Literati is excited to welcome authors Thomas Bailey and Katherine Joslin who will be sharing their new biography Theodore Roosevelt: A Literary Life.
About Theodore Roosevelt: A Literary Life
Of all the many biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, none has presented the twenty-sixth president as he saw himself: as a man of letters. This fascinating account traces Roosevelt’s lifelong engagement with books and discusses his writings from childhood journals to his final editorial, finished just hours before his death. His most famous book, The Rough Riders–part memoir, part war adventure–barely begins to suggest the dynamism of his literary output. Roosevelt read widely and deeply, and worked tirelessly on his writing. Along with speeches, essays, reviews, and letters, he wrote history, autobiography, and tales of exploration and discovery. In this thoroughly original biography, Roosevelt is revealed at his most vulnerable–and his most human.
Thomas Bailey is professor emeritus of English and environmental studies at Western Michigan University.
Katherine Joslin is the author of Jane Addams, A Writer’s Life and Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion, winner of a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award.
We are thrilled to welcome award winning author Weike Wang to Literati Bookstore for the paperback release of her novel Chemistry. She will be joined for a post-reading discussion with author Lillian Li.
About Chemisty:
At first glance, the quirky, overworked narrator of Weike Wang’s debut novel seems to be on the cusp of a perfect life: she is studying for a prestigious PhD in chemistry that will make her Chinese parents proud (or at least satisfied), and her successful, supportive boyfriend has just proposed to her. But instead of feeling hopeful, she is wracked with ambivalence: the long, demanding hours at the lab have created an exquisite pressure cooker, and she doesn’t know how to answer the marriage question. When it all becomes too much and her life plan veers off course, she finds herself on a new path of discoveries about everything she thought she knew. Smart, moving, and always funny, this unique coming-of-age story is certain to evoke a winning reaction.
Weike Wang is a graduate of Harvard University, where she earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry and her doctorate in public health. She received her MFA from Boston University. Her fiction has been published in literary magazines, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, and Ploughshares , which also named Chemistry the winner of its John C. Zacharis Award. A “5 Under 35” honoree of the National Book Foundation, Weike currently lives in New York City.
Lillian Li received her BA from Princeton and her MFA from the University of Michigan. She is the recipient of a Hopwood Award in Short Fiction, as well as Glimmer Train‘s New Writer Award. Her work has been featured inGuernica, Granta , and Jezebel. She is from the D.C. metro area and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Number One Chinese Restaurant is her first novel.
Literati is honored to host contributors from the new essay collection Voices from the Rust Belt.
About Voices from the Rust Belt:
Where is America’s Rust Belt? It’s not quite a geographic region but a linguistic one, first introduced as a concept in 1984 by Walter Mondale. In the modern vernacular, it’s closely associated with the “Post-Industrial Midwest,” and includes Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, as well as parts of Illinois, Wisconsin, and New York. The region reflects the country’s manufacturing center, which, over the past forty years, has been in decline. In the 2016 election, the Rust Belt’s economic woes became a political talking point, and helped pave the way for a Donald Trump victory. But the region is neither monolithic nor easily understood. The truth is much more nuanced. Voices From the Rust Belt pulls together a distinct variety of voices from people who call the region home. Voices that emerge from familiar Rust Belt cities– Detroit, Cleveland, Flint, and Buffalo, among others — and observe, with grace and sensitivity, the changing economic and cultural realities for generations of Americans. The anthology is a collection of the best non-fiction essays published in Belt Magazine, a critically-acclaimed regional magazine, and has been artfully put together by publisher and founder Anne Trubek
Anne Trubek is the founder and director of Belt Publishing. She is the author of The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting and A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses, and the co-editor of Rust Belt Chic: The
Cleveland Anthology.
Ryan Schurr is a writer and photographer from northeast Indiana. He is the author of In the Watershed: A Journey Down the Maumee River.
Connor Coyne has written two novels–Shattering Glass and Hungry Rats–and Atlas, a colleciton of short stories, all inspired by the past, present, and future of Flint, Michigan. He lives in Flint with his wife, two daughters, and an adopted rabbit.
Literati is thrilled to welcome poet Emily Strelow who will be reading from her new collection The Wild Birds.
About the The Wild Birds:
Cast adrift in 1870s San Francisco after the death of her mother, a girl named Olive disguises herself as a boy and works as a lighthouse keeper’s assistant on the Farallon Islands to escape the dangers of a world unkind to young women. In 1941, nomad Victor scours the Sierras searching for refuge from a home to which he never belonged. And in the present day, precocious fifteen year-old Lily struggles, despite her willfulness, to find a place for herself amongst the small town attitudes of Burning Hills, Oregon. Living alone with her hardscrabble mother Alice compounds the problem–though their unique relationship to the natural world ties them together, Alice keeps an awful secret from her daughter, one that threatens to ignite the tension growing between them.
