Calendar

Sep
12
Thu
Braylon Edwards and Tom VanHaaren: Doing It My Way @ Nicola's Books
Sep 12 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Braylon Edwards and Tom VanHaaren are stopping in for a signing of their new book, Braylon’s autobiography, Doing It My Way. Please read signing information below.

Signing Information

No ticket is needed, but to join the signing line and have your book signed, you will need to purchase a copy from Nicola’s Books (either in-store or at the event) to receive a signing line ticket. Already bought your book from Nicola’s Books, but want to join the signing line? Simply bring your Nicola’s Books receipt to the store, and we will give you a signing line ticket.

About the Book

Braylon Edwards has heard all the talk—that he’s only out for himself, only about the money; he’s a bust, a bad guy, a troublemaker, a typical wide receiver who doesn’t get it. He’s also heard the cheering fans, heard them singing “The Victors” after wins in the Big House, and cherished the smiles he saw in the crowd. All of it leaves an impression, just as Edwards has left his mark in return. In this frank, unflinching autobiography, Edwards reveals the heartbeat behind the padded armor and shares how football helped him find his place and gave him a voice. He details his transformative time in Ann Arbor, how he felt when he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns, what was going through his head when he got traded to the Jets, and lays bare all the bumps, bruises, and unexpected turns along the way.

About the Author

Braylon Edwards played college football at the University of Michigan, where he received unanimous All-American honors and became the first receiver in Big Ten Conference history to record three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons. He played in the NFL for the Cleveland Browns, New York Jets, San Francisco 49ers, and Seattle Seahawks.

Tom VanHaaren has covered college football and recruiting for ESPN since 2011. A Michigan native, Tom started his career in 2009, focusing on Michigan Wolverines football and recruiting. Tom, his wife, Laura, and their three children currently reside in southeast Michigan.

Salmon Rushdie in Conversation with Rich Fahle @ Rackham Auditorium
Sep 12 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Tickets on sale now. Purchase here.

Literati Bookstore is honored to welcome renown, Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie to Rackham Auditorium on the campus of the University of Michigan in support of his latest novel, Quichotte. The author will be joined in conversation by Rich Fahle of PBS Books

Tickets are general admission and include a pre-signed hardcover copy of Quichotte, to be picked up at the venue the evening of the event. Literati will have additional copies of Salman Rushdie’s previous titles available for purchase. Parking in downtown Ann Arbor on Thursday evenings can be difficult. Surface spots are sparse, but a detailed map of available parking structures can be found here.

About the book: 

A dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age—a tour de force that is as much an homage to an immortal work of literature as it is to the quest for love and family, by Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie

Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen.” Meanwhile, his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.

Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirize the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse. And with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of Rushdie’s work, the fully realized lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction.

Salman Rushdie is the author of twelve novels—Grimus, Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and The Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, Luka and the Fire of Life, andTwo Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights—and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published four works of nonfiction—Joseph Anton, The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands, and Step Across This Line—and co-edited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.

Rich Fahle is Executive Producer of PBS Books and also the Chief Strategy Officer at 24G, a Detroit-based digital experience agency. He has worked with books and authors for more than 20 years. He was a Vice President at Borders Group, and prior to that, communications director at C-SPAN, where he helped launch Book TV.

Questions? Email John@literatibookstore.com 

Story Night for Grown Ups: Beverly Black, Steve Daut, Jill Halpern, and Laura Lee Hayes @ Crazy Wisdom
Sep 12 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Tellers will be Beverly Black, Steve Daut, Jill Halpern,and Laura Lee Hayes – Storytelling has power. Much more than just talking about personal experiences, today’s professional, passionate and playful storytellers can grab your attention and hold you spellbound with each word and each gesture. Hosted by Steve Daut and Laura Lee Hayes. Mark your calendars and join us for Story Night in the Crazy Wisdom Tea Room

 

 

Sep
13
Fri
Amanda Goldblatt: Hard Mouth, in conversation with Elizabeth Allen @ Nicola's Books
Sep 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Amanda Goldblatt will join Elizabeth Ellen in conversation to discuss her debut title, Hard Mouth.

About the Book

For ten years, Denny’s father has battled cancer. The drawn-out loss has forged Denny into a dazed, antisocial young woman. On the clock, she works as a lab tech, readying fruit flies for experimentation. In her spare time, only her parents, an aggressively kind best friend, and her blowhard imaginary pal Gene—who she knows isn’t real—ornament her stale days in the DC suburbs.

