Tom Brzezina has had work in Chiron, Rusty Truck, Red Fez, Third Wednesday, Peninsula Poets, and The 5-2. His poems draw heavily upon drug experiences of his youth, the underbelly of society, and growing up in Detroit. He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife, dog, and way too many books.
Lynn Gilbert is a founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and currently associate editor of Third Wednesday in Ann Arbor. Her poems have been published in The Texas Observer, Kansas Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, Southwestern American Literature, Peninsula Poets, and Water Music: The Great Lakes State Poetry Anthology, which she co-edited.
Crazy Wisdomn Bookstore and Tea Room, 114 S. Main St. Free. 7346652757.info@crazywisdom.net www.crazywisdom.net
Literati is excited to welcome the Creative Writing Sub-concentration seniors in the English Department at the University of Michigan for a night of poetry and prose readings!
Each year the Creative Writing Sub-concentration selects no more than 14 students who spend their senior year working with faculty to complete a creative thesis of poetry or fiction. These collections, the same size as many MFA theses, are first attempts to create book-length manuscripts, and to prepare the writers for their work in the future.
Readers include…
Reema Baydoun transferred to the University of Michigan as a sophomore, and has since spent her time in Ann Arbor studying English and caring for her cat. As an Arab-American poet, she often spends weekends in Dearborn for inspiration and good food.
RC student Ariel Everitt hails from a one-stoplight town in Northeast Michigan and is a junior studying English and Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, where they have been a research assistant in a biogerontology lab, become a peer writing consultant, and won a Hopwood Award. Their fiction tackles the boundaries between people and genres, applying dream logic to science and human connections wherever possible. Ariel plans to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing in the near future.
Madeleine Gaudin is a writer and future Elementary School teacher originally from Austin, Texas. Formerly the Managing Arts Editor at the Michigan Daily, she wrote about movies, music, books and the wonderful hellscape of the Internet for four years before turning her attention to ghost stories and fiction about the apocalypse.
Jenny Hong is a senior studying English with a Sub-concentration in Creative Writing (Poetry). She loves cooking, blogging, and binging TV series on lazy days—and also chatting with people around campus. She is sad that she will no longer be a student in May and enroll in workshops that will give her friendly nudges to write, but she’s also pretty excited for what’s next!
Kate Velguth is a senior studying English. She’s received four Hopwood Awards, and her fiction has appeared in The Washington Square Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere.” Her thesis, a collection of short stories, is entitled The World of Hidden Things. She hopes to teach English in South Korea next year.
Maxim Vinogradov is a local playwright, Michigan student, and is very excited to be reading at Literati! You may have seen his work in productions at Theatre Nova, Slipstream Theatre Initiative, Basement Arts, Outvisible Theatre Company, and others in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. He has had the pleasure of receiving two Hopwood Awards in Drama, two Wilde Awards, the National Partners of the American Theatre Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center, and has spent this past summer in internships and residences with The Public Theater and O’Neill Theater Center. He’d love to thank the University of Michigan and Literati for this privilege, and hopes you enjoy his goofy writing!
Ellison Zak is a senior transfer student at the University of Michigan studying English, creative writing, and linguistics. Her thesis grapples with the secrets we all keep and the toll they can take on ourselves and our relationships. She spends her summers between school road tripping across the country and camping at national parks. More than anything else, she hopes to find employment after graduation.
Literati is excited to welcome back author Polly Rosenwaike who will be reading and discussing her new short story collection Look How Happy I’m Making You.
About Look How Happy I’m Making You:
“A beautifully written and beautifully conceived series of stories about, well, conception…Among the thousands of books for prospective and new parents, I doubt any will make you feel more understood and less alone than this one.”–ANTHONY DOERR, author of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
A candid, ultimately buoyant debut story collection about the realities of the “baby years,” whether you’re having one or not.
The women in Polly Rosenwaike’s Look How Happy I’m Making You want to be mothers, or aren’t sure they want to be mothers, or–having recently given birth–are overwhelmed by what they’ve wrought. Sharp and unsettling, wry and moving in its depiction of love, friendship, and family, this collection expands the conversation about what having a baby looks like.
One woman struggling with infertility deals with the news that her sister is pregnant. Another woman nervous about her biological clock “forgets” to take her birth control while dating a younger man and must confront the possibility of becoming a single parent. Four motherless women who meet in a bar every Mother’s Day contend with their losses and what it would mean to have a child.
