Edward Morin is from Chicago, where he earned degrees in English at University of Chicago and Loyola University. His poems have appeared in Hudson Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Collections of his poems include Labor Day at Walden Pond (1997) and The Dust of Our City (1978). A chapbook titled Housing for Wrens is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press in September 2016. His co-translations of modern Greek and Chinese poems have appeared in Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Poetry Miscellany. He edited and co-translated an anthology, The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry since the Cultural Revolution (U. of Hawaii Press, 1990) and a book of poems by Cai Qijiao. Recent co-translations of Arabic poems have been published in Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arab Literature, The Dirty Goat, and Asymptote. He is editor of the Poetry Society of Michigan’s journal, Peninsula Poets, and co-hosts the Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series in Ann Arbor.
Bob Brill is a retired computer programmer and digital artist. He is now devoting his energies to writing fiction and poetry. His novellas, short stories and 150 poems have appeared in over 45 online magazines, print journals, and anthologies. His most recent publications are 2 poems in Water Music: The Great Lakes State Poetry Anthology, and his first book of poems, Hello Goodbye, Selected Poems by Bob Brill.
Every 1st & 3rd Sun. Readings by featured poets, preceded by a poetry open mike.
Reading by Ting Gou, a U-M medical student and award-winning poet who recently published her debut chapbook, The Other House. .
7-9 p.m. (sign-up begins at 6:30 p.m.), Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry.
The University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) presents award-winning poet and 2016 MacArthur Fellow Claudia Rankine. In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Rankine will speak about her bestselling book Citizen: An American Lyric.
In Citizen, Rankine uses poetry, essay, cultural criticism and visual images to explore what it means to be a black American in a “post-racial” society. Citizen was the winner of the 2015 Forward Prize for Best Collection, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, the NAACP Image Award for poetry, the PEN Open Book Award and the LA Times Book Award for poetry. It also holds the distinction of being the only poetry book to be a New York Times best seller in the nonfiction category.
Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry and two plays and the editor of several anthologies. She also co-produces a video series, “The Situation,” with John Lucas and is the founder of the Open Letter Project: Race and the Creative Imagination. She is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University. Rankine’s numerous awards and honors include the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The January 16 talk will be followed by a book signing. Books will be available for purchase from Bookbound. The event is co-sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities.
On January 17, Rankine will also present her recent work on American racism at 10 a.m. in ISR Room 1430 at 426 Thompson St. in Ann Arbor. Her talk will be followed by a cross-disciplinary discussion on American racism and the scholar-activist.
Rankine will also present her recent work on American racism at 10 a.m. in ISR Room 1430 at 426 Thompson St. in Ann Arbor. Her talk will be followed by a cross-disciplinary discussion on American racism and the scholar-activist.
“Plato’s Self-Moving Myth: The Circulation of Plato’s Charioteer from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance”
Sara Ahbel-Rappe, Professor of Classical Studies
January 17, 12:30pm
Institute for the Humanities, 202 S. Thayer
In this lecture, Ahbel-Rappe discusses her book in progress, in which she investigates the reception of Plato’s Phaedrus, and especially the famous myth of the soul (Phaedrus 246-249), from late antiquity to the Renaissance, tracing the phenomenon of this text’s migration into exegetical traditions and languages far removed from the original site of Plato’s dialogue. The study relies on the core idea of the text network and asks if the text itself an agent of its own migration.
Recent work on text networks (Selden, McCracken, Lopez) investigating such multi-linguistic migratory texts as the Alexander Romance, Life of Aesop, or Barlaam and Josephat, focus on the trajectory of a text, a text that takes on its life and makes its home as an immigrant in foreign lands, among foreign tongues. What astonishes about these texts is that they often perform their very subject matter, and it has gone unnoticed that the myth of the charioteer in Plato’s Phaedrus fits this profile. What she means is that the myth is an allegory for the soul, whereas Plato defines the soul at Phaedrus 246 as a self-mover. The story itself, a tale of the embodied soul being out of place in the world and wandering through cycles of birth and death, finds its textual analogue as the text takes on a corporeality, a presence in space and time, and a diffuse, variegated voicing.