Now her father’s cancer is back for a third time, and he’s rejecting treatment. Denny’s transgressive reaction is to flee. She begins to dismantle her life, constructing in its place the fantasy of perfect detachment. Unsure whether the impulse is monastic or suicidal, she rents a secluded cabin in the mountains. When she discovers life in the wilderness isn’t the perfect detachment she was expecting—and that she isn’t as alone as she’d hoped—Denny is forced to reckon with this failure while confronting a new life with its own set of pleasures and dangerous incursions.

Morbidly funny, subversive, and startling, Hard Mouth, the debut novel from 2018 NEA

Creative Writing Fellow Amanda Goldblatt, unpacks what it means to live while others are dying.

About the Author

AMANDA GOLDBLATT is a writer and teacher living in Chicago. She is a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, and her fiction and essays have appeared in such journals as The Southern Review, NOON, Fence, Diagram, Hobart, and American Short Fiction. Hard Mouth is her debut novel.

About the Conversationalist

Elizabeth Ellen is the author of the novel Person/a, chosen by Lithub as a ‘best work of experimental literature’ for 2017. Her writing has been featured in such places as American Short Fiction, Salon, Bennington Review, BOMB, Joyland and Catapult. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for her story, “Teen Culture,” included in her most recent collection Saul Stories. In 2018, she published her poetry collection Elizabeth Ellen. She is the founder of Short Flight/Long Drive books (SF/LD) and is deputy editor at Hobart literary journal. Her first story collection—Fast Machine—is an indie cult classic. She lives in Ann Arbor.

Sep
15
Sun
Shachar Pinsker: A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture @ AADL Malletts Creek
Sep 15 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Shachar Pinsker, professor, Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies, University of Michigan discusses his book A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture.  The book explores the ways in which cafes provide a window into understanding modern Jewish culture and modernity. Through its focus on Jewish cafe culture in six cities: Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, Berlin, New York, and Tel Aviv, we see how Jews who migrated to cities gravitated towards cafes as important spaces and sites for producing Jewish culture. It is a story of the global aspects of Jewish modernity, what it means to be part of the public sphere, and the ways in which cafes present an important backdrop to the changes and challenges of modernity.

This event includes a book signing and books will be for sale. This event is in partnership with the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor (CHAA), an organization of scholars, cooks, food writers, nutritionists, collectors, students, and others interested in the study of culinary history and gastronomy. Their mission is to promote the study of culinary history through regular programs open to members and guests, through the quarterly newsletter Repast, and through exchanges of information with other such organizations.

Sep
18
Wed
Polly Rosenwaike: Look How Happy I’m Making You, and Cody Walker: The Trumpiad, in conversation @ Nicola's Books
Sep 18 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Ann Arbor Natives Polly Rosenwaike and Cody Walker are joining us in conversation around their most recent works. Polly will be sharing her beautifully written series of stories about… conception and Cody, he will share his brilliantly written comedic poetry.

Author: Polly Rosenwaike
Title: Look How Happy I’m Making You

A candid, ultimately buoyant debut story collection about the realities of the “baby years,” whether you’re having one or not.

The women in Polly Rosenwaike’s Look How Happy I’m Making You want to be mothers, or aren’t sure they want to be mothers, or—having recently given birth—are overwhelmed by what they’ve wrought. Sharp and unsettling, wry and moving in its portrayal of love, friendship, and family, this collection expands the conversation about some of women’s most intimate experiences.

Author: Cody Walker
Title: The Trumpiad

The new U.S. president doesn’t read books, but for everyone else, there’s Cody Walker’s The Trumpiad, a blistering and hilarious take on America’s political collapse. Key Difference: I wouldn’t lump / Trump / in with Hitler and Mussolini. / Trump’s hands are littler. (They’re teeny.) The Trumpiad will be published on April 29th 2017, which, if no one manages to stop him, will mark Trump’s 100th day in office.

About the Authors

Polly Rosenwaike’s story collection, Look How Happy I’m Making You, was a featured book pick in O MagazineMs.People, and New York Magazine. Her stories, reviews, and essays have been published in The O. Henry Prize StoriesGlimmer TrainNew England ReviewThe Cut, the New York Times Book Review, the San Francisco ChronicleLit Hub, and The Millions. She is the fiction editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review.

