Journalist Johnson, host of the daily NPR show 1A, the successor to The Diane Rehm Show, interviews panelists on the first amendment, free speech, and what they mean in a changing America.
6-7:30 p.m., Rackham Auditorium. Free. 998-7666.
Literati is proud to welcome author Jeff Kass who will be be reading and sharing with us his thrilling debut novel set in Ann Arbor, Takedown
About Takedown:
Ann Arbor: a small city with a big university A city of cute coffee shops, leftover hippies, hybrid cars, indie bookstores, and craft breweries. A city, above all, that values education. Or does it? Jim Harrow has been an Ann Arbor cop for fifteen years. He mostly handles things like stolen cars and fratboy fights, giving him time to coach high school wrestling and help raise his teenage daughters. But things take a deadly turn the night after the Michigan–Michigan State football game, when a house party ends in a fire. Its single victim is a graduate student with no job, no friends, and no research. What was Sanders Bolgim working on, and why would someone want to kill him for it? Nothing about the case makes sense, and as Jim traces the events leading to the fire, he uncovers a shady party company, dark money buying for-profit charter schools, and a string of murders stretching back years. In a town where money and education are always in each other’s pockets, someone is paying a killer to teach the ultimate lesson. Kass’ debut novel is an astute commentary on the darker side of education reform wrapped in a gripping adventure. Filled with authentic characters, a strong voice, and the perfect portrait of a Midwest college town, Takedown is as sharp and crisp as a football Saturday.
Jeff Kass is the author of the award-winning short story collection Knuckleheads and the poetry collection My Beautiful Hook-Nosed Beauty Queen Strutwave. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in multiple literary journals. He founded the Literary Arts Program at The Neutral Zone, Ann Arbor’s Teen Center, and is currently an English teacher at Pioneer High School and the Assignment Editor at Current Magazine.
One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends – a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.
Readings by 2 U-M creative writing grad students, including fiction writer Laura Preston and poet Lea Xue.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State. Free. 764-0395.
. http://umma.umich.edu/events/4270/mark-webster-reading-series
U-M drama students in Kate Mendeloff’s play production seminar direct and perform renowned English playwright Caryl Churchill’s acclaimed 2012 play about relationships in the digital age presented as an evolving mosaic of more than 50 fragmented and superficially unconnected scenes.
7 p.m., Keene Theatre, East Quad, 701 East University. Free. 647-4354.
Local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal host an open house for writers to connect with one another and/or work on their projects.
Talk by New York Times columnist Bret Stephens.
4-5:30 p.m., Mendelssohn Theatre. Free. 998-7666.
Please join the Clements Library as we celebrate the release of The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering an Early American Crisis, by James E. Lewis, Jr. A professor of History at Kalamazoo College, Lewis examines how rumors and reports of Aaron Burr’s activities in the trans-Appalachian West in 1805 and 1806 produced a sense of crisis that was broadly held across the new nation. He discusses the various political and cultural forces that shaped how men and women at the time turned vague and often conflicting accounts into enough certainty to act.
Books will be available for purchase.
Hatcher Graduate Library – The Gallery, 913 S. University Ave. Free. 734-647-0864.ehanka@umich.edu http://clements.umich.edu/exhibits-upcoming.php
Literati is thrilled to host novelist Thisbe Nissen who will be reading and discussing her latest Our Lady of the Prairie
About Our Lady of the Prairie
A sharp and bitingly funny novel about a professor whose calm-ish midwestern life gives way to a vortex of crises–and her attempts to salvage the pieces without going to pieces herself
In the space of a few torrid months on the Iowa prairie, Phillipa Maakestad–long-married theater professor and mother of an unstable daughter–grapples with a life turned upside down. After falling headlong into a passionate affair during a semester spent teaching in Ohio, Phillipa returns home to Iowa for her daughter Ginny’s wedding. There, Phillipa must endure (among other things) a wedding-day tornado, a menace of a mother-in-law who may or may not have been a Nazi collaborator, and the tragicomic revenge fantasies of her heretofore docile husband.
Naturally, she does what any newly liberated woman would do: she takes a match to her life on the prairie and then steps back to survey the wreckage.
Set in the seething political climate of a contentious election, Thisbe Nissen’s new novel is sexy, smart, and razor-sharp–a freight train barreling through the heart of the land and the land of the heart.
Thisbe Nissen is the author of a story collection, Out of the Girls’ Room and into the Night, and two novels, The Good People of New York and Osprey Island. Her fiction has been published in the Iowa Review and the American Scholar, among others, and her nonfiction has appeared in Vogue, Glamour, and elsewhere. She teaches at Western Michigan University and lives in Battle Creek, Michigan, with her husband, writer Jay Baron Nicorvo, and their son.
Scott Seegert is the author of the Vordak the Incomprehensible series. He lives in Farmington, MI with his wife, Margie, and their three children.
John Martin is an illustrator, graphic artist, and website designer. He is the illustrator for the Vordak the Incomprehensible series. He lives in Farmington Hills, MI, with his wife, Mary, and their three children.
James Patterson presents a hilarious space adventure featuring an average human kid getting into a universe of trouble.
Kelvin is the new kid at Sci-Fi Junior High – a floating space station filled with alien kids form across the universe. And he arrived just in time for the annual school dance: The Galactic Get Down
Kelvin is desperate to take luminous Luna (her species literally glows), but now that his secret about not being a Mega Supergenius is out, Kelvin is doesn’t have a shot. He has to think of a way to become super cool so everyone forgets he lied about his average intelligence…
Cue mad scientist Erik Failenheimer’s escape from his asteroid prison, an army of Pinions (any similarities to the MinionsTM is purely coincidental), and a battle to save Sci-Fi Junior High from imminent doom. Let’s dance.
“Saving the universe has never been so much fun ” — Gordon Korman, #1 New York Timesbestselling author of 39 Clues and Masterminds on Sci-Fi Junior High.
Jan 2 & 16. Monthly 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 teams of 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.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. $8. 764-5118.
