Dempsey and Egen are authors of Michigan at Antietam.
Jack Dempsey is a lawyer and Michigan native. He co-founded and is the president of the Michigan Civil War Association, which is dedicated to erecting a Michigan monument at the Antietam National Battlefield. Jack is president of the Michigan Historical Commission, board member of the Michigan History Foundation and a member of the Michigan Historic Preservation Network, the Abraham Lincoln Civil War Roundtable, the Civil War Trust, Preservation Detroit, and runs the Michigan Civil War Blog.
Brian James Egen is executive producer at the Henry Ford and a Michigan native. He is a co-founder of the Michigan Civil War Association, chairman of the Michigan Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee and member of the Michigan Historical Commission, Monroe County Historical Commission and Commission on the Environment, City of Monroe. Brian is an award-winning director for an independent short film and has worked on several National Park Service and historic site Civil War documentaries.
Jonathan is the coauthor of The Comic Book Story of Beer (Random House), a nonfiction graphic novel telling the story of the world’s favorite alcoholic beverage from 7,000 B.C. to the present.
The book is his third collaboration with artist Aaron McConnell. Their first book release, The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation (2008; Macmillan), was an illustrated, graphic novel edition of the entire U.S. Constitution. It was chosen as a “Best Book of 2008” by The Village Voiceand a 2009 “Great Graphic Novels for Teens” by the American Library Association. A conceptual follow-up, The Gettysburg Address: A Graphic Adaptation (2013; HarperCollins), used the words of Abraham Lincoln’s immortal speech to tell the whole story of the Civil War from colonial times through to the Civil Rights Era. The book received starred reviews in Kirkus and Library Journal and was also chosen by Library Journal as a “Best Graphic Novel of 2013.”
In addition, Legendary Comics, the publishing arm of Legendary Pictures (Inception, The Dark Knight franchise, The Hangover, Godzilla), launched Hennessey’s first series of fiction comics. A dark and unique twist on time travel rooted in American History, Epochalypse began appearing in comic book stores in 2014. The first six issues were collected into a stand-alone graphic novel, also titled Epochalypse.
Jonathan has appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show, has guest-blogged for Fox News and the American Constitution Society; written for the Austin Chronicle; and has appeared at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, San Diego Comic Con, New York City Comic Con, as a featured guest at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., and the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum in Chicago.
A graduate of Syracuse University, Jonathan has also done extensive work in film and television. He has been on the production crews of several noted film directors, including Wes Anderson’sRushmore, Richard Linklater’s Suburbia and The Newton Boys, and Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids. He has worked as a screenplay and story analyst for Phoenix Pictures (Shutter Island, Black Swan, Zodiac) and Jerry Bruckheimer Television.
A lover of illustration with next to no capacity for it himself, Jonathan has been drawn towards working in the graphic novel or comics medium. He also writes across other platforms, including prose for middle grade and adult audiences. He also blogs about ginger beer atilovegingerbeer.com.
Jonathan was born on a U.S. Army base in Massachusetts, grew up in suburban Boston, and has lived in Texas and New York City. He currently resides outside Los Angeles.
Poet, novelist, and Fence founder Rebecca Wolff’s internal monologue made external in poetry is uncanny. Her musical and darkly funny fourth collection, One Morning— (published September 2015), spans language, culture, art history, love, passion, grief, consumerism, environmental devastation, and the ekphrastic experience of pop and high culture. She experiments with torque, energy, narrative—two steps ahead of herself with the reader on her heels.
Rebecca Wolff is the author of four collections of poetry, one novel, and numerous pieces of occasional prose. Her first book, Manderley, was selected for the National Poetry Series by Robert Pinsky. Her second, Figment, was selected for the Barnard Women Poets Prize by Claudia Rankine and Eavan Boland. Her third, The King, was published by W. W. Norton in 2009. Her novel The Beginners was published by Riverhead in 2011. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and the Millay Colony for the Arts. In 1998, Wolff founded the influential literary journal Fence; in 2001 she founded Fence Books and launched The Constant Critic website. Wolff lives in Hudson, New York, and is currently a fellow at the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany.
Please note that this event begins at 7:30pm.
John Steadman, author of H.P. Lovecraft and the Black Magickal Tradition, discusses why he chose to write about Lovecraft and why Lovecraft’s work has had, and continues to have, such an enduring influence on Western culture.
Gwendolyn Calvert Baker will read from her memoir, How Fudge Sundae in a White Paper Cup: A Spirited Black Woman in a White World. Gwendolyn will be joined by Deborah Loewenberg Ball, the dean of UM’s School of Education.
Gwendolyn Calvert Baker has had an extraordinary career and has witnessed a dramatic change in the ways that U.S. schools provide education to and about our multiethnic, multicultural society. But Baker hasn’t just lived through the progression of multicultural considerations—she has been singularly instrumental in the creation and acceptance of multicultural education. In Hot Fudge Sundae in a White Paper Cup, she shares her memories and experience of a lifetime spent serving and leading the causes for multicultural education.
Wil Haygood will read from his latest, Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and The Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America.
Wil Haygood is currently the Wiepking Visiting Distinguished Professor in the department of media, journalism, and film at Miami University, Ohio. For nearly three decades he was a journalist, serving as a national and foreign correspondent at The Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and then at The Washington Post, where he wrote the story “A Butler Well Served by this Election,” which became the basis for the award-winning motion picture The Butler, directed by Lee Daniels. Haygood’s book The Butler: A Witness to History has been translated into a dozen foreign languages. For his work on Showdown, Haygood was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. His biographies of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Sammy Davis Jr., and Sugar Ray Robinson have all garnered wide acclaim.
Three local children’s book illustrators discuss their work. Deb Pilutti’s Bear and Squirrel Are Friends explores the possibility of friendships between predators and prey. Deborah Marcero’sSadie’s Story concerns a funny witch who helps Sadie deal with her disappointment when her two best friends go on vacation together without her. Cathy Gendron’s The Nutcracker Comes to America tells how a 19th-century Russian ballet came to be a holiday tradition in contemporary America. Signing.
An open mike for poets, who are welcome to read their own work or a favorite poem by another writer. Followed by a reading by a featured poet TBA.
Stefan Szymanski will read from his latest, Money and Soccer.
Stefan Szymanski is professor of economics and the MBA Dean at the Cass Business School, City University London. He is the coauthor of Fans of the World, Unite!: A (Capitalist) Manifesto for Sports Consumers, National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer and Winners and Losers: The Business Strategy of Football.
Ann Arbor Storytellers Guild members host a storytelling program. Audience members are encouraged to bring a 5-minute story to tell.
