Literati is proud to be the bookseller at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of Ann Arbor’s event with Kentaro Toyama at the Washtenaw Community College.
The Future of Work
Speaker’s Synopsis: Will artificial intelligence (AI) take away jobs or usher in a prosperous utopia? Will self-driving cars reduce our use of fossil fuels or accelerate emissions? What will a college degree be worth when knowledge work can be done by machine? This talk considers these and other questions through the lens of technology’s “Law of Amplification.” Paradoxically, what is needed most in a world of advanced technology is greater attention to human values.
Kentaro Toyama is W. K. Kellogg Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan School of Information, a fellow of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, and author of Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology. In previous lives, Kentaro taught at Ashesi University in Ghana and co-founded Microsoft Research India, where he did research on the application of information and communication technology to international development.
All invited to listen to guild members swap stories or bring their own to tell.
2-4 p.m., Ann Arbor District Library 3rd fl. Freespace, 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. annarborstorytelling.org .
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.
7-8:45 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200.
Let Me Sing and I’m Happy is the history of an actress who sings popular songs. It is also a handbook detailing an approach to bringing the song to life. Author Morris writes “For forty years I’ve been privileged to sing the greatest songs from our American musical theater history – Kern, Berlin, Gershwin, Porter, and Rodgers and Hart. I was fortunate to find a musical partner, William Bolcom, who felt the same way, who helped me illuminate and bring to life the history and drama in each song. Our approach gained us entry into the serious-music concert world. It helped us, in Schiller’s words, to ‘…unite that which fashion had sternly parted.’”
5:30 p.m., 100 U-M Hatcher Grad Library Gallery, enter from the Diag. Free. 763-8994.
Literati is pleased to be on hand as a bookseller for the University of Michigan Hopwood Awards Ceremony, featuring a reading from Raquel Salas Rivera.
Please join the Hopwoods Award Program as they celebrate the winners of the 2019-20 Hopwood First- and Second-Year Awards, as well as the winners of six additional contests.
Following the announcement of the awards, there will be a reading from Raquel Salas Rivera, Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, winner of the 2018 Ambroggio Prize, & winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry.
Light reception to follow. Free to attend and open to all!
If you have any accessibility questions or requests about attending, please contact the Hopwood Program Manager at hopwoodprogram@umich.edu or by phone at 764-6296.
Please join us as we celebrate the fall winners of the 2018-19 Hopwood Underclassmen awards, which includes RC writing students and U-M students taking RC writing classes.
Following the announcement of the awards, there will be a reading from former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey and a light reception. Free to attend and open to all!
This event is presented in collaboration with the UM branch of Phi Beta Kappa.
Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry, Monument (2018), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award; Thrall (2012); Native Guard (2006), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002); and Domestic Work (2000) which was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and won both the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Her book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, appeared in 2010. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. At Northwestern University she is a Board of Trustees Professor of English in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. In 2012 she was named Poet Laureate of the State of Mississippi and and in 2013 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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 U-M creative writing grad students, including poetry by Justin Balog and prose by Rachel Ann Girty.
Performances by these two 2018 Ann Arbor Youth Poetry Slam finalists.
7 p.m. Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry
Neutral Zone teens present a program of storytelling and spoken word performances on the theme of making history on their own terms.
7-8 p.m., AADL Downtown multipurpose rm. Free. 327-4200.
Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit that also produces a weekly public radio show. Ten storytellers are selected at random to tell a 3-5 minute story–this month’s themes are “Delusions” (Feb. 5) & “Flight” (Feb 19)–judged by a 3-person team recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Seating limited, so arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. General admission tickets $10 in advance only at themoth.org beginning a week before each event. 764-5118.
