resulting from the 1915 Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, the survivors of the massacres were dispersed across the Middle East, Europe and North and South America. Not content with watching World War I silently from the sidelines, a large number of Armenian volunteers joined the Légion d’Orient. They were trained in Cyprus and fought courageously in Palestine alongside Allied commander General Allenby, eventually playing a crucial role in defeating the German and Ottoman forces in Palestine at the Battle of Arara in September 1918. The Armenian legionnaires signed up on the understanding that they would be fighting in Syria and Turkey, and, should the Allies be successful, they would be part of an occupying army in their old homelands, laying the foundation for a self-governing Armenian state.
Susan Pattie describes the motivations and dreams of the Armenian Legionnaires and their ultimate betrayal as the French and the British shifted their priorities, leaving their ancestral homelands to the emerging Republic of Turkey. Complete with eyewitness accounts, letters and photographs, this book provides an insight into relations between the Great Powers through the lens of a small, vulnerable people caught in a war that was not their own, but which had already destroyed their known world.
Copies of “The Armenian Legionnaires” will be available for purchase (cash only) at the event.
Susan Pattie, former Director of the Armenian Institute in London is currently leader of the Pilot Project of the Armenian Diaspora Survey, funded by the Gulbenkian Foundation. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Reception for the artists. The show continues at the RC Art Gallery through the end of Winter term.
Perfect for this new, fresh, sweet springtime: For the April edition of the Motor Signal Reading Series, two innovative, multi-genre writers are going to crack us open and help us imagine what’s possible.
Motor Signal, now in its sixth season, jolts the typical literary reading out of its traditional form. An activity of co-creation connects the featured writers with the audience in a unique way. In celebration of the beauty of text, an artist at Signal-Return makes a handset, limited-edition broadside of the writers’ work for event attendees. And we proudly pay writers for their time and talent.
Hosted by RC writing alumna Anna Clark.
ELIZABETH SCHMUHL is a multidisciplinary artist–writer, dancer, and painter– and the author of Premonitions (Wayne State University Press). She illustrates essays for The Rumpus, has taught writing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and worked in digital development at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. She is currently Shamel Pitts’ Marketing and Campaign Manager and works at U-M; she is also an RC writing alum.
KELLY FORDON’S work has appeared in The Florida Review, The Kenyon Review (KRO), Rattle and various other journals. Her novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind, was chosen as a 2016 Michigan Notable Book among other awards. On the Street Where We Live, a one-act play adapted from her poetry was chosen for the 2018 Dream Up Festival in New York. She is the author of three award-winning poetry chapbooks and a full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press 2019). www.kellyfordon.com
Literati is excited to welcome poet Sue William Silverman in celebration of her new poetry collection If the Girl Never Learns: Poems. Sue will be joined by fellow poets Keith Taylor, Elizabeth Schumhl, and Marc Sheehan who will be reading from their own work.
About If the Girl Never Learns:
From the opening lines, it’s clear The Girl at the center of these poems is damaged–which is another way to say she’s a survivor. If the Girl Never Learns moves from the personal to the mythic to the apocalyptic, because The Girl would do anything, even go to hell, to save her soul. So, she resists, takes action to overturn society’s suffocating ideal of Good Girldom. The poems’ sense of breathlessness reflects The Girl’s absolute need to control her own destiny, to outrun her past, while at the same time chasing a future she alone has envisioned and embodied. Because The Girl is, above all else, a badass.
Sue William Silverman’s first poetry collection is Hieroglyphics in Neon. She is also the author of four books of creative nonfiction. Her most recent book, The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew, was a finalist in Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award. Her memoir, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, won the AWP Award, and Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction is also a Lifetime TV original movie. Her craft book is Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir, and she teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
The poet Marc Sheehan is a life-long Michigan resident. He has earned degrees from Western Michigan University, Central Michigan University and the University of Michigan, where he received a Major Hopwood Award in Poetry. His honors also include grants from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has served as Writer Center Coordinator at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, and has reviewed books for both the Lansing Capital Times and On the Town.
