Book Signing and Talk with Diane Burney, author of Spiritual Balancing: A Guidebook for Living in the Light
Apr. 6, 7 p.m. in the Crazy Wisdom Tea Room
A free author event that will include an overview of Burney’s book, situations that create auric weaknesses, ways to increase your vibrations, and spiritual protection.
Saadia Faruqi is a Pakistani American writer of fiction and nonfiction. She writes for a number of publications including Huffington Post and The Islamic Monthly about the global contemporary Muslim experience and about interfaith dialogue. She has trained law enforcement on cultural sensitivity issues and offers community college classes on a variety of topics related to Islam and Muslims. She is editor-in-chief of Blue Minaret, a magazine for Muslim art, poetry and prose. Her short stories have been published in several American literary journals and magazines such as Catch & Release, On the Rusk, In Flight and The Great American Literary Magazine. “Brick Walls: Tales of Hope & Courage from Pakistan” is her debut fiction book. She is currently working on a novel based in Pakistan and the U.S. as well as a children’s book series.
Literati is pleased to present a roundtable discussion, in conjunction with the Jean & Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, to mark the publication of Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant.
Although Anne (Chana) Kleiman—who died in 2011 at the age of 101—was the first American-born Jewish woman to publish poems in Hebrew, and Annabelle (Chana) Farmelant—who is still living and occasionally publishing—wrote a substantial body of Hebrew verse from the 1940s to the 1960s, their work is virtually unknown today, even to those familiar with Hebrew literature in America. The roundtable will discuss the singular voices of these women, introduce their captivating and wide–ranging poetry and place it in its historical, literary, and cultural contexts. The rountable will feature editor Shachar Pinsker, the translator Adriana Jacobs, Adina Kleiman (the daughter of the poet Anne Kleiman), and faculty from the Frankel Center who are experts on American Jewish Literature.
Literati is the bookseller for the Zell Visiting Writers Series at the University of Michigan and the 2016 Sarah Marwil Lamstein Children’s Literature Lecture, presented by R.J. Palacio.
R.J. Palacio is the author of New York Times #1 Bestseller Wonder, a novel about a young boy born with a facial deformity entering the fifth grade. A former art director and book jacket designer, Palacio lives in New York City with her husband, two sons, and two dogs.
Bryan Burrough is a special correspondent at Vanity Fair magazine and the author of six books, including the No. 1 New York Times Best-Seller Barbarians at the Gate and his latest, Days of Rage. He is also a three-time winner of the prestigious Gerald Loeb Award for Excellence in Financial Journalism.
Born in 1961, Bryan was raised in Temple, Texas, and graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1983. From 1983 to 1992 he was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where he reported from Dallas, Houston, Pittsburgh and, during the late 1980s, covered the busy mergers and acquisitions beat in New York. He has written for Vanity Fair since 1992.
In 1990 Bryan and John Helyar co-authored Barbarians, the story of the fight for control of RJR Nabisco. The book, which spent 39 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, has been hailed as one of the most influential business narratives of all time. Bryan joined Vanity Fair in 1992, where he has reported from locales as diverse as Hollywood, Nepal, Moscow, Tokyo and Jerusalem.
Literati is pleased to welcome Christopher Bakken, David Blair, and Cody Walker to kick off our celebration of National Poetry Month.
Christopher Bakken is department chair and Frederick F. Seeley Professor of English at Allegheny College. He is the author of the poetry collections After Greece and Goat Funeral. He is also co-translator of The Lions’ Gate: Selected Poems of Titos Patrikios, and the author of Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table. Of Eternity & Oranges, Adam Zagajewski says: “This is a beautiful collection of poems: half-cryptic, half-open; half based on ancient myths, half on actual life. There’s almost always Greece as the backdrop, olives and the sea but also a human drama. Christopher Bakken proves that what’s ancient is also modern and vice versa. We live between times; only poetry can make it palpable.”
David Blair is the author of two previous poetry collections. He teaches at the New England Institute of Art. Another book, Arsonville, is forthcoming. Of his most recent work, Friends with Dogs, Tom Sleigh says: “What gives weight and density to David Blair’s remarkable poems is their almost Hardyish sense of regret and loss. So many of his poems are little dramas of what wasn’t said when it should have been said, or of the way celebratory instincts get undermined by the pressures of day-to-day life. I admire the quick shifts in voicing, the way a whole social world becomes revealed in some small characteristic gesture, and how alert Blair is to other people. Very few poets ever achieve this kind of fellow feeling and write about it with such tact and intelligent sympathy.”
Cody Walker is the author of Shuffle and Breakdown and the co-editor of Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest. His poems have appeared in The Yale Review, Parnassus, Slate, Poetry Northwest, The Hecht Prize Anthology, and the 2007 and 2015 editions of The Best American Poetry; his essays have appeared online in The New Yorker and The Kenyon Review. He lives with his family in Ann Arbor, where he teaches English at the University of Michigan. Of his latest, Mary Jo Salter says: “In Cody Walker’s The Self-Styled No-Child, the poet-father sings to his new baby (read ‘Cradle Song’ or ‘Small Suite’ for perfect little servings of delight), but his childlike playfulness has an internal source, too. The light verses in Walker’s new collection often have dark edges to them (see ‘The Garden’ or ‘We Hated Our Lives’), and his social and political satires are unflinching. Still, this word-wizard with a genius for rhyme reminds us of how irrepressibly joy remains.”
Apr. 8-10. U-M drama lecturer Kate Mendelof directs RC students in Federico Garcia Lorca’s landmark 1932 drama, a lyrical, expressionist tragedy inspired by a sensational 20s murder case in rural Spain. A young bride flees an arranged marriage on her wedding day, with fatal consequences. Pitting passion against social conventions, the poetic drama conjures up an archetypal Spain, steeped in Andalusian music, dance, and cultural lore.
7:30 p.m., Matthaei Botanical Gardens Conservatory, 1800 N. Dixboro Rd. Free; donations to Matthaei encouraged. 647-4354.
Melissa Grunow is the author of Realizing River City: A Memoir (Tumbleweed Books, 2016). Her writing has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth, New Plains Review, Blue Lyra Review, Temenos, and Yemassee, among many others. She is also a live storyteller who competes in Detroit’s The Moth StorySLAM.
An award-winning writer, Melissa was a semi-finalist for the 2015 DISQUIET International Literary Lisbon Writing Program, a Pushcart Prize nominee for her essay “Home,” a two-time recipient of the Detroit Working Writers creative nonfiction prize, and is featured in Poets & Writers Directory of Writers.
She is a volunteer reader for Creative Nonfiction magazine, screening general submissions for publication and and editor for Grey Wolfe Publishing. She is a member of Detroit Working Writers, Michigan Writers, and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).
Melissa holds a Bachelor of Science in English-creative writing and journalism from Central Michigan University, a Master of Arts in English from New Mexico State University, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing with distinction from National University.
Apr. 8-10. U-M drama lecturer Kate Mendelof directs RC students in Federico Garcia Lorca’s landmark 1932 drama, a lyrical, expressionist tragedy inspired by a sensational 20s murder case in rural Spain. A young bride flees an arranged marriage on her wedding day, with fatal consequences. Pitting passion against social conventions, the poetic drama conjures up an archetypal Spain, steeped in Andalusian music, dance, and cultural lore.
7:30 p.m., Matthaei Botanical Gardens Conservatory, 1800 N. Dixboro Rd. Free; donations to Matthaei encouraged. 647-4354.
