Calendar

Jun
12
Wed
Poetry and the Written Word: Workshop @ Crazy Wisdom
Jun 12 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

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.

 

 

Jun
13
Thu
Fiction at Literati: Ocean Vuong: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous @ Literati
Jun 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

As part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati Series, we welcome celebrated author and poet Ocean Vuong in support his debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.

About the book: Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by VultureEntertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more, poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

About the author: Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have also been featured in The AtlanticHarper’sThe NationNew RepublicThe New Yorker, and The New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is his first novel.

Jun
17
Mon
Julien Gorbach: The Notorious Ben Hecht @ Literati
Jun 17 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome journalist and professor in the School of Communications at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Julien Gorbach, in support of his latest book The Notorious Ben Hecht

About the book: In 1932, Hecht solidified his legend as “the Shakespeare of Hollywood” with his thriller Scarface, the Howard Hughes epic considered the gangster movie to end all gangster movies. But Hecht rebelled against his Jewish bosses at the movie studios when they refused to make films about the Nazi menace. Leveraging his talents and celebrity connections to orchestrate a spectacular one-man publicity campaign, he mobilized pressure on the Roosevelt administration for an Allied plan to rescue Europe’s Jews. Then after the war, Hecht became notorious, embracing the labels “gangster” and “terrorist” in partnering with the mobster Mickey Cohen to smuggle weapons to Palestine in the fight for a Jewish state.

The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist is a biography of a great twentieth-century writer that treats his activism during the 1940s as the central drama of his life. It details the story of how Hecht earned admiration as a humanitarian and vilification as an extremist at this pivotal moment in history, about the origins of his beliefs in his varied experiences in American media, and about the consequences.

About the author: Julien Gorbach spent most of his 10 years as a daily newspaper reporter on the police beat, covering drive-by shootings and murder trials, and publishing an investigative series on killings that remained unsolved because gangs had intimidated witnesses into silence. As a freelancer, he contributed to the Boston PhoenixTime Out New York, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and the New Orleans Gambit, among other publications. He covered Hurricane Katrina for the Boston Globe. Gorbach earned a doctorate in media history at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2013 and is now an assistant professor in the School of Communications at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

 

Jun
18
Tue
Fiction at Literati: Ferrett Steinemetz: The Sol Majestic @ Literati
Jun 18 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome Nebula Nominated author Ferrett Steinemetz in support of his new novel, The Sol Majestic, a big-hearted and delightful intergalactic adventure for fans of Becky Chambers and The Good Place, as part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati series. The event is free and open to the public.

About the book: Kenna, an aspirational teen guru, wanders destitute across the stars as he tries to achieve his parents’ ambition to advise the celestial elite.

Everything changes when Kenna wins a free dinner at The Sol Majestic, the galaxy’s most renowned restaurant, giving him access to the cosmos’s one-percent. His dream is jeopardized, however, when he learns his highly-publicized “free meal” risks putting The Sol Majestic into financial ruin. Kenna and a motley gang of newfound friends–including a teleporting celebrity chef, a trust-fund adrenaline junkie, an inept apprentice, and a brilliant mistress of disguise–must concoct an extravagant scheme to save everything they cherish. In doing so, Kenna may sacrifice his ideals–or learn even greater lessons about wisdom, friendship, and love.

Utterly charming and out of this world, Ferrett Steinmetz’s The Sol Majestic will satisfy the appetites of sci-fi aficionados and newcomers alike.

About the author: Ferrett Steinemetz s a graduate of both the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and Viable Paradise. He was nominated for the Nebula Award in 2012 for his novelette Sauerkraut Station, and for the Compton Crook Award in 2015. He is the author of The Sol Majestic for Tor Books, as well as the ‘Mancer trilogy and The Uploaded. He has written for Asimov’s Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Ferret lives in Cleveland with his very clever wife, a small black dog of indeterminate origin, and a friendly ghost.

 

Jun
23
Sun
Ann Arbor Storytellers Guild @ AADL Downtown
Jun 23 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

All invited to listen to guild members swap stories or bring their own to tell, at the AASG monthly meeting.

 

 

 

 

 

Jun
25
Tue
Fiction at Literati: Catherine Chung: The Tenth Muse @ Literati
Jun 25 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome NEA Fellow and PEN/Hemingway Finalist Catherine Chung in support of her new novel, The Tenth Muse, which Roxane Gay calls “ambitious and intriguing,” as part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati series. The event is free and open to the public. 