Elizabeth Schmuhl is a multidisciplinary artist whose work appears in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, Paper Darts, PANK, Hobart, Pinwheel, and elsewhere. She has worked at various nonprofits, including the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, and currently works at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Keith Taylor has published many books over the years: collections of poetry, a collection of very short stories, co-edited volumes of essays and fiction, and a volume of poetry translated from Modern Greek.
Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and David Jibson • Second and Fourth Wednesdays, 7-9 p.m. in the Crazy Wisdom Tea Room • Second Wednesdays are poetry workshop nights. All writers welcome to share and discuss their own poetry and short fiction. Sign up for new participants begins at 6:45 p.m.
Fourth Wednesdays have a featured reader for 50 minutes and then open mic for an hour. All writers welcome to share. Sign up begins at 6:45 p.m. Free. Contact Ed at 668-7523; eacmorso@sbcglobal.net or cwpoetrycircle.tumblr.com.
This free, family-friendly event will feature local authors, crafts, book-ish artisans, kids’ story hours and more. Additional details, vendors and schedule below!
9 am – 4pm Vendors open!
All day: Take a book, leave a book. Find a new friend and pass on an old favorite! Any leftover books will be donated to the Ypsilanti District Library.
9 am – 3:30pm Creative Reuse Bookmark Making Station with SCRAP Box (Great Hall)
10 am – 11am Kids’ Storytime with TBD (Cafe)
12 pm – 1pm Kids’ Storytime with Black Men Read (Cafe)
2 pm – 3pm Kids’ Spanish Storytime with Cristina Heredia (Cafe)
— 2019 Vendors —
Bookstores:
Black Stone Bookstore & Cultural Center
Nicola’s Books Ann Arbor
Bookbound Bookstore
Children’s authors:
Jordan J. Scavone – Children’s Author
Lisa Rose
Debbie Taylor (author, ‘Sweet Music in Harlem’)
Kristin & Brad Northrup (authors, ‘Akeina the Crocodile’)
Adult authors:
Ken MacGregor’s Stories / LVP Publications (local horror author and anthologist)
Fifth Avenue Press
Thomas Gregory
Crysta K. Coburn
Patti Smith
Charles Taylor (author, ‘Dark Rhythm’)
Geezer girl (Jeanne Adwani)
Linda Jeffries (author, ‘We Thought We Knew You’ & ‘Who You Might Be’)
Young adult authors:
Shannon McGee
Lori Alden Holuta
Artisans:
Bunny and Smooch
Typewriter Poems Bespoke by A. Probst
Woodland Caravan
Jesse Rubenfeld Illustrations
Ephemeral Books
Jen Talley Art & Design
Clever Creations by Amy
Non-profits and other friends:
Friends of the Ypsilanti District Library
Washtenaw Literacy
SCRAP Box
Trader Joe’s-Ann Arbor,MI
BookDay : Booker T. Washington Holiday
What/Why:
3rd Annual Detroit Festival of Books (aka: Detroit Bookfest)! FREE!
Sunday, July 21, 2019
10am-4pm
Eastern Market
Shed3
2934 Russell Street
Detroit, Michigan
FREE entry for attendees!
Website
detroitbookfest.com
Questions
books at detroitbookfest dot com
200+ vendors
10,000+ attendees
BOOKS (ie: Used, Rare, Antiquarian, Unusual, Ephemera, Authors, etc)
Art
Comic Books
Maps
Vintage Board Games
Vinyl Records
And more!
Food
Beer
And…..FUNK MUSIC!
Official Bookfest Afterparty @ Eastern Market Brewing Company down the street!
Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and David Jibson • Second and Fourth Wednesdays, 7-9 p.m. in the Crazy Wisdom Tea Room • Second Wednesdays are poetry workshop nights. All writers welcome to share and discuss their own poetry and short fiction. Sign up for new participants begins at 6:45 p.m.
