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Literati is thrilled to support the launch of Victor J. Strecher’s Life on Purpose: How Living for What Matters Most Changes Everything.

A pioneer in the field of behavioral science delivers a groundbreaking work that shows how finding your purpose in life leads to better health and overall happiness. Your life is a boat. You need a rudder. But it doesn’t matter how much wind is in your sails if you’re not steering toward a harbor—an ultimate purpose in your life.

While the greatest philosophers have pondered purpose for centuries, today it has been shown to have a concrete impact on our health. Recent studies into Alzheimer’s, heart disease, stroke, depression, functional brain imaging, and measurement of DNA repair are shedding new light on how and why purpose benefits our lives. Going beyond the fads, opinions, and false hopes of “expert” self-help books, Life on Purpose explores the incredible connection between purposeful living and the latest scientific evidence on quality of life and longevity. Drawing on ancient and modern philosophy, literature, psychology, evolutionary biology, genetics, and neuroscience, as well as his experience in public health research, Dr. Vic Strecher reveals the elements necessary for a purposeful life and how to acquire them, and outlines an elegant strategy for improving energy, willpower, and long-term happiness, and well-being. He integrates these core themes into his own personal story—a tragedy that led him to reconsider his own life—and how a deeper understanding of purposeful living helped him not only survive, but thrive.

Illuminating, accessible, and authentically grounded in real people’s experiences, Life on Purposeis essential reading for everyone seeking lasting improvement in their lives.

Dr. Victor J. Strecher received his PhD at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in 1983. Since 1995, Dr. Strecher has been a Professor in the UM School of Public Health and until 2009, Director of Cancer Prevention and Control at the UM Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Strecher founded the UM Center for Health Communications Research, a collaborative research-focused organization of scientists, software engineers, and artists. Through this Center, Dr. Strecher has been a leading investigator on over $45 million in grant-funded studies of health-related behavior change programs. In 1998, Dr. Strecher founded HealthMedia Inc., an Ann Arbor-based company that has grown to over 185 employees, developing and disseminating award-winning tailored health interventions for health promotion, disease prevention, behavioral health, and disease management to millions of users. In 2008 HealthMedia Inc. was purchased by Johnson & Johnson as their initial investment in the area of wellness and prevention. Currently, as Director for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship, Dr. Strecher is helping the University of Michigan disseminate research to the real world, improving the public’s health nationally and globally.

Literati is pleased to host Teen Spirit, an award-winning publication of the Skyline High School Writing Center. Teen Spirit is a literary magazine that allows the entire school’s creative community to exhibit their writing, artwork, and multimedia creations.

This event will feature several exceptional Skyline student writers reading their fiction, poetry, and essays from Teen Spirit publicly for the first time.

An editorial board comprised of students in the Skyline Writing Center curate, layout, and editTeen Spirit. This year’s editorial board consists of general editors Celia Arsen (‘16), Leah Bauer (‘16), Kelsey Carpenter (‘16), and Christopher Morgan-Martin (‘17),  art editors Star Su (‘17) and Eleana Tworek (‘16), and promotions directors Anna Dang (‘17), Ella Horwedel (‘16), and Kaelan Oldani (‘16) .

The first two editions of Teen Spirit (‘13 and ‘14) received a superior rating from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), which is the competition’s highest possible rating.  The third edition of Teen Spirit (‘15) received an excellent rating from the NCTE, which was the magazine’s third consecutive top-five finish.

The Skyline Writing Center is a student-centered peer tutoring and mentoring organization that provides high quality writing support to students every hour of every school day.  Each year, 35 qualified juniors and seniors are trained to work with all students on a wide variety of genres at any stage of the writing process.  Since its founding in 2012, the Writing Center has made more than 4,000 student contacts.

Jeffrey Austin, a Skyline English teacher, is the program’s founder and director.