Cody Walker directs the Creative Writing Sub-concentration at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He’s the author of two full-length poetry collections—The Self-Styled No-Child and Shuffle and Breakdown—and a chapbook, The Trumpiad. (The chapbook doubles as a fundraiser for the ACLU.) His work appears in The New York Times MagazineSlate, and The Best American Poetry. He’s the co-director of the Bear River Writers’ Conference and the co-editor of Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest.

Poetry Salon: One Pause Poetry @ Argus Farm Stop
Sep 18 @ 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm

ONE PAUSE POETRY SALON is (literally) a greenhouse for poetry and poets, nurturing an appreciation for written art in all languages and encouraging experiments in creative writing.

We meet every Weds in the greenhouse at Argus Farm Stop on Liberty St. The poems we read each time are unified by form (haiku, sonnet, spoken word), poet, time / place (Tang Dynasty, English Romanticism, New York in the 70s) or theme / mood (springtime, poems with cats, protest poems). We discuss the poems and play writing games together, with time for snacks and socializing in between.

Members are encouraged to share their own poems or poems they like – they may or may not relate to the theme of the evening. This is not primarily a workshop – we may hold special workshop nights, but mostly we listen to and talk about poems for the sake of inspiring new writing.

Whether you are a published poet or encountering poetry for the first time, we invite you to join us!

$5 suggested donation for food, drinks and printing costs.

8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.

 

 

 

Sep
19
Thu
Zell Visiting Writers Series: Wayetu Moore: Roundtable @ Hopwood Room, 1176 Angell Hall
Sep 19 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

(This description is for the talk at 5:30 pm)

Wayétu Moore’s debut novel She Would Be King reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years. It was named a best book of 2018 by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Entertainment Weekly & BuzzFeed.

Moore is the founder of One Moore Book, a non-profit organization that creates and distributes culturally relevant books for underrepresented readers. Her first bookstore opened in Monrovia, Liberia in 2015. Her writing can be found in The Paris Review, Frieze Magazine, Guernica, The Atlantic Magazine and other publications. She has been featured in The Economist Magazine, NPR, NBC, BET and ABC, among others, for her work in advocacy for diversity in children’s literature.

She is a graduate of Howard University, University of Southern California and Columbia University. Moore is a founding faculty member of Randolph College MFA program and a Distinguished Visiting Writer at Syracuse University.

This event is free and open to the public.

The Zell Visiting Writers Series brings outstanding writers to campus each semester. The Series is made possible through a generous gift from U-M alumna Helen Zell (BA ’64, LLDHon ’13). For more information, please visit the Zell Visiting Writers Program webpage: https://lsa.umich.edu/writers

For any questions about the event or to share accommodation needs, please email asbates@umich.edu– we are eager to help ensure that this event is inclusive to you. The building, event space, and restrooms are wheelchair accessible. A lactation room (Angell Hall #5209), reflection room (Haven Hall #1506), and gender-inclusive restroom (Angell Hall 5th floor) are available on site. ASL interpreters and CART services are available upon request; please email asbates@umich.edu at least two weeks prior to the event.

Mark Stryker: Jazz From Detroit @ AADL Downtown
Sep 19 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

From Motown to soul and rock to techno, Detroit’s contributions to American musical culture have been long celebrated. Now, Mark Stryker’s new book, Jazz From Detroit, refocuses attention on the city’s influential role as one of the most prolific breeding grounds for innovative jazz musicians and front-rank stylists, from Elvin Jones and Ron Carter to Geri Allen and Regina Carter.

Stryker will give a talk and we’ll have a signing (books will be for sale), then we can head over to Blue LLama on Main Street in Ann Arbor for a FREE set of Detroit jazz by Motor City mainstay Marion Hayden whose band is performing there at 8:30 pm as part of the A2 Jazz Fest.

Jonathan Safran Foer in Conversation @ Rackham Auditorium
Sep 19 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Please register your attendance here.

The University of Michigan School for Environtment, Sustainbale Food Systems Initiative and Literati Bookstore are thrilled to welcome Jonathan Safran Foer to Rackham Auditorium on the campus of the University of Michigan in support of his landmark book We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast.

Join New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) to learn how saving the planet begins on our breakfast plates. With a reading and discussion of his new book, We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, Safran Foer will highlight small behavioral changes that could help move the needle on climate change.

Literati Bookstore will be on-hand to sell copies of the book.

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