Fourth Wednesdays have a featured reader for 50 minutes and then open mic for an hour. All writers welcome to share. Sign up begins at 6:45 p.m. Free. Contact Ed at 668-7523; eacmorso@sbcglobal.net or cwpoetrycircle.tumblr.com.
July 24 • Ian Haight is an author, translator, and editor who graduated from U-M’s Residential College, worked with the UN, was a tenured professor at a Korean university, and now resides in Germany. His book, Celadon, won the First Book Prize in Poetry from Unicorn Press. He communicates an international, spiritually-minded aesthetic. Visit ianhaight.com.
Literati is pleased to be an official bookselling partner as Zingerman’s Community of Businesses presents acclaimed food activist and James Beard-award winning Chef Sean Sherman for a select dinner and presentation. Tickets are available through Zingerman’s, here. Proceeds from every ticket purchased will directly benefit The Sioux Chef team as they continue to work to educate and make indigenous foods more accessible through its nonprofit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS).
On Wednesday, August 7, 2019, at Zingerman’s Miss Kim restaurant, in Ann Arbor, acclaimed indigenous food activist and winner of two James Beard awards, Chef Sean Sherman will share both history, wisdom and foods directly from The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen cookbook for a select, ticketed group of diners.
Rooted in his passionate quest to rekindle and restore stolen traditions and preserve them in the present day, Chef Sean will educate and enlighten our hearts and palates. Diners will be graced with new translations of seasonal dishes by Chef Sean made with ingredients locally sourced in collaboration with Miss Kim’s Chef Ji Hye. The spirit of Chef Sean’s book joyfully reinforces Chef Ji Hye’s own integration of Korean food roots and ancestral traditions in her Michigan kitchen and she joins our community’s warm welcome of Chef Sean Sherman. The result is a rare and intimate evening with one of the most inspired social, political and culinary change agents of our time who is blazing a timely trail to honor and value tradition’s sacred connection to the fundamental human experience of community, land and food. See what you’ll be having!
Daughters of Memory: Paintings and Poems on the Nine Muses is an interdisciplinary show of works by Cindy Sowers exploring the elusive sources for the ancient figures of the Muses, as well as the appropriation of these figures by different artists through the ages.
Reception for the Artist: September 6, approximately 4:30pm. Refreshments will be served.
Cindy Sowers received her B.A. from Oakland University, her M.A. from University of Michigan in Comparative Literature, and her Ph.D. also from the University of Michigan in Comparative Literature. During her Masters program in 1973, she started teaching at the Residential College in the First Year Seminar and French programs. Her dissertation, The Shared Structure of Craft and Song: A Study of Homer’s Narrative Art, revealed passions for narrative and visual analysis comparatively understood that would characterize her teaching thereafter. She participated in an interdisciplinary group composed of Residential College humanities and fine arts faculty who together constructed the Arts and Ideas in the Humanities concentration. Cindy’s recent course offerings have included critical approaches to the literature and visual arts of classic modernism, postmodernism, Shakespeare and Rome, the heritage of Greece, the psychoanalytic interpretation of the arts, and many others. She combines analyses of literary texts, visual arts, and philosophy to hone in on the animating spirit of a cultural moment and space. She has presented at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2006 U-M residency, as part of the RC Faculty Colloquium, for the LSA Comparative Literature and the Colloquium on Critical Theory sponsored by the LSA Department of English Language and Literature, and at the Residential College’s 50th Anniversary celebration. She has received the Ford Foundation Fellowship, the Rackham Prize twice, the U-M Excellence in Teaching Award, the Matthews Underclass Teaching Award, and is a member of the Medieval Academy of America. Cindy retires from her position as a Senior Lecturer and Lecturer IV, having served in the Residential College for 46 years. She has an active art practice, and her work will be displayed in the RC Art Gallery in a fall 2019 exhibition. She also maintains a personal website, cynthiasowers.rc.lsa.umich.edu, where she publishes essays, poetry, and visual artwork.
