Mar. 17 & 18. RC students present the acclaimed contemporary NYC-based playwright David Adjmi’s award-winning 2012 tragicomic satire of the empty-headed narcissism of the congenitally rich in the guise of the daily life of the doomed queen on the eve of the French Revolution.
8 p.m., Keene Theater, East Quad, 701 East University. Free. 647-4354.
RC drama instructors Martin Walsh and Kate Mendeloff’s students direct and perform 8 short plays by Ives, an acclaimed contemporary American playwright best known for his one-act comedies.
7:30 p.m., RC Keene Theater, East Quad, 701 East University. Free. 647-4359.
Written and directed by RC Creative Writing student Clare Higgins.
AUDREY KELLAN is a brash, well-spoken but socially clueless young woman in her early twenties who has recently had to leave her university due to a dangerous “incident”. She moves back in with her mother while attending some court-mandated therapy before she is allowed back at school. Meanwhile, she finds a job at a local comic shop, befriends slacker and secret beat poet, REN, and reluctantly makes a friend or two at therapy, as well. Her tense relationship with her mother starts to lift as Audrey discovers new romance in her therapy group: a young man named ADAM who, though they have barely spoken, is bound to be her soul-mate. Meanwhile, CALEB, another young man in the group who is dealing with problems of his own tries to get closer to Audrey, to her constant rebuff, eventually earning her friendship. As Audrey becomes more connected in her hometown, she believes she is making the kind of progress others want from her. But when she is deemed still unfit to return to school, and her therapist warns her she might be making the same mistakes she made leading up to “the incident”, Audrey leans into disaster. Will she find her way out of her own chaos, or will she remain nothing but Loveless in Lakewood?
Written and directed by RC Creative Writing student Clare Higgins.
AUDREY KELLAN is a brash, well-spoken but socially clueless young woman in her early twenties who has recently had to leave her university due to a dangerous “incident”. She moves back in with her mother while attending some court-mandated therapy before she is allowed back at school. Meanwhile, she finds a job at a local comic shop, befriends slacker and secret beat poet, REN, and reluctantly makes a friend or two at therapy, as well. Her tense relationship with her mother starts to lift as Audrey discovers new romance in her therapy group: a young man named ADAM who, though they have barely spoken, is bound to be her soul-mate. Meanwhile, CALEB, another young man in the group who is dealing with problems of his own tries to get closer to Audrey, to her constant rebuff, eventually earning her friendship. As Audrey becomes more connected in her hometown, she believes she is making the kind of progress others want from her. But when she is deemed still unfit to return to school, and her therapist warns her she might be making the same mistakes she made leading up to “the incident”, Audrey leans into disaster. Will she find her way out of her own chaos, or will she remain nothing but Loveless in Lakewood?
Literati is pleased to welcome Laura Hulthen Thomas in support of her debut collection, States of Motion.
Newton’s Laws of Motion describe the relationship between a body and its response to the forces acting upon it. For the men and women in States of Motion, imbalance is a way of life. Set in Michigan small towns both real and fictional, the stories in Laura Hulthen Thomas’s collection 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 for them. These stories follow blue collars and white, cops and immigrants, and mothers and sons as they defend a world that is quickly vanishing.
The eight stories in States of Motion follow tough, quixotic characters struggling to reinvent themselves even as they cling to what they’ve lost. A grieving father embraces his town’s suspicions of him as the sole suspect in his daughter’s disappearance. A driving instructor struggles to care for his abusive mother between training lessons with two flirtatious teens. A behavioral researcher studying the fear response must face her own fears when her childhood attacker returns to ask for her forgiveness. Conditioned by their traumatic pasts to be both sympathetic and numb to suffering, the characters in these stories clutch at a chance to find peace on the other side of terror. From the isolated roadways of Michigan’s countryside to the research labs of a major university, the way forward is both one last hope and a deep-seated fear.
Laura Hulthen Thomas’s 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.
