Calendar

Sep
30
Mon
Poetry at Literati: Khaled Mattawa: Mare Nostrum @ Literati
Sep 30 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome acclaimed poet Khaled Mattawa in support of his latest collection, Mare Nostrum.

About the book: “On the bridges to those slippery worlds, we are wrapped in gold foil, disease free. Who is saving whom? The question’s not stated, only implied.” In 2013, the Italian government implemented Mare Nostrum, an operation intended to limit immigration from Africa and the Middle East to European countries. For the refugees, the journeys were harrowing, often ending in shipwrecks or imprisonment, and the arrivals were wracked with uncertainty. Here, the poet Khaled Mattawa conjures a pointed, incantatory account of the refugee experience in the Mediterranean. In reclaiming the operation’s name Mare Nostrum (our sea in Latin), he renders us culpable for the losses, and responsible to those risking their lives in pursuit of hope and respite from oppression. The voices are many, and the lyrics ritualistic, as if Mattawa has stirred ghosts from the wreckage. Part narrative, part blessing, this chapbook begs of its readers: Do you remember? Mattawa’s writing is a lighthouse for politics of the twenty-first century, and this chapbook a stunning memorial.

 

Acclaimed poet Khaled Mattawa conjures a pointed, incantatory account of the refugee experience during Operation Mare Nostrum.

Oct
1
Tue
Veronica Roth: The End and Other Beginnings, and in conversation with Alexander Weinstein @ AADL Downtown (First Floor Lobby)
Oct 1 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Literati Bookstore is pleased to welcome Veronica Roth to the Ann Arbor District Library’s Downtown Branch in support of her new book, The End and Other Beginnings: Stories from the Future. Veronica will be in-conversation with Alexander Weinstein, author of Children of the New World and the forthcoming Universal Love.

A signing will follow the event. A copy of The End and Other Beginnings: Stories from the Future is required to join the signing line. Copies will be available for purchase through Literati Bookstore at the event. Limit two books per person during the signing line. Additional signing line guidelines will be announced at the event. No posed photos.

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent Series (DivergentInsurgentAllegiant, and Four: A Divergent Collection) and the Carve the Mark series (Carve the MarkThe Fates Divide). Her short stories and essays have appeared in the anthologies Summer Days and Summer NightsShards and Ashes, and Three Sides of a Heart. The Divergent Series was developed into three major motion pictures.

This event is in partnership with Literati Bookstore. It includes a signing with books for sale.

The Moth Storyslam: Fraud @ Greyline
Oct 1 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Open-mic storytelling competitions. Open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night’s theme. Come tell a story, or just enjoy the show!

6:30pm Doors Open | 7:30pm Stories Begin

*Tickets for this event are available one week before the show, at 3pm ET.

*Seating is not guaranteed and is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Please be sure to arrive at least 10 minutes before the show. Admission is not guaranteed for late arrivals. All sales final.

Media Sponsor: Michigan Radio.

FRAUD: Prepare a five-minute story about fakes, liars, and hustlers. Tell us about a time when you felt like a phony or a sham. A moment where you struggled with impostor syndrome? Exposed a con? Catch Me If You Can or fake it ’til you make it.

 

Oct
2
Wed
Matthew Riemer: Seeing Queer History @ AADL Downtown
Oct 2 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Matthew Riemer, co-author of We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation, uses imagery and narrative culled from years of research to examine how the struggles and triumphs of the queer past can inform the present with an eye toward a more liberated future.

Matthew Riemer co-wrote We Are Everywhere with his husband Leighton Brown. They are also the creators of Instagram’s @lgbt_history, and live in Washington, D.C., where Leighton is an attorney and Matthew, a former attorney, is a writer and lecturer. With their meticulous and visually engaging approach to documenting the radical fight for queer liberation, Matthew and Leighton are respected members of a new generation of queer historians. We Are Everywhere is the couple’s first book. This event includes a signing with books for sale.

Poetry Salon: One Pause Poetry @ Argus Farm Stop
Oct 2 @ 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.

 

 

 

Oct
3
Thu
Peter Ho Davis: Reading and Discussion @ Kreft Recital Hall, Concordia University
Oct 3 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

Peter Ho Davies is the author of two novels, The Fortunes (winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award and the Chautauqua Prize) and The Welsh Girl(long-listed for the Man Booker Prize), and two short story collections, The Ugliest House in the World (winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize) and Equal Love (A New York Times Notable Book). His work has appeared in Harpers, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Guardian, and Washington Post among others, and has been widely anthologized, including selections for Prize Stories:The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. In 2003 Granta magazine named him among its Best of Young British Novelists. Davies is also a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and is a winner of the PEN/Malamud Award. He is currently on the faculty of the Helen Zell MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Dwight Wilson: The Resistors @ Nicola's Books
Oct 3 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Dwight Wilson will join us to share The Resistors, stories of slavery and the brave black, white, Native American, and multiracial men and women who fought against it.

