Calendar

Nov
7
Thu
Joshua A. Douglas: Vote for Us @ Literati
Nov 7 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome law professor Joshua A. Douglas in support of his book, Vote for Us: How to Take Back Our Elections and Change the Future of Voting. A book signing will follow. The event is free and open to the public. 

About the book: In contrast to the anxiety surrounding our voting system, with stories about voter suppression and manipulation, there are actually quite a few positive initiatives toward voting rights reform. Professor Joshua A. Douglas, an expert on our electoral system, examines these encouraging developments in this inspiring book about how regular Americans are working to take back their democracy, one community at a time. Told through the narratives of those working on positive voting rights reforms, Douglas includes chapters on expanding voter eligibility, easing voter registration rules, making voting more convenient, enhancing accessibility at the polls, providing voters with more choices, finding ways to comply with voter ID rules, giving redistricting back to the voters, pushing back on big money through local and state efforts, using journalism to make the system more accountable, and improving civics education. At the end, the book includes an appendix that lists organizations all over the country working on these efforts. Unusually accessible for a lay audience and thoroughly researched, this book gives anyone fed up with our current political environment the ideas and tools necessary to affect change in their own communities.

Joshua A. Douglas is a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law. His most recent scholarship focuses on the constitutional right to vote, with an emphasis on state constitutions, as well as the various laws, rules, and judicial decisions impacting election administration. He has also written extensively on election law procedure. He is a coauthor of an election-law case book and a coeditor of Election Law Stories, which tells the behind-the-scenes stories of the major cases in the field. In addition, his media commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, Reuters, the Washington Post, Politico, the Atlantic, Huffington Post, and Slate, among other outlets, and he has been quoted in major newspapers such as the New York Times and theWashington Post. He appeared live on CNN on Election Day 2016.

Nov
8
Fri
Bill Lopez: Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid @ Nicola's Books
Nov 8 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Lopez will join us for the evening to examine the lasting damage done by a daylong act of collaborative immigration enforcement in Washtenaw County, Michigan. He will share his title Separated, where Lopez discusses deportation’s rippling negative effects on families, communities, and individuals and reveals efforts to cope with trauma, avoid homelessness, handle worsening health, and keep families together.

About the Book

In Separated,  Lopez examines the lasting damage done by a daylong act of collaborative immigration enforcement in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Exploring the chaos of enforcement through the lens of community health, Lopez discusses deportation’s rippling negative effects on families, communities, and individuals and reveals efforts to cope with trauma, avoid homelessness, handle worsening health, and keep families together.

About the Author

William Lopez is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and collaborates and organizes with the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights and Washtenaw ID Project. He lives in Ann Arbor with his partner and two children.

Linda Solomon: The Queen Next Door: Aretha Franklin, an Intimate Portrait @ AADL Downtown (4th Floor Meeting Room)
Nov 8 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

The Queen Next Door: Aretha Franklin, An Intimate Portrait is a book full of firsts, as photojournalist Linda Solomon was invited not only to capture historical events in Aretha’s music career showcasing Detroit, but to join in with the Franklin family’s most intimate and cherished moments in her beloved hometown.  Join us for this special evening as she reflects on this book which documents Aretha’s life and career.

Linda Solomon met Aretha in 1983 when Linda was beginning her career as a photojournalist and newspaper columnist and was hired to capture the singer’s major career events, and to also document everything else.  What developed over these years of photographing birthday and Christmas parties, annual celebrity galas, private backstage moments, photo shoots with the iconic pink Cadillac, and more, was a friendship between two women who grew to enjoy and respect one another.

Martin Bandyke, morning drive host on Ann Arbor’s 107one, will host this event which includes a signing with books for sale.

Theatre Nova: Frederick Glaysher’s The Parliament of Poets @ Hathaway's Hideaway
Nov 8 @ 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm

The theatre company Apollo’s Troupe, will stage the theatre adaptation of the critically-acclaimed epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, written by Michigan poet Frederick Glaysher and published in 2012 by Earthrise Press. Fresh from performing in May at Wayne State University’s Studio Theatre, this stage adaptation of Mr. Glaysher’s epic work in verse keeps intact much of the beautiful poetry that exemplifies this spectacular book while seeking to reach a new audience with its message of how poetry and artistry from all times and cultures can elevate the world and redefine our lives for the better.

Glaysher studied with Robert Hayden during the last year of his life, worked for him as a secretary, and edited his Collected Prose for the University of Michigan Press and his Collected Poems for Liveright. Glaysher holds two degrees from U of M, the latter a Master’s in English. When it came time for writing his epic poem, Glaysher knew he had to include Robert Hayden to try to honor his former teacher, mentor, and friend.

