Literati is thrilled to welcome Dave Eggers back to Ann Arbor for a book signing! Please note the special time for this event: Dave will be available to chat and sign books from noon until 1:30pm. All of Dave’s books, including the recently published Heroes of the Frontier, will be available for sale and signing.
Dave Eggers grew up near Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house in San Francisco that produces books, a quarterly journal of new writing (McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern), and a monthly magazine, The Believer. McSweeney’s publishes Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. In 2002, he cofounded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit youth writing and tutoring center in San Francisco’s Mission District. Sister centers have since opened in seven other American cities under the umbrella of 826 National, and like-minded centers have opened in Dublin, London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Birmingham, Alabama, among other locations. His work has been nominated for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, France’s Prix Médicis, Germany’s Albatross Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the American Book Award. Eggers lives in Northern California with his family.
Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for the Zell Visiting Writers Series at the University of Michigan. More information about the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, including a full calendar of visiting writers, can be found here. The November 10th installment of ZVWS will feature alumna and bestselling novelist Celeste Ng.
Celeste Ng is the author of the novel Everything I Never Told You, which was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications.Everything I Never Told You was also the winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, the ALA’s Alex Award, and the Medici Book Club Prize. Her fiction and essays have appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere, and she is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize.
Literati is pleased to partner with One Pause Poetry to celebrate the recent work of Rochelle Hurt and Sarah Rose Nordgren.
Rochelle Hurt is the author of two collections of poetry: In Which I Play the Runaway (2016), winner of the Barrow Street Book Prize, and The Rusted City (2014), published in the Marie Alexander Series from White Pine Press. Her writing has been included in the Best New Poets anthology series and awarded prizes from Crab Orchard Review, Arts & Letters, Hunger Mountain, Poetry International, and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fund. She is a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati.
Sarah Rose Nordgren is the author of the poetry collections Best Bones (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Darwin’s Mother, which is forthcoming from University of Pittsburgh in fall 2017. Her poems and essays appear widely in journals such as Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Agni, The Kenyon Review Online, and Copper Nickel. Among her awards are two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and fellowships and scholarships from the Sewanee and Bread Loaf Conferences, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Native to North Carolina, Nordgren is currently a doctoral student in poetry at the University of Cincinnati and Associate Editor at 32 Poems.
A founding editor of both LVNG and Flood Editions, Michael O’Leary works as a structural engineer and lives with his family in Chicago.
Critically acclaimed novelist Justin Torres called ASHLEY WHITAKER a “Real Texan Charmer.” The editors of Glimmer Train typed her name on their website one time. She lives alone with her cat, Catwoman.
MOLLY DICKINSON is a poet hailing from the West Coast. Her work can be found in Jerk Poet, on Tin House’s The Open Bar, and on The Nervous Breakdown. Molly graduated from Lewis & Clark College in 2012, where she was the recipient of the American Academy of Poets Prize.
The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends – a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.
FRUIT is an independent, community-led reading and dialogue series for and by marginalized voices, hosted in Literati Bookstore. More information about this month’s installment forthcoming.
FRUIT is a moment and a movement of reclamation. It is a space of and for literary artists representing the marginalized: the colored, the queer, the silenced, and the unseen. Each event showcases the work of fresh, revolutionary artists and features a conversation around their lives and their crafts. In this space, FRUIT strives to serve as a carefully curated reading and dialogue series for those who live at intersections ignored. This experience exists both physically and digitally in order to help those marginalized voices reclaim their flesh and plant their roots through short-form literature. Our goal is to create an experience that is intentional in its centering of the historically othered. Through this exploration of identity and craft, we hope to cultivate a platform in which the growth and sharing of radical joy— both encumbered and despite— happens in the presence of solidarity and healthy community.
Seating will be open beginning at 7pm. The event will start at 7:30pm.
Literati is pleased to welcome Chris Dombrowski in support of his memoir Body of Water: A Sage, a Seeker, and the World’s Most Alluring Fish.