About the Book

Wilson’s (The Kidnapped, 2018, etc.) new volume of historical fiction weaves together 24 short stories to create a remarkable, multihued portrait of America.

These are the stories of slavery and the brave black, white, Native American, and multiracial men and women who fought against it. The narrative begins in 1795. Esi and Kofi, two Fante from West Africa, were kidnapped and sent to Virginia to be sold. Esi was Fante royalty; Kofi was known for his bravery in confronting a lion. They were 12 years old. Purchased by a farmer from Daufuskie Island, they remained on his plantation until his death in 1801. Esi and Kofi (who assumed the English name Kenneth) married at 16 and were sold to Nathan Prescott of Culpeper, Virginia, to work on his “Fruits of the Spirit” plantation. They had many children, some of whom were forcibly fathered by Prescott. Kenneth earned small amounts of money on the side as a cobbler and was determined to buy his children’s freedom. Then, help appeared from another source. Quaker abolitionists established an underground railroad and offered sanctuary to those who made their way into free territory. In 1827, Kenneth’s daughter Sarah and two of her brothers were rescued by an “African-Shawnee” named Caesar and brought to live with a Quaker family in Ohio. The stories, narrated in the strong and textured voice of Sarah, span the first half of the 19th century. Here, she poignantly describes her father: “I know that Daddy was always a double-sided man: a Fante warrior dressed in a slave’s rags; dignified while disgraced.” The stories are the product of the author’s imagination, informed by years of research and personal lineage. Wilson, himself a Quaker, identifies Sarah as a “direct ancestor.” Each stand-alone tale conveys a quick snapshot of resistance, whether through overt acts of rescue/escape or the quiet refusal to submit to degradation of the soul. The conversational prose captures the cadence and imagery of the period, including racist slurs, but without contrived dialect.

Memorable characters and unique historical details illuminate slavery’s complex legacy.

About the Author

Dwight L. Wilson is father to four sons and grandfather to two grandsons and two granddaughters.  He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife Diane, an attorney.

He spent 41 years as a school professional including serving as Headmaster and Dean as well as Assistant Chaplain at Oberlin College and Associate Dean at Marshall University. He is also a recorded Friends Minister who pastored Durham Maine Friends Meeting and is the only person of color to serve as General Secretary of Friends General Conference.

Currently he serves as Co-Director of the Washtenaw County Interfaith Round Table, helping to deepen the understanding and inter-congregation support of the myriad spiritual groups of Ann Arbor, Michigan and environs.

Among Friends, as a volunteer he has served on the national board of the American Friends Service Committee, as Clerk of Earlham School of Religion and as a trustee with Friends World College, Haverford College, Wilmington College, Medford Leas Retirement Center, Rancocas Friends School and Pendle Hill.  With non-profits he has been Chair of the Wayne State Medical School Anti-Prostate Cancer Study Group, Afri-Male Institute and Burlington County Boys and Girls Club as well as a trustee with the Burlington County YMCA. SafeHouse Womens Center and Student Advocacy Center.  He served seven years as Ann Arbor Human Rights Commission where for four years he chaired the Subcommittee on Police Oversight.

He has published historical fiction including The Kidnapped: A Collection of Stories, The Resistors: A Collection of Stories and six books in the series Esi Was My Mother.  His book Modern Psalms in Search of Peace and Justice is fed by his Quaker faith and a lifetime of social activism. His haiku and essays on Japanese Poetry have been published in periodicals spanning the globe.

In addition to writing historical novels and modern psalms he has published both religious and educational articles in a variety of magazines and been featured author in The Inclusive School.

Fiction at Literati: Aaron Hamburger: Nirvana Is Here @ Literati
Oct 3 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome award-winning author Aaron Hamburger as part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati series, in support of his latest novel Nirvana is Here. Book signing to follow. Free and open to the public.

About the book: When his ex-husband is accused of sexual harassment in the #metoo era, history professor Ari Silverman is forced to confront long-buried trauma from his childhood, where he and his high school crush bonded over the raw emotion of Kurt Cobain’s lyrics in the segregated suburbs of 1990s Detroit.