Witty, empathetic, and precisely observed, Look How Happy I’m Making You offers the rare, honest portrayal of pregnancy and new motherhood in a culture obsessed with women’s most intimate choices.
POLLY ROSENWAIKE has published stories, essays, and reviews in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013, The New York Times Book Review, Glimmer Train, New England Review, The Millions, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The fiction editor for Michigan Quarterly Review, she lives in Ann Arbor with the poet Cody Walker and their two daughters.
Literati is excited to welcome the Creative Writing Sub-concentration seniors in the English Department at the University of Michigan for a night of poetry and prose readings!
Each year the Creative Writing Sub-concentration selects no more than 14 students who spend their senior year working with faculty to complete a creative thesis of poetry or fiction. These collections, the same size as many MFA theses, are first attempts to create book-length manuscripts, and to prepare the writers for their work in the future.
Readers include…
Laura Dzubay is a writer specializing in short fiction, long fiction, and articles about all the music she loves. She is mostly from Indiana and has published work in Blue Earth Review, Bad Pony, Belle Ombre, and others, and has won three Hopwood Awards. She enjoys UltimateGuitar.com and pretending it’s fall year-round.
Sophia Christos is a senior studying English, creative writing, and entrepreneurship. She’s one of the founders of EMPOWER, an online young women’s magazine that promotes positivity and inspiration. Sophia’s also a development intern at the Alzheimer’s Association, where she is working to find the first survivor of Alzheimer’s. In her spare time, Sophia loves to scuba dive, ski, and travel the world.
Nitya Gupta is a senior from the Chicago suburbs studying English with a sub-concentration in creative writing and a minor in the environment. She’s a Daily Arts Writer for The Michigan Daily as well as an Editorial Assistant at Michigan News. When she’s not reading or writing, she enjoys practicing and teaching yoga.
Ana Lucena is a senior studying English with creative writing and pre-law at the University of Michigan. Her favorite themes are psychological horror and social justice. Her writing is deeply inspired by film and comics as well. If her writing career doesn’t take off, she plans to go to law school in the hopes of furthering her research skills and her understanding of society to the benefit of her writing.
Cailean Robinson is a writer, reader, introvert, and feminist. Her work has appeared in the 2016 Cafe Shapiro Anthology. If Cailean could do anything for a day, she would people-watch with Libba Bray and Jane Austen, and if she could go anywhere for a month, she would visit New Zealand. Cailean enjoys acting and listening to musicals, and her plans after graduating (please stop asking) are to live, to travel, and to finish her book. She is from Ann Arbor, MI and Kennesaw, GA.
Matthew Solway is a poet at the University of Michigan. He has worked in various medical research labs studying diabetic complications and is committed to understanding the natural world through poetry and science with a specific focus on improving the lives of those who cannot help themselves. This fall, he will continue his studies Wayne State School of Medicine.
Josie Tolin is just glad to be here. She’s from Chesterton, Indiana—a town so unremarkable it’s almost remarkable. Her short fiction has appeared in The Google Drive Folder (a premier publication co-founded by Nitya Gupta, Kate Velguth, and Ellie Zak) as well as Emails to Her Friends (subject line: “can u tell me if this sux, lol”).
Literati is pleased to be partnering with the Neutral Zone to host poet Aldo Leopoldo Pando Girard.
Join us for the release of a poetry book by Aldo Leopoldo Pando Girard, Ann Arbor’s Youth Poet Laureate! Aldo’s work explores the intersection of multiple identities and homelands, painting a complex, vulnerable and vivid self-portrait. Aldo will read from his collection, followed by a Q&A and book signing.
Aldo Leopoldo Pando Girard is an Afro-Cuban poet born and raised in Ann Arbor, MI. He loves music, walking through the woods, has an intense fascination with mountains, & thinks that the ultimate goal of life is to increase happiness in the world. He was a feature for Poetry Night in Ann Arbor 2018 and a member of the 2018 Ann Arbor slam team. He spends a lot of time at the Neutral Zone sharing poems, ideas, & energy. He is now a student at the University of Michigan studying vocal performance and civil engineering.
BRING ABOUT SIX COPIES OF YOUR WORK. COPIES WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU.
Hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and Dave Jibson; see our blog at Facebook/Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series
Literati is honored to welcome back poet Clayton Eshelman who will be reading from his new collection Pollen Aria.
About Pollen Aria:
That Clayton Eshleman has not ceased from exploration over a career spanning more than 60 years is witnessed by the bulk, range, and diversity of his prior work. Now in his 80’s Eshleman presents us with a last collection of his poems-mostly recent, a few older. That he has sought to open up his life and work, to entwine and entangle it with others, through observation and vision, research and scholarship, translation and editing, and collaboration and conversation, all of this reflects Eshleman’s life commitment, indeed a commitment to life in writing poetry.
Clayton Eshleman has had published roughly 100 books and chapbooks of original poetry, translations, and nonfiction writings, and edited seventy issues of magazines and journals, including the ground-breaking Caterpillar and Sulfur. His writings have appeared in over 500 literary magazines and journals around the world and his books and writings have been translated into over a dozen languages. He has won many poetry awards, fellowships, and translation awards for his works through the years. It is undoubtedly unnecessary to observe that he made and has fulfilled a life commitment to poetry. Now in his 80’s he resides with his wife Caryl in Ypsilanti, MI.
Listen to old tales and new during an evening of adult stories. Ann Arbor Storytellers’ Guild members perform for the first hour. For the second half of the program we will be bringing in something new – come find out what we’re up to! Free. Donations welcome. Contact the Guild at annarborstorytelling.org
Literati is excited to welcome author and physician Anthony DeBenedet to discuss his book Playful Intelligence.
About Playful Intelligence:
As adults, we have more responsibilities than we could have ever imagined growing up. Learning the work of marriage. Navigating the bumpy terrain of parenting. Maintaining social relationships. Facing grave hardship. Finding contentment in our career.
As the years pass by, we sense how the good things in life are so often eclipsed by stress. We find ourselves doing everything we can just to endure adulthood, all the while wondering whether we are actually enjoying it. This is exactly why Dr. Anthony T. DeBenedet decided to write Playful Intelligence: The Power of Living Lightly in a Serious World, to show readers how playfulness helps us counterbalance the seriousness of adulthood.
“Five years ago, my life was becoming more intense and stressful,” DeBenedet says. “My relationships, clinical work as a physician, and basic interactions with the world were blurring into a frazzled mosaic. Going through the motions became my norm, and every day brought busyness and exhaustion. I thought about whether I was depressed. I didn’t think I was. Anxious? Sure, but aren’t we all anxious on some level? I also thought about the lifestyle factors that could be making me feel this way. Was I getting enough sleep? Was I exercising regularly? Was I eating healthy? Was I playing and remembering to be playful?”
Today, we live in a taxing world. The endless pressure to keep up with our responsibilities and the daily headlines swarming around us can be overwhelming. DeBenedet’s work comes at a time when stress, uncertainty, and intensity levels are high. Playful Intelligence shows adults that there is a way to live lighter–and smarter–as we navigate the seriousness of adulthood. It’s not about taking life less seriously; it’s about taking ourselves less seriously.
The book’s core chapters are devoted to exploring the effects and benefits of five playful qualities: imagination, sociability, humor, spontaneity, and wonder. By examining playfulness as a sum of its parts, readers will gain a working awareness of its power and be able to apply playful principles to their own lives, bringing the magic of childhood back into their day-to-day existence. The book also offers practical suggestions on how to make life more playful in nature.
Anthony T. DeBenedet, M.D. is a practicing physician and behavioral-science enthusiast. His interviews and writings have run in various media outlets, including the New York Times, the Today show, the Washington Post, and TIME Ideas. He also co-authored The Art of Roughhousing: Good Old-Fashioned Horseplay and Why Every Kid Needs It (Quirk Books, 2011), a parenting book about the importance of parent-child physical play. DeBenedet has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering, a Master of Science Degree in Health and Healthcare Research from the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School, and a Doctor of Medicine Degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He completed his internal medicine residency and gastroenterology fellowship at the University of Michigan Health System. DeBenedet lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he enjoys spending time with his family, connecting with friends, and playing a little basketball.
The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES) at the University of Michigan cordially invite you to join us for Dr. Assya Humesky’s talk about her and her family’s contributions to Ukrainian culture through published works, art, and teaching in higher education.
Light refreshments will be served.