Former Humanities Institute fellow Sara Ahbel-Rappe is Professor of Classical Studies. She has written several books that focus on the trajectory of the Platonic tradition, from the Sokratikoi Logoi to the “last pagan professor,” Damascius. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study, the Mellon Foundation, and Center for Hellenic Studies.
Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for the Zell Visiting Writers Series, presented by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, which brings world-renowned poets and fiction writers to Helmut Stern Auditorium in the University of Michigan Museum of Art. For this installment, Kelly Link will sign books during the reception at 6:15, and then read at 7pm.
Kelly Link, our Winter Distinguished Writer in Residence, is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, and Get in Trouble. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She and Gavin J. Grant have co-edited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Steampunk!and Monstrous Affections. She is the co-founder of Small Beer Press and co-edits the occasional zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. Link was born in Miami, Florida. She currently lives with her husband and daughter in Northampton, Massachusetts.
The book club offers an intimate, small-group discussion with RC alumnus Rick Petrie, Tuesday, January 17 at 6 pm. We will discuss The Drifter before Nick’s reading from his newest book, Burning Bright, at 7 pm.
Limited to 12 people. To participate, you must purchase the book discussion title from Nicola’s (at a 15 percent discount) and pre-order or purchase the new release title (at a 10 percent discount).
To sign up, contact the store directly at 734-662-0600.
Nick Petrie received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington, won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan Residential College, and his story At the Laundromat won the 2006 Short Story Contest in theThe Seattle Review, a national literary journal. A husband and father, he runs a home-inspection business in Milwaukee.
“Lots of characters get compared to my own Jack Reacher, but Petrie’s Peter Ash is the real deal.”–Lee Child.
In the new novel featuring war veteran Peter Ash, an action hero of the likes of Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne (Lincoln Journal-Star), Ash has a woman’s life in his hands and her mystery is stranger than he could ever imagine.
War veteran Peter Ash sought peace and quiet among the towering redwoods of northern California, but the trip isn’t quite the balm he’d hoped for. The dense forest and close fog cause his claustrophobia to buzz and spark, and then he stumbles upon a grizzly, long thought to have vanished from this part of the country. In a fight of man against bear, Peter doesn’t t favor his odds, so he makes a strategic retreat up a nearby sapling.
There, he finds something strange: a climbing rope, affixed to a distant branch above. It leads to another, and another, up through the giant tree canopy, and ending at a hanging platform. On the platform is a woman on the run. From below them come the sounds of men and gunshots.
Just days ago, investigative journalist June Cassidy escaped a kidnapping by the men who are still on her trail. She suspects they’re after something belonging to her mother, a prominent software designer who recently died in an accident. June needs time to figure out what’s going on, and help from someone with Peter’s particular set of skills.
Only one step ahead of their pursuers, Peter and June must race to unravel this peculiar mystery. What they find leads them to an eccentric recluse, a shadowy pseudo-military organization, and an extraordinary tool that may change the modern world forever.
Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit storytelling organization that also produces a weekly public radio show. Each month 10 storytellers are selected at random from among those who sign up to tell a 3-5 minute story on the monthly theme. The 3 judges are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Space limited, so it’s smart to arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), The Circus, 210 S. First. $10. 764-5118.
Literati is pleased to welcome Jon Milan and Gail Offen for a presentation of their latest work, Iconic Restaurants of Ann Arbor.
What is an iconic Ann Arbor restaurant? Ask anyone who has ever spent time there as a student, traveler, or “townie,” and they are likely to name several favorites in an instant. From debating the best place to celebrate or console on football Saturdays to deciding where to eat after the bars close, the choices have always sparked passionate conversation. In Ann Arbor, people are known to have strong feelings about the best places for pizza, coffee, beer, burgers, noodles, and burritos. Although many of the go-to hangouts are long gone, a surprising number still thrive. And there are always a few newcomers coming along to win the hearts of the next generation of diners, nibblers, and noshers. Some are fine restaurants and taverns, and others are lunch counters, diners, carry-outs, and drive-ins—but in each and every case, they are unique and together make up a collection of iconic local eateries.
Through rare photographs and advertisements, Jon Milan and Gail Offen, coauthors of Grand River Avenue: Detroit to Lake Michigan (Arcadia 2014), rekindle some tasty memories, and perhaps even some of the debates, shared by so many. No matter what, these iconic places will always be an important part of the community’s shared past and palates.
