BRING ABOUT SIX COPIES OF YOUR WORK. COPIES WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU.
Hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and Dave Jibson; see our blog at Facebook/Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series
Literati is honored to welcome back poet Clayton Eshelman who will be reading from his new collection Pollen Aria.
About Pollen Aria:
That Clayton Eshleman has not ceased from exploration over a career spanning more than 60 years is witnessed by the bulk, range, and diversity of his prior work. Now in his 80’s Eshleman presents us with a last collection of his poems-mostly recent, a few older. That he has sought to open up his life and work, to entwine and entangle it with others, through observation and vision, research and scholarship, translation and editing, and collaboration and conversation, all of this reflects Eshleman’s life commitment, indeed a commitment to life in writing poetry.
Clayton Eshleman has had published roughly 100 books and chapbooks of original poetry, translations, and nonfiction writings, and edited seventy issues of magazines and journals, including the ground-breaking Caterpillar and Sulfur. His writings have appeared in over 500 literary magazines and journals around the world and his books and writings have been translated into over a dozen languages. He has won many poetry awards, fellowships, and translation awards for his works through the years. It is undoubtedly unnecessary to observe that he made and has fulfilled a life commitment to poetry. Now in his 80’s he resides with his wife Caryl in Ypsilanti, MI.
Literati is proud to be partnering with the Helen Zell Writers Program to host author Edwidge Danticat at the University of Michigan Art Museum Helmut Stern Auditorium.
Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah’s Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and the novel-in-stories, The Dew Breaker. She is the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures , Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2, and Best American Essays 2011. She has written six books for young adults and children– Anac aona, Behind the Mountains, Eight Days, The Last Mapou, Mama’s Nightingale, and Untwine–as well as a travel narrative, After the Dance, A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow.
Listen to old tales and new during an evening of adult stories. Ann Arbor Storytellers’ Guild members perform for the first hour. For the second half of the program we will be bringing in something new – come find out what we’re up to! Free. Donations welcome. Contact the Guild at annarborstorytelling.org
Literati is excited to welcome author Lydia Fitzpatrick who will be sharing with us her novel Lights All Night Long.
About Lights All Night Long:
A gripping and deftly plotted narrative of family and belonging, Lights All Night Long is a dazzling debut novel from an acclaimed young writer
“Lights All Night Long is utterly brilliant and completely captivating. . . . One of the most propulsive, un-put-downable literary novels I’ve read in ages.”–Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Fifteen-year-old Ilya arrives in Louisiana from his native Russia for what should be the adventure of his life: a year in America as an exchange student. The abundance of his new world–the Super Walmarts and heated pools and enormous televisions–is as hard to fathom as the relentless cheerfulness of his host parents. And Sadie, their beautiful and enigmatic daughter, has miraculously taken an interest in him.
But all is not right in Ilya’s world: he’s consumed by the fate of his older brother Vladimir, the magnetic rebel to Ilya’s dutiful wunderkind, back in their tiny Russian hometown. The two have always been close, spending their days dreaming of escaping to America. But when Ilya was tapped for the exchange, Vladimir disappeared into their town’s seedy, drug-plagued underworld. Just before Ilya left, the murders of three young women rocked the town’s usual calm, and Vladimir found himself in prison.
With the help of Sadie, who has secrets of her own, Ilya embarks on a mission to prove Vladimir’s innocence. Piecing together the timeline of the murders and Vladimir’s descent into addiction, Ilya discovers the radical lengths to which Vladimir has gone to protect him–a truth he could only have learned by leaving him behind.
A rich tale of belonging and the pull of homes both native and adopted, Lights All Night Long is a spellbinding story of the fierce bond between brothers determined to find a way back to each other.
Lydia Fitzpatrick‘s work has appeared in the The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, One Story, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a fiction fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant. She graduated from Princeton University and received an MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters.
Vault of Midnight is excited to present a reading and book signing with Michael DeForge to launch Leaving Richard’s Valley, his new graphic novel. Leaving Richard’s Valley documents a group of forest creatures attempting to survive in the big city after being forced out of their cultish community. What unfolds is an entertaining meditation on the meaning of community and the many forms it takes.
