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.
Chamber Music, directed by Katri Ervamaa. Featuring music by Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, and others. April 20, 2pm and April 22, 6pm, Keene Theater. Free.
Chamber Music, directed by Katri Ervamaa. Featuring music by Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, and others. April 20, 2pm and April 22, 6pm, Keene Theater. Free.
Renaissance Drama presents, Commedia del’arte final performance directed by Martin Walsh. Featuring a period scenario about “Il cavadente” or “the tooth puller”, a bogus dentist that pulls the teeth out of the evil Pantelone. April 23, 1-2pm, North Courtyard if weather permits.
Join David Priess, author and former CIA insider, as he discusses his new book, “How to Get Rid of a President: History’s Guide to Removing Unpopular, Unable, or Unfit Chief Executives.”
To limit executive power, the founding fathers created fixed presidential terms of four years, giving voters regular opportunities to remove their leaders. Even so, Americans have often resorted to more dramatic paths to dis-empower the chief executive.
“How to Get Rid of a President” is a lively narrative showcasing various dark sides of the nation’s history: a stew of election dramas, national tragedies, and presidential departures mixed with party intrigue, personal betrayal, and backroom shenanigans.
In this briskly-paced and approachable sweep of history, Priess barnstorms through history, showing all the ways – from impeachment to death – that presidents have either left office prematurely or just barely avoided doing so. While the pomp and circumstance of presidential elections might draw more attention, the way that presidents are removed teaches us much more about our political order.
Free Admission. Free Parking. Book sales/signing and reception follow program.
Literati is proud to be partnering with Dawn Farm to host Gregory Boyle at the Towsley Auditorium at the Washtenaw Community College.
In this presentation, Gregory Boyle will share how compassion, kindness, and kinship are the tools to fight despair and decrease marginalization. Through his stories and parables, all will be reminded that no life is less valuable than another.
The Rev. Gregory J. Boyle
Gregory Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, Calif., the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world.
A Jesuit priest, from 1986 to 1992 Father Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church, then the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city.
Father Boyle witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called “decade of death” that began in Los Angeles in the late 1980s and peaked at 1,000 gang-related killings in 1992. In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence, Father Boyle and parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings.
In 1988 they started what would eventually become Homeboy Industries, which employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to thousands of men and women who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life.
Father Boyle is the author of the 2010 New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. His 2017 book is the Los Angeles Times-bestseller Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship.
He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, the White House named Father Boyle a Champion of Change. He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics.
Open-mic storytelling competitions. Open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night’s theme. Come tell a story, or just enjoy the show!
6:30pm Doors Open | 7:30pm Stories Begin
FLAWED: Prepare a five-minute story about pitfalls. Imperfections….a glitch that changed your course either for the better or for the worse. Times that even Beyonce couldn’t say “I woke up like this.” Some say the flaws are what makes something beautiful.
*Tickets for this event are available one week before the show, at 3pm ET.
*Seating is not guaranteed and is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Please be sure to arrive at least 10 minutes before the show. Admission is not guaranteed for late arrivals. All sales final.
Media Sponsor: Michigan Radio.
Open-mic storytelling competitions. Open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night’s theme. Come tell a story, or just enjoy the show!
6:30pm Doors Open | 7:30pm Stories Begin
WORSHIP: Prepare a five minute story about coming to the altar. Waiting in line for the midnight release of the next book in the series or singing your heart out on a Sunday morning. Tell tales of seeing the light or giving it up in favor of something else. Feeling the glory of the end of a 10 mile run, becoming an adult at 13, or finally making it to the last level. Prayers, disillusions, and everything in between. All are welcome here.
*Tickets for this event are available one week before the show, at 3pm ET.
*Seating is not guaranteed and is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Please be sure to arrive at least 10 minutes before the show. Admission is not guaranteed for late arrivals. All sales final.
Media Sponsor: Michigan Radio.
A Michigan Map Society Lecture
In the eighteenth century, Britain relied on geographic knowledge to reform its American empire. The schemes of colonial development and control that these maps envisioned, Edelson argues, helped provoke the resistance that led to the American Revolution. Lecture presented in collaboration with the Stephen S. Clark Library. Dr. S. Max Edelson is Professor of History at the University of Virginia. His second book, The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America Before Independence (Harvard University Press, 2017) was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize and received the John Lyman Book Award for U.S. Maritime History by the North American Society for Oceanic History. Register online.