About the book: From childhood, Katherine knows she is different, and that her parents are not who they seem to be. But in becoming a mathematician, she must face the most human of problems–who is she? What is the cost of love, and what is the cost of ambition?

On her quest to conquer the Riemann hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns to a theorem with a mysterious history that holds both the lock and key to her identity, and to secrets long buried during World War II in Germany. Forced to confront some of the most consequential events of the twentieth century and rethink everything she knows of herself, she strives to take her place in the world of higher mathematics and finds kinship in the stories of the women who came before her–their love of the language of numbers connecting them across generations.

In The Tenth Muse, Catherine Chung offers a gorgeous, sweeping tale about legacy, identity, and the beautiful ways the mind can make us free.

About the author: Catherine Chung won an Honorable Mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award with her first novel, Forgotten Country, and has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a Granta New Voice, and a Director’s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She has a degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago, and worked at a think tank in Santa Monica before receiving her MFA from Cornell University. She has published work in The New York Times and Granta, and is a fiction editor at Guernica Magazine. She lives in New York City.

Skazat! Poetry Series: Cozine Welch @ Sweetwaters
Jun 25 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Cozine Welch is managing editor of Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing. The program begins with open mike readings.

Jun
26
Wed
Poetry and the Written Word: William Teets @ Crazy Wisdom
Jun 26 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

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.

June 26 • William Teets is a poet born in Peekskill, NY, currently living in Waterford, MI. He is author of the memoir, Upside Down (One on the House), and the novel, Reverend Went Walking. His poetry collection, Before The Flood, resonates with Americana and religiosity. His journal publications include Chronogram and Art and Life.

 

Jun
27
Thu
Literati Fiction Writing Workshop Final Reading @ Literati
Jun 27 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome the eight participants from Literati’s first Fiction Writing Workshop, reading original prose as a culmination and celebration of the eight-week course run by Literati bookseller and Creative Programs Manager, Gina Balibrera Amyx. Free and open to the public. 

About Literati’s Fiction Writing Workshop: Literati Bookstore’s Fiction Writing Workshop is an 8-week writing intensive to be held in May and June 2019.  The workshop will focus on elements of prose–narrative structure, context, and especially, voice. The arc of this course will be shaped by the curiosities and obsessions of the group. Each writer will be workshopped by the group, and will write and receive in-depth, typed critiques of work from other participants and the instructor. At the conclusion of the session, participants will receive two craft texts, as well as three texts selected personally for them by the instructor, to complement and inform their writing, a one-on-one conference with the instructor, and the opportunity to give a public reading of original work. The workshop is taught by Gina Balibrera Amyx, graduate of University of Michigan’s Helen Zell MFA program in Prose,  and currently,  Creative Programs Manager at Literati. Her writing has been featured in the Boston Review, Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Wandering Song, an anthology of the Central American diaspora.

 

Jul
1
Mon
Fiction at Literati: Joe Sacksteder: Make/Shift: Stories, and Matt Kirkpatrick: The Ambrose J. and Vivian T. Seagrave Museum of 20th Century Art @ Literati
Jul 1 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome authors Joe Sacksteder and Matt Kirkpatrick in support of their latest, Make/Shift: Stories and The Ambrose J. and Vivian T. Seagrave Museum of 20th Century American Art, respectively, as part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati series. A book signing will follow the reading. The event is free and open to the public. 

Situated in the absurd and pop-culture, the stories in Make/Shift land athletes, actors, musicians, and grievers at the center of more dire spectacles than they’d anticipated.

A strange museum, an even stranger curator, the deceased artist who haunts him, and the mystery surrounding the museum founders’ daughter, lost at sea as a child . . . The Ambrose J. and Vivian T. Seagrave Museum of 20th Century American Art is by turns a dark comedy, a ghost story, a romance, a whodunit, a family saga, and an exhibition catalog

Joe Sacksteder is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Utah. Fugitive Traces, his album of Werner Herzog audio collages, will be available from Punctum Books. His writing has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Florida Review, The Literary Review, Passages North, Hobart, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He is currently a visiting instructor at Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan.

Matthew Kirkpatrick is a writer and associate professor of creative writing at Eastern Michigan University.

 

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