Taking place on the moon at the Apollo 11 landing site, a lone poet finds himself charged by Don Quixote and “The Parliament of Poets” to spread a new message of beauty, unity, and love to all nations of our fractured modern world. He is then sent to meet with the great poets, myths, and characters from history, East and West, to be mentored on his quest towards enlightenment and understanding.

 

Nov
9
Sat
Larry and Sandy Feldman: Building Bridges Across the Racial Divide @ Crazy Wisdom
Nov 9 @ 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Building Bridges Across the Racial Divide with Larry and Sandy Feldman – Nov 9, 2 to 4 p.m. – Authors Larry and Sandy Feldman will share concepts and stories from their recently published book Building Bridges Across the Racial Divide. Free to Attend Event. Contact (269) 921-0531, sandyandlarryfeldman@hotmail.com

Andre Aciman: Find Me, and In Conversation @ Rackham Auditorium
Nov 9 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Tickets on sale now. Click here to purchase.

Literati Bookstore is excited to welcome bestselling author André Aciman to Rackham Auditorium on the campus of the University of Michigan in support of the follow-up to Call Me By Your NameFind Me. The program will feature a conversation and an audience Q&A. A book signing will follow.

Seating is general admission and there are three ticket types for this event. The Book Bundle ticket includes general admission, a copy of Find Me, and priority access to the signing line following the event for that ticket holder and a party of any group of ticket holders no greater than 3 persons total (including Book Bundle Ticket holder). Parties are encouraged to sit together (and arrive early) as guests will be released by row to join the signing line.

General Admission tickets are $10 and can be redeemed for $10 off a copy of Find Me if purchased at the venue the evening of the event.

Student General Admission tickets are free, and those guests are asked to present a valid school-issue ID at the door.

If not attending with a Book Bundle ticket holder, General Admission and Student General Admission guests may join the line following all Book Bundle ticket holders and their parties, provided they have a book they wish to have signed.

Surface parking in downtown Ann Arbor is limited. A detailed map of available (and walkable) parking structures can be found here.

About the book: No novel in recent memory has spoken more movingly to contemporary readers about the nature of love than André Aciman’s haunting Call Me by Your Name. First published in 2007, it was hailed as “a love letter, an invocation . . . an exceptionally beautiful book” (Stacey D’Erasmo, The New York Times Book Review). Nearly three quarters of a million copies have been sold, and the book became a much-loved, Academy Award–winning film starring Timothée Chalamet as the young Elio and Armie Hammer as Oliver, the graduate student with whom he falls in love.

In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio’s father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train with a beautiful young woman upends Sami’s plans and changes his life forever.

Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic.

Aciman is a master of sensibility, of the intimate details and the emotional nuances that are the substance of passion. Find Me brings us back inside the magic circle of one of our greatest contemporary romances to ask if, in fact, true love ever dies.

André Aciman is the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me By Your NameOut of EgyptEight White NightsFalse PapersAlibis, and Harvard Square, and most recently Enigma Variations. He’s the editor of The Proust Project and teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives with his wife in Manhattan.

Additional event questions? Email John@LiteratiBookstore.com

Theatre Nova: Frederick Glaysher’s The Parliament of Poets @ Hathaway's Hideaway
Nov 9 @ 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm

The theatre company Apollo’s Troupe, will stage the theatre adaptation of the critically-acclaimed epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, written by Michigan poet Frederick Glaysher and published in 2012 by Earthrise Press. Fresh from performing in May at Wayne State University’s Studio Theatre, this stage adaptation of Mr. Glaysher’s epic work in verse keeps intact much of the beautiful poetry that exemplifies this spectacular book while seeking to reach a new audience with its message of how poetry and artistry from all times and cultures can elevate the world and redefine our lives for the better.

Glaysher studied with Robert Hayden during the last year of his life, worked for him as a secretary, and edited his Collected Prose for the University of Michigan Press and his Collected Poems for Liveright. Glaysher holds two degrees from U of M, the latter a Master’s in English. When it came time for writing his epic poem, Glaysher knew he had to include Robert Hayden to try to honor his former teacher, mentor, and friend.

Taking place on the moon at the Apollo 11 landing site, a lone poet finds himself charged by Don Quixote and “The Parliament of Poets” to spread a new message of beauty, unity, and love to all nations of our fractured modern world. He is then sent to meet with the great poets, myths, and characters from history, East and West, to be mentored on his quest towards enlightenment and understanding.