Literati is pleased to welcome Keith Lesmeister in support of his debut short story collection, We Could’ve Been Happy Here. Keith will be joined in reading by Markin Jenkins, a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, and Alexander Weinstein, author of Children of the New World.
In his first collection of short fiction, Keith Lesmeister plows out a distinctive vision of the contemporary Midwest. These stories peer into the lives of those at the margins-the broken, the resigned, the misunderstood. Hopeful and humorous, tender and tragic, these stories illuminate how we are shaped and buoyed by our intimate connections.
Keith Lesmeister was born in North Carolina, raised in Iowa, and received his M.F.A. from the Bennington Writing Seminars. His fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, Slice, Meridian, Redivider, Gettysburg Review, and many other print and online publications. His nonfiction has appeared in Tin House Open Bar, River Teeth, The Good Men Project, and elsewhere. He currently lives in northeast Iowa where he teaches at Northeast Iowa Community College. We Could’ve Been Happy Here is his first book.
Alexander Weinstein is the Director of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and the author of the short story collection Children of the New World (Picador 2016). His fiction and translations have appeared in Cream City Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Notre-Dame Review, Pleiades, PRISM International, World Literature Today, and other journals. He is the recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and his fiction has been awarded the Lamar York, Gail Crump, Hamlin Garland, and New Millennium Prize. His stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and appear in the anthologies 2013 New Stories from the Midwest, and the 2014 & 2015 Lascaux Prize Stories. He is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and a freelance editor, and leads fiction workshops in the United States and Europe.
Marlin M. Jenkins was born and raised in Detroit. A poetry graduate from University of Michigan’s MFA program, his work has been given homes by The Collagist, The Offing, The Journal, and Bennington Review, among others. He has worked with students in Detroit Public Schools through the Inside Out Literary Arts program and received a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. He is also a runner and a dancer.
Literati is pleased to welcome Rebecca J. Kinney and Stephen M. Ward for a discussion of their recent books about Detroit and the people who form its heart.
What is the “new Detroit” that everyone keeps talking about? In Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America’s Postindustrial Frontier, Rebecca J. Kinney reveals that the contemporary story of Detroit’s rebirth is an upcycled version of the American Dream, which has long imagined access to work, home, and upward mobility as race-neutral projects. She tackles key questions about the future of postindustrial America, and shows how the narratives of Detroit’s history are deeply steeped in material and ideological investments in whiteness.
Rebecca J. Kinney, who grew up in metropolitan Detroit, is assistant professor in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at Bowling Green State University.
In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs details both the personal and the political dimensions of the Boggses’ lives, highlighting the vital contributions these two figures made to black activist thinking. At once a dual biography of two crucial figures and a vivid portrait of Detroit as a center of activism, Ward’s book restores the Boggses, and the intellectual strain of black radicalism they shaped, to their rightful place in postwar American history.
Stephen Ward is associate professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) and the Residential College at the University of Michigan. He is also a board member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership in Detroit.
Creative Writing Faculty read from their works:
Lolita Hernandez, Lecturer, RC Creative Writing and Literature
Laura Kasischke, RC ’84, Lecturer, RC Creative Writing and Literature Christopher Matthews, Lecturer, RC Creative Writing and Literature
Ken Mikolowski, Lecturer Emeritus, RC Creative Writing and Literature
Laura Thomas, RC ’88, Lecturer and Program Head, RC Creative Writing and Literature
Nov. 17 & 18. RC students perform Theresa Rebeck’s 2011 Broadway drama about 4 young writers, their professor, and the tensions and romances that develop as they attend a 10-week intensive writing seminar.
8 p.m., Keene Theatre, East Quad, 701 East University. Free; donations welcome. 763-0176.
Nov. 17 & 18. RC students perform Theresa Rebeck’s 2011 Broadway drama about 4 young writers, their professor, and the tensions and romances that develop as they attend a 10-week intensive writing seminar.
8 p.m., Keene Theatre, East Quad, 701 East University. Free; donations welcome. 763-0176.