The reading will take place in the Ultralounge, nestled beneath Vault of Midnight Ann Arbor, at 7pm and will be followed by a signing. Come celebrate this exciting book launch for Leaving Richard’s Valley by meeting Eisner-award winning creator, Michael DeForge, for a very special event at our Downtown Ann Arbor location!
DR. CHLOE PREEDY, UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
Hosted by the Animal Studies & Environmental Humanities RIW. Please RSVP to lageiger@umich.edu or cvfair@umich.edu
Literati is excited to welcome author and physician Anthony DeBenedet to discuss his book Playful Intelligence.
About Playful Intelligence:
As adults, we have more responsibilities than we could have ever imagined growing up. Learning the work of marriage. Navigating the bumpy terrain of parenting. Maintaining social relationships. Facing grave hardship. Finding contentment in our career.
As the years pass by, we sense how the good things in life are so often eclipsed by stress. We find ourselves doing everything we can just to endure adulthood, all the while wondering whether we are actually enjoying it. This is exactly why Dr. Anthony T. DeBenedet decided to write Playful Intelligence: The Power of Living Lightly in a Serious World, to show readers how playfulness helps us counterbalance the seriousness of adulthood.
“Five years ago, my life was becoming more intense and stressful,” DeBenedet says. “My relationships, clinical work as a physician, and basic interactions with the world were blurring into a frazzled mosaic. Going through the motions became my norm, and every day brought busyness and exhaustion. I thought about whether I was depressed. I didn’t think I was. Anxious? Sure, but aren’t we all anxious on some level? I also thought about the lifestyle factors that could be making me feel this way. Was I getting enough sleep? Was I exercising regularly? Was I eating healthy? Was I playing and remembering to be playful?”
Today, we live in a taxing world. The endless pressure to keep up with our responsibilities and the daily headlines swarming around us can be overwhelming. DeBenedet’s work comes at a time when stress, uncertainty, and intensity levels are high. Playful Intelligence shows adults that there is a way to live lighter–and smarter–as we navigate the seriousness of adulthood. It’s not about taking life less seriously; it’s about taking ourselves less seriously.
The book’s core chapters are devoted to exploring the effects and benefits of five playful qualities: imagination, sociability, humor, spontaneity, and wonder. By examining playfulness as a sum of its parts, readers will gain a working awareness of its power and be able to apply playful principles to their own lives, bringing the magic of childhood back into their day-to-day existence. The book also offers practical suggestions on how to make life more playful in nature.
Anthony T. DeBenedet, M.D. is a practicing physician and behavioral-science enthusiast. His interviews and writings have run in various media outlets, including the New York Times, the Today show, the Washington Post, and TIME Ideas. He also co-authored The Art of Roughhousing: Good Old-Fashioned Horseplay and Why Every Kid Needs It (Quirk Books, 2011), a parenting book about the importance of parent-child physical play. DeBenedet has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering, a Master of Science Degree in Health and Healthcare Research from the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School, and a Doctor of Medicine Degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He completed his internal medicine residency and gastroenterology fellowship at the University of Michigan Health System. DeBenedet lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he enjoys spending time with his family, connecting with friends, and playing a little basketball.
The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES) at the University of Michigan cordially invite you to join us for Dr. Assya Humesky’s talk about her and her family’s contributions to Ukrainian culture through published works, art, and teaching in higher education.
Light refreshments will be served.
Professor Richard Mann has been a pivotal figure in consciousness-related coursework and research on the U-M campus and far beyond. A revered pedagogue and visionary, he has impacted hundreds of students from across fields as well as maintained national prominence through his writings and longtime position as editor of the cutting-edge SUNY series in Transpersonal Psychology. In conversation with PCCS Director Ed Sarath, this evening’s talk will commemorate Mann’s long and distinguished tenure at U-M and engage in far-reaching reflections about his personal work and what might lie ahead for the still-nascent field of consciousness studies. Topics will range from research and ideas pursued by organizations such as Society for Scientific Exploration, Institute for the Noetic Sciences, and the Integral Theory community that challenge materialist assumptions, to socio-political-environmental ramifications of consciousness understanding, to what a 21st century program in consciousness studies might look like.
For more information on the Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies and its Consciousness Next Series, contact Ed Sarath, sarahara@umich.edu, and also go to https://smtd.umich.edu/current-students-3/pccs/