Emily Strelow’s mesmerizing debut stitches together a sprawling saga of the feral Northwest across farmlands and deserts and generations: an American mosaic alive with birdsong and gunsmoke, held together by a silver box of eggshells–a long-ago gift from a mother to her daughter. Written with grace, grit, and an acute knowledge of how the past insists upon itself, The Wild Birds is a radiant and human story about the shelters we find and make along our crooked paths home.
Emily Strelow was born and raised in Oregon’s Willamette Valley but has lived all over the West and now, the Midwest. For the last decade she combined teaching writing with doing seasonal avian field biology with her husband. While doing field jobs she camped and wrote in remote areas in the desert, mountains and by the ocean. She is a mother to two boys, a naturalist, and writer. She lives in Ann Arbor, MI. The Wild Birds is her first novel.
All invited to read and discuss their poetry or short stories. Bring about 6 copies of your work to share.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
Ann Arbor Storytellers Guild members host a storytelling program. Audience members are encouraged to bring a 5-minute story to tell.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom Tea Room, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
Literati is excited to host author Julia Fine who will be sharing her new novel What Should Be Wild.
About What Should Be Wild:
In this darkly funny, striking debut, a highly unusual young woman must venture into the woods at the edge of her home to remove a curse that has plagued the women in her family for millennia–an utterly original novel with all the mesmerizing power of The Tiger’s Wife, The Snow Child, and Swamplandia!
Cursed. Maisie Cothay has never known the feel of human flesh: born with the power to kill or resurrect at her slightest touch, she has spent her childhood sequestered in her family’s manor at the edge of a mysterious forest. Maisie’s father, an anthropologist who sees her as more experiment than daughter, has warned Maisie not to venture into the wood. Locals talk of men disappearing within, emerging with addled minds and strange stories. What he does not tell Maisie is that for over a millennium her female ancestors have also vanished into the wood, never to emerge–for she is descended from a long line of cursed women.
But one day Maisie’s father disappears, and Maisie must venture beyond the walls of her carefully constructed life to find him. Away from her home and the wood for the very first time, she encounters a strange world filled with wonder and deception. Yet the farther she strays, the more the wood calls her home. For only there can Maisie finally reckon with her power and come to understand the wildest parts of herself.
Julia Fine teaches writing at DePaul University and is a recent graduate of Columbia College Chicago’s MFA program. She lives in Chicago with her husband and their son.
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 students to share their writing, art, photography, songs, and videos with our broader community, providing them an authentic audience for their work. This event will feature several exceptional Skyline student writers reading their fiction, poetry, and essays from the fifth edition of Teen Spirit publicly for the first time.
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, 30 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 opening in 2012, the Writing Center has made more than 5,000 student contacts. Jeffrey Austin, a Skyline English teacher, is the program’s founder and director.
An intro to birding migration in Michigan. We will discuss the importance of field marks, bird sounds, flyways, weather, books and online media in the world of birding. Bring your questions and desire to learn birding basics. No experience necessary.
Emily Strelow has an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Washington in Seattle and an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science. Her first novel, The Wild Birds, was published March of 2018 with Rare Bird Books. She was born and raised in Oregon’s Willamette Valley but now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For the last decade she combined teaching writing with doing seasonal avian field biology. While doing field jobs she camped and wrote in remote areas in the desert, mountains and by the ocean. She is a mother to two boys, a naturalist, and a writer.
Literati is excited to partner with the University of Michigan Medical School to present Iatrogenesis: Essays on Becoming a Physician, a collection of essays written by U-M medical students.
About Iatrogenesis:
In Iatrogenesis: Essays on Becoming a Physician, medical students share coming-of-age stories that illustrate the rigorous, rewarding, and sometimes unforgiving journey into medicine. In Greek, iatro- means doctor, and -genesis means origin: Iatrogenesis thus describes any effect, good or bad, brought forth by a physician’s actions. This essay compendium looks beyond a physician’s impact on patients, instead turning inward to examine the impact of medical training on student doctors. These essays written by University of Michigan medical students span from the donning of the White Coat to graduation. Along the way, each writer weaves a story, the threads of which unite in a tapestry highlighting the universality of this coming-of-age journey. These essays breathe life into each stage of medical apprenticeship, displaying the full spectrum of human emotion as medical students find ways to reinvent themselves as the physicians of tomorrow.
In Greek, iatro- means doctor, and -genesis means origin: Iatrogenesis thus describes any effect, good or bad, brought forth by a physician’s actions. This essay compendium looks beyond a physician’s impact on patients, instead turning inward to examine the impact of medical training on student doctors. These essays breathe life into each stage of medical apprenticeship, displaying the full spectrum of human emotion as medical students find ways to reinvent themselves as the physicians of tomorrow.