“A tender self-reckoning, Nirvana Is Here brings the past full circle. Hamburger deftly reveals how incidents recede–even if they leave their mark–to bring new hopes into focus.” –Foreword Reviews

“Deft characterization of a person who seeks to close the space between the past and present self.” –Lambda Literary Review

“Hamburger is tender and provocative in his examinations of sexual abuse, racial strife in ’90s Detroit, and the way that discovering Nirvana changes everything about Ari’s world. The complexities of this novel are deftly handled by Hamburger, whose sensitive and observant prose is a pure joy to read on every page.” –Electric Literature

Aaron Hamburger is the author of a story collection titled The View from Stalin’s Head (Random House), winner of the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His second book, the novel Faith for Beginners (Random House), was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. His writing has appeared in The New York TimesThe Washington PostThe Chicago TribuneO, the Oprah MagazineDetailsThe Village VoicePoets & WritersTin HouseOutMichigan Quarterly ReviewThe Forward and numerous other publications. In addition, he has also won fellowships from Yaddo, Djerassi, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation as well as first prize in the Dornstein Contest for Young Jewish Writers. He has taught creative writing at Columbia University, the George Washington University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and the Stonecoast MFA Program. He currently resides in Washington, D.C.

Fierce Reads Tour, with Sara Faring, L.L. McKinney, Margaret Owen, Katy Rose Pool, in conversation with Lucy Schramm @ Nicola's Books
Oct 3 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

It’s coming for us! 2019 Fierce Reads Tour is headed our way October 3. This is your opportunity to meet four fabulous YA authors – Sara Faring, L.L. McKinney, Margaret Owen, and Katy Rose Pool. They will be on a panel hosted by Lucy Shramm from Ann Arbor District Library.

About the Books

The Tenth Girl Simmering in Patagonian myth, The Tenth Girl is a gothic psychological thriller with a haunting twist.

A Blade So Black The first time the Nightmares came, it nearly cost Alice her life. Now she’s trained to battle monstrous creatures in the dark dream realm known as Wonderland with magic weapons and hardcore fighting skills. Yet even warriors have a curfew.

The Merciful Crow One way or another, we always feed the crows. 

There Will Come a Darkness  Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows meets Kristin Cashore’s Graceling, with a dash of Winter is Coming, in this showstopping debut YA fantasy!

About the Authors

Sara Faring was born in Los Angeles, and is a multilingual Argentine-American fascinated by literary puzzles. After working in investment banking at J.P. Morgan, she worked at Penguin Random House. She holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in International Studies and from the Wharton School in Business. The Tenth Girl is her debut book.

L.L. McKinney is a writer, a poet, and an active member of the kidlit community. She’s an advocate for equality and inclusion in publishing, and the creator of the hashtag #WhatWoCWritersHear. She’s spent time in the slush by serving as a reader for agents and participating as a judge in various online writing contests. She’s also a gamer girl and an adamant Hei Hei stan. A Blade So Black is her debut novel.

Margaret Owen was born and raised at the end of the Oregon Trail, and now lives and writes in Seattle while negotiating a long-term hostage situation with her two monstrous cats. In her free time, she enjoys exploring ill-advised travel destinations and raising money for social justice nonprofits through her illustrations. She resides in Seattle, WA. You can find her on Twitter @what_eats_owls. Visit her at www.margaret-owen.com.

Katy Rose Pool was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in history, Katy spent a few years building websites by day and dreaming up prophecies by night. Currently, she resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she can be found eating breakfast sandwiches, rooting for the Golden State Warriors, and reading books that set her on fire. There Will Come a Darkness is her first novel.

About our Conversationalist

Lucy Schramm has worked at the Ann Arbor District Library for 6 years, where she currently creates and hosts programs for children, teens and adults. She sings and shares stories at story time and baby playgroups, and meets with school groups to help spread the word about all the library has to offer. She loves to promote the joy of reading and is a lifelong book nerd who especially enjoys middle grade, young adult, and adult fiction.

Oct
4
Fri
CREES Lecture: Ruta Sepetys: From the Soviet Gulag to Franco’s Spain: Historical Fiction’s Power for Global Dialogue @ Michigan Theater
Oct 4 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Fri, Oct 4, 5:30 PM 
CREES Distinguished Lecture and Film. 
“From the Soviet Gulag to Franco’s Spain: Historical Fiction’s Power for Global Dialogue.” Ruta Sepetys, author. Lecture followed at 7 PM by a screening of Ashes in the SnowMarius A. Markevicius, director (98 min., 2018), based on the novel Between Shades of Gray, by Ruta Sepetys. Sponsor: CREES. Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty.

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