Twitter: @Skyline_WC

Website: tinyurl.com/skylinewc

Facebook: Skyline Writing Center

Literati is pleased to welcome Michael Byers, Peter Ho Davies, Michael Delp, M.L. Liebler, Thomas Lynch, and Gloria Whelan for a discussion of Bob Seger’s House and Other Stories, recently published by the Made in Michigan Writers Series.

Bob Seger’s House and Other Stories is a collection of short stories written by some of Michigan’s most well-known fiction writers. This collection of twenty-two short stories serves as a celebration not only of the tenth anniversary of the Made in Michigan Writers Series in 2016 but also of the rich history of writing and storytelling in the region. As series editors Michael Delp and M. L. Leibler state in their preface, “The stories contained in this anthology are a way to stay connected to each other. Think of them as messages sent from all over the map, stitching readers and writers together through stories that continue to honor the ancient art of the fire tale, the hunting epic, and all of the ways language feeds the blood of imagination.”

The scope of this project reflects the dynamic and diverse writing that is currently taking place by people who consider their home to be the Great Lakes state. Stories are far-ranging, from the streets of Detroit and the iconic presence of the auto industry to the wild tracts of the Upper Peninsula, to a couple on the west coast trying to figure out parenting. The book vibrates with that tension, of metal versus rock and human frailty taking on the pitfalls and hardships of living in this world.

In his foreword, Charles Baxter asks, “Does a region give rise to a particular kind of literature? Michigan is so fiercely diverse in its landscapes, its economy, and its population demographics that it presents anybody who wants to write about it with a kind of blank slate. You can’t summarize the state easily.” These storytellers exude a “Michigan aesthetic” in their writing, something that cannot be learned in a textbook or taught in a classroom but can be felt through the tales of these storytellers.

The experience of picking up this collection is akin to taking a drive from the mechanized world and arriving several hours later in one of the wildest places on earth. Readers of short fiction will enjoy the multitude of voices in this anthology.

Literati is pleased to welcome Ross Business School professor Gerald F. Davis in support of his most recent book, The Vanishing American Corporation: Navigating the Hazards of a New Economy.

It may be hard to believe in an era of Walmart, Citizens United, and the Koch brothers, but corporations are on the decline. The number of American companies listed on the stock market dropped by half between 1996 and 2012. In recent years we’ve seen some of the most storied corporations go bankrupt (General Motors, Chrysler, Eastman Kodak) or disappear entirely (Bethlehem Steel, Lehman Brothers, Borders). Gerald Davis argues this is a root cause of the income inequality and social instability we face today. Corporations were once an integral part of building the middle class. He points out that in their heyday they offered millions of people lifetime employment, a stable career path, health insurance, and retirement pensions. They were like small private welfare states. The businesses that are replacing them will not fill the same role. For one thing, they employ far fewer people—the combined global workforces of Facebook, Yelp, Zynga, LinkedIn, Zillow, Tableau, Zulily, and Box are smaller than the number of people who lost their jobs when Circuit City was liquidated in 2009. And in the “sharing economy,” companies have no obligation to most of the people who work for them—at the end of 2014 Uber had over 160,000 “driver-partners” in the United States but recognized only about 2,000 people as actual employees. Davis tracks the rise of the large American corporation and the economic, social, and technological developments that have led to its decline. The future could see either increasing economic polarization, as careers turn into jobs and jobs turn into tasks, or a more democratic economy built from the grass roots. It’s up to us.

Gerald F. Davis is the Wilbur K. Pierpont Collegiate Professor of Management at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. He has published widely in management, sociology, and finance. Recent books include Social Movements and Organization Theory (with Doug McAdam, W. Richard Scott, and Mayer N. Zald);Organizations and Organizing (with W. Richard Scott); Managed by the Markets(which won the 2010 Terry Award for best book from the Academy of Management); and Changing your Company from the Inside Out (with Christoper White). He is Editor of Administrative Science Quarterly and Director of the Interdisciplinary Committee on Organization Studies (ICOS) at the University of Michigan.