Literati is delighted to celebrate the release of Airea D. Matthews’s prize-winning collection, Simulacra.
A fresh and rebellious poetic voice, Airea D. Matthews debuts in the acclaimed series that showcases the work of exciting and innovative young American poets. Matthews’s superb collection explores the topic of want and desire with power, insight, and intense emotion. Her poems cross historical boundaries and speak emphatically from a racialized America, where the trajectories of joy and exploitation, striving and thwarting, violence and celebration are constrained by differentials of privilege and contemporary modes of communication. In his foreword, series judge Carl Phillips calls this book “rollicking, destabilizing, at once intellectually sly and piercing and finally poignant.” This is poetry that breaks new literary ground, inspiring readers to think differently about what poems can and should do in a new media society where imaginations are laid bare and there is no thought too provocative to send out into the world.
Airea D. Matthews‘s first collection of poems, Simulacra, received the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award (Yale University Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in Best American Poets 2015, American Poets, Four Way Review, The Indiana Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She received the 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and has awarded the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from the 2016 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She received her B.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, her M.P.A. from the University of Michigan, and her M.F.A. from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program. Ms. Matthews is working on her second poetry collection, under/class, which explores the behavioral and cultural ramifications of poverty. She lives in Detroit, Michigan, with her husband and four children.
Literati is thrilled to be the partner-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.
Tanwi Nandini Islam, our Janey Lack fiction writer this year (invited by the current second-year fiction writers), is the author of Bright Lines (Penguin 2015), a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is the founder of Hi Wildflower Botanica, a small-batch niche perfume, candle and skincare line. Her writing has appeared in Elle.com, Fashionista.com, Open City, Women 2.0, Billboard.com and Gawker. A graduate of Brooklyn College MFA and Vassar College, she lives in Brooklyn, NY.
U-M Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature George Bornstein attended Harvard University where he earned a Bachelor of Arts, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1963. He then attended Princeton University, where he earned his Doctorate in 1966. Professor Bornstein joined the faculty at the University of Michigan as associate professor in 1970 and was promoted through the ranks to professor in 1975.
Professor Bornstein is one of the most distinguished and admired scholars of Modernism in his generation. For decades, as he devoted himself to the study of the literature and culture of the later 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. He is the author of seven scholarly monographs, and the editor of twelve books. He has published close to fifty articles, numerous reviews, and he has given talks at conferences, colleges, and universities throughout the United States, in Ireland, England, and Germany. He has offered distinguished service to the Department, the College and the University.
Book:
A stunning facsimile of the 1919 first edition of William Butler Yeats’s The Wild Swans at Coole an elegant volume showcasing these poems as they would have first been read and a complement to facsimile editions The Winding Stair and The Tower.
Published in 1919 during W.B. Yeats’s “middle stage” and composed of poems written during World War I, The Wild Swans at Coole is contemplative and elegiac. This collection captures Yeats at a time when he was looking back on his life, coming to terms with the realities of modern war, reflecting on lost love, and defining his place in the world as a poet. It features forty poems, among them “The Fisherman,” “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory,” “The Wild Swans at Coole,” and “On Being Asked for a War Poem.”
This facsimile of the original 1919 edition presents the reader with the work in its original form, with handsome old fashioned type, how readers and Yeats himself would have seen it in the early twentieth century. A great gift book and collector’s item, The Wild Swans at Coole also includes an Introduction and notes by esteemed Yeats scholar George Bornstein.
This year’s Story Slam again features prose, poetry, narratives, personal essays and more (800 words or less) in the newsroom. Winner will receive a $50 gift card from Literati. Guests and participants can enjoy food from New York Pizza Depot and Avalon Cafe and Kitchen while it lasts. All are welcome to attend!
Apr. 7-9 (different locations). U-M drama lecturer Kate Mendeloff directs RC students in Chekhov’s tragedy about the plight of the artist, the irrevocable passage of time, and a hopelessly misguided desire that evokes both humor and pathos.
7 p.m., U-M Matthaei Botanical Gardens (Apr. 7 & 9), 1800 N. Dixboro, & RC Keene Theatre (Apr. 8), East Quad, 701 East University. Free. 647-4354.
Apr. 7-9 (different locations). U-M drama lecturer Kate Mendeloff directs RC students in Chekhov’s tragedy about the plight of the artist, the irrevocable passage of time, and a hopelessly misguided desire that evokes both humor and pathos.
7 p.m., U-M Matthaei Botanical Gardens (Apr. 7 & 9), 1800 N. Dixboro, & RC Keene Theatre (Apr. 8), East Quad, 701 East University. Free. 647-4354.
FRUIT is an independent, community-led reading and dialogue series for and by marginalized voices, hosted in Literati Bookstore. This month’s installment features readings by TBD.
FRUIT is a moment and a movement of reclamation. It is a space of and for literary artists representing the marginalized: the colored, the queer, the silenced, and the unseen. Each event showcases the work of fresh, revolutionary artists and features a conversation around their lives and their crafts. In this space, FRUIT strives to serve as a carefully curated reading and dialogue series for those who live at intersections ignored. This experience exists both physically and digitally in order to help those marginalized voices reclaim their flesh and plant their roots through short-form literature. Our goal is to create an experience that is intentional in its centering of the historically othered. Through this exploration of identity and craft, we hope to cultivate a platform in which the growth and sharing of radical joy— both encumbered and despite— happens in the presence of solidarity and healthy community.
Seating will be open beginning at 7pm. The event will start at 7:30pm.
Detroit children’s book writer Mark Crilley, author of the Mike Falls and Akiko series, discusses the art of writing and presents awards to the winners of the AADL short story contest for 3rd-5th graders. Refreshments.
2-3 p.m., AADL multipurpose room, 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-8301.
Apr. 7-9 (different locations). U-M drama lecturer Kate Mendeloff directs RC students in Chekhov’s tragedy about the plight of the artist, the irrevocable passage of time, and a hopelessly misguided desire that evokes both humor and pathos.
7 p.m., U-M Matthaei Botanical Gardens (Apr. 7 & 9), 1800 N. Dixboro, & RC Keene Theatre (Apr. 8), East Quad, 701 East University. Free. 647-4354.
Wayne State University Press authors Kelly Fordon, Michael Lauchlan, Ken Mikolowski, Cindy Hunter Morgan, Keith Taylor, and Laura Hulthen Thomas will be participating in readings on Sunday, April 9, as part of a new festival, Power of the Press Fest. For more information, or to learn about how you can get involved, check out the Power of the Press Fest website.