Chris Dombrowski was playing a numbers game: two passions—poetry and fly-fishing; two children, one of them in utero; and an income hovering perilously close to zero. Enter, at this particularly challenging moment, a miraculous email: can’t go, it’s all paid for, just book a flight to Miami. Thus began a journey that would lead to the Bahamas and to David Pinder, a legendary bonefishing guide. Bonefish are prized for their elusiveness and their tenacity. And no one was better at hunting them than Pinder, a Bahamian whose accuracy and patience were virtuosic. He knows what the fish think, said one fisherman, before they think it. By the time Dombrowski meets Pinder, however, he has been abandoned by the industry he helped build. With cataracts from a lifetime of staring at the water and a tiny severance package after forty years of service, he watches as the world of his beloved bonefish is degraded by tourists he himself did so much to attract. But as Pinder’s stories unfold, Dombrowski discovers a profound integrity and wisdom in the guide’s life.
“A brilliant book. Destined to be a classic.”—Jim Harrison
Born in Michigan, Chris Dombrowski earned his MFA from the University of Montana. His publications include two collections of poems, By Cold Water (2009) and Earth Again (2013). His poetry and nonfiction have been widely published in leading journals and magazines. Also a well-established fly-fishing guide, Dombrowski lives in Missoula, Montana.
Reading by Art Academy of Cincinnati creative writing professor poet Matt Hart, an award-winning poet who has 2 new books, the book-length serial poem Radiant Action, a philosophical meditation on life in our time and the timelessness of the desire to be always in awe, and the companion collection Radiant Companion. The program begins with open mike readings.
Literati is pleased to once again partner with the University of Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing in support of their Word2: Writer to Writer programming. Professor Philip J. Deloria is this installment’s featured guest.
Sweetland’s Word Squared: Writer to Writer series lets you hear directly from University of Michigan professors about their challenges, processes, and expectations as writers and also as readers of student writing. Each semester,Word² pairs one esteemed University professor with a Sweetland faculty member for a conversation about writing.
Word² sessions are broadcast live on WCBN radio. These conversations offer students a rare glimpse into the writing that professors do outside the classroom. You can hear instructors from various disciplines describe how they handle the same challenges student writers face, from finding a thesis to managing deadlines. Professors will also discuss what they want from student writers in their courses, and will take questions put forth by students and by other members of the University community. If there’s anything you’ve ever wanted to ask a professor about writing, Word² gives you the chance.
Professor Deloria is the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor of American Culture and History, former LSA Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, and past Director of the Program in American Culture and the AC Native American Studies program. He has served as president of the American Studies Association, a council member of the Organization of American Historians, and a Trustee of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. He holds a joint appointment in the Department of American Culture and the Department of History.
Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for the Zell Visiting Writers Series at the University of Michigan. More information about the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, including a full calendar of visiting writers, can be found here. The November 17th installment of ZVWS will feature award-winning author Colm Tóibín.
Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet. His seventh novel, Brooklyn, was recently adapted into a major motion picture, and his most recent novel, Nora Webster, received the Hawthornden Prize in 2015. Tóibín has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize on three different occasions, and been awarded the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year, the Lamda Literary Award, the Costa Novel Award, and the Irish PEN Award, among many others. A celebrated essayist as well, Tóibín’s latest nonfiction book, On Elizabeth Bishop, offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of the American poet, who was one of his most important literary influences.
Literati is pleased to welcome Terri Tate in support of her memoir A Crooked Smile.
In A Crooked Smile, Terri Tate shares the compelling story of her journey through cancer diagnosis, multiple surgeries, and the inner path of self-discovery. With her wry ability to illuminate the profound and the absurd, she invites us to experience her ride on the emotional roller-coaster of fear and hope; personal experiences with nearly every spiritual practice ever devised; and her discovery that miracles, healing, and guidance can come to us in the most unexpected ways.
“Thrilling in its insight and first-rate storytelling! Terri writes like a dream, she describes dark material in a way that is totally honest, yet also jaunty and visceral, and makes it easy to read about.I laughed out loud while reading this book, over and over, and marked up it up like a student.”–Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author of Bird by Bird and Traveling Mercies
Terri Tate is a clinical nurse specialist, teacher, and humorist. Terri was first diagnosed with oral cancer in 1991, and is now a nationally recognized speaker; a consultant and therapist who uses lessons from her own struggle to help support anyone facing life challenges; and a stand-up comedienne with a popular one-woman show, Shopping As a Spiritual Path