 

Nov
10
Sun
Fifth Avenue Press Book Release Reception @ AADL Downtown (Lobby)
Nov 10 @ 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm

The Ann Arbor District Library is pleased to announce the release of NINE new literary works from our Fifth Avenue Press imprint.

We’re releasing four titles for adults:

The Elements: a love letter to all things everywhere (Hannah Burr) An artist’s exploration of the periodic table of elements and our inseparability with everything.

All That We Encounter (Bethany Grey) A literary novel with a metaphysical and time-travel slant that addresses the complexity of family bonds, explores self-discovery at every age, and raises the question: to truly move on from one’s past, must one first come to terms with it?

Breaking Through (Johnny Thompson) A novel about Sam, a twenty-eight year old teacher, who navigates changing friendships and her own out-of-control love life as forgotten pieces of her past begin to resurface.

Shape Notes (Judy Patterson Wenzel) Expressing both the harmonious and dissonant parts of life, Shape Notes is organized around four shapes and four themes: social justice, places, family and community. The poems attempt to create connections and discover how our connections can bring joy.

One title for teens:

Intersections (Shanelle Boluyt) When a tragic car accident cuts short the life of vivacious Chloe, the lives of everyone involved are forever changed. Told from nine different perspectives, Intersections portrays the crossroads of the struggle to find the light or surrender to the shadows.

Four titles for children:

The Dragon Library (James Barbatano, with illustrations by Douglas Bosley) A charming beginning reader about a mysterious library and the three dragons who work hard to keep it going.

Modern Crab Adventures: Fantastic Planet (Douglas Bosley) Crab is on an outer space adventure, but when the ship breaks down on an unfamiliar planet how will Crab get back home? Find out in this delightful picture book.

Over In Motown (Debbie Taylor, with illustrations by Keisha Morris) An energetic picture book celebrating the musical genres and rhythms of industry that fueled Detroit in the Motown era.

The Planet We Live On (Shanda Trent) In this picture book told in a lively House That Jack Built style, discover the connections among plants, animals, and the resources they need to survive. How do people fit into earth’s web of life?

Join us to hear readings and meet our fourth group of authors, buy their books, get them signed, and enjoy light refreshments!

For more information about Fifth Avenue Press or to submit your work visit fifthavenue.press.

Theatre Nova: Frederick Glaysher’s The Parliament of Poets @ Hathaway's Hideaway
Nov 10 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

The theatre company Apollo’s Troupe, will stage the theatre adaptation of the critically-acclaimed epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, written by Michigan poet Frederick Glaysher and published in 2012 by Earthrise Press. Fresh from performing in May at Wayne State University’s Studio Theatre, this stage adaptation of Mr. Glaysher’s epic work in verse keeps intact much of the beautiful poetry that exemplifies this spectacular book while seeking to reach a new audience with its message of how poetry and artistry from all times and cultures can elevate the world and redefine our lives for the better.

Glaysher studied with Robert Hayden during the last year of his life, worked for him as a secretary, and edited his Collected Prose for the University of Michigan Press and his Collected Poems for Liveright. Glaysher holds two degrees from U of M, the latter a Master’s in English. When it came time for writing his epic poem, Glaysher knew he had to include Robert Hayden to try to honor his former teacher, mentor, and friend.

Taking place on the moon at the Apollo 11 landing site, a lone poet finds himself charged by Don Quixote and “The Parliament of Poets” to spread a new message of beauty, unity, and love to all nations of our fractured modern world. He is then sent to meet with the great poets, myths, and characters from history, East and West, to be mentored on his quest towards enlightenment and understanding.

 

Nov
11
Mon
Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings from the Me Too Movement @ Literati
Nov 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome contributors to this intersectional collection of essays, fiction, and poetry featuring black, Latinx, Asian, queer, and trans writers. Details and readers to be announced. 

About the book: “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter,” said Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford when she testified to congress in September 2018 about the men who victimized her. A year earlier, in October 2017, the hashtag #MeToo shone a light on the internalized, normalized sexual harassment and abuse that’d been ubiquitous for women for generations.

Among the first books to emerge from the #MeToo movement, Indelible in the Hippocampus is a truly intersectional collection of essays, fiction, and poetry. These original texts sound the voices of black, Latinx, Asian, queer, and trans writers, to name but a few, and says “me too” 23 times. Whether reflecting on their teenage selves or their modern-day workplaces, each contributor approaches the subject with unforgettable authenticity and strength.

Together these pieces create a portrait of cultural sea-change, offering the reader a deeper understanding of this complex, galvanizing pivot in contemporary consciousness.

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