Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including fiction writer Kristen Roupenian and poet Robert Heald.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State. Free. 615-3710.
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.
Literati is pleased to partner with the University of Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing and WCBN Radio for the latest installment of Word^2: Writer to Writer, a series which puts a UM professor and member of the Sweetland faculty in conversation about writing.
This month, Writer to Writer welcomes Clare Croft, a historian, theorist, and dramaturg working at the intersection of dance studies and performance studies. She specializes in 20th and 21st century American dance, cultural policy, feminist and queer theory, and critical race theory. In all of these areas, Croft considers how dance is a way of thinking and a mode for asking questions. What does it mean to acknowledge that people have bodies and that they use their bodies to make meaning, create community, and critique social structures?
Croft’s current book project, Funding Footprints: Dance and American Diplomacy (Oxford University Press), examines the history of U.S. State Department funding of international dance tours. Croft’s writing about dance has appeared in Dance Research Journal, Theatre Journal, and Theatre Topics, and is forthcoming in Dance Chronicle. From 2002-2005, Croft was a regular contributor to The Washington Post, and from 2005-2010, she covered dance, as well as theatre and musical theatre, for the Austin American-Statesman.
In 2010, Croft’s article, “Ballet Nations: The New York City Ballet’s 1962 U.S. State Department-Sponsored Tour of the Soviet Union,” received the American Society of Theatre Research’s Biennial Sally Banes Publication Prize, which recognizes the publication that best explores the intersections of theatre and dance/movement. Croft was also the 2007 recipient of the Society of Dance History Scholar’s Selma Jeanne Cohen Award. At the University of Michigan, Croft teaches courses in the BFA and MFA dance programs, as well as in the BFA interarts program.
Mar. 22: Readings by Jennifer Clark, a Kalamazoo poet who has a forthcoming 2nd collection Johnny Appleseed: The Slice and Times of John Chapman, and InsideOut Literary Arts Project (Detroit) interim director and Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Detroit project coordinator Alise Alousi, whose work is featured in Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry. Followed by a poetry and short fiction open mike.
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7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including fiction writer Rebecca Marie Fortes and poet Young Eun Yook.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State. Free. 615-3710.
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.
Literat is pleased to welcome some soon-to-be graduates of the University of Michigan’s Creative Writing undergraduate program to read from their theses. More information to come!
Literati is pleased to welcome Margot Singer in support of her new novel, Underground Fugue. Margot will be joined in conversation by UM professor and author Eileen Pollack.
Set against the backdrop of the London tube bombings in 2005, Underground Fugue interweaves the stories of four characters who are dislocated by shock waves of personal loss, political violence, and, ultimately, betrayal. It’s April and Esther has left New York for London, partly to escape her buckling marriage, and partly to care for her dying mother; Lonia, Esther’s mother, is haunted by memories of fleeing Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II; Javad, their next-door neighbor and an Iranian neuroscientist, struggles to connect with his college-aged son; and Amir, Javad’s son, is seeking both identity and escape in his illicit exploration of the city’s forbidden spaces. As Esther settles into life in London, a friendship develops among them. But when terrorists attack the London transit system in July, someone goes missing, and the chaos that follows both fractures the possibilities for the future, and reveals the deep fault lines of the past. With nuanced clarity and breathtaking grandeur, Margot Singer’s Underground Fugue is an elegant, suspenseful, and deeply powerful debut.
Literati is delighted to welcome poets Kathy Fagan, Matthew Thorburn, and Katie Willingham in support of their recent and forthcoming collections.
Kathy Fagan’s latest collection is Lip (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2009); her new book, Sycamore, is scheduled to appear with Milkweed Editions in March 2017. She is also the author of the National Poetry Series selection The Raft (Dutton, 1985), the Vassar Miller Prize winner MOVING & ST RAGE (Univ of North Texas, 1999), and The Charm (Zoo, 2002). Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Slate, FIELD, Narrative, The New Republic, and Poetry, among other literary magazines, and is widely anthologized. Fagan is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Frost Place, Ohioana, and the Ohio Arts Council. The Director of Creative Writing and the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, she is currently Professor of English, Poetry Editor of OSU Press, and Advisor to The Journal.
Matthew Thorburn is the author of six collections of poetry, including the book-length poem Dear Almost (Louisiana State University Press, 2016) and the chapbook A Green River in Spring (Autumn House Press, 2015), winner of the Coal Hill Review chapbook competition. His previous collections include This Time Tomorrow (Waywiser Press, 2013), a finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize; Every Possible Blue (CW Books, 2012); Subject to Change (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2004), winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize; and an earlier chapbook, the long poem Disappears in the Rain (Parlor City Press, 2009). His work has been recognized with a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, as well as fellowships from the Bronx Council on the Arts and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His interviews with writers, first published as the What Are You Reading? series, now appear on the Ploughshares blog as a monthly feature. He lives in New York City, where he works in corporate communications.
Katie Willingham is the author of Unlikely Designs, forthcoming in September 2017 from the University of Chicago Press. She teaches at the University of Michigan and lives in Ann Arbor.
All invited to read and discuss their poetry or short stories. Bring about 6 copies of your work to share. Hosted by local poets and former college English teachers Joe Kelty and Ed Morin.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
We’re celebrating with a full hour of Open Mic when area poets can read their own work or share a favorite poem by another author in a friendly atmosphere. Everyone is welcome, from first-timers to pros. This event is part of a poetry series held on the second Thursday of most months at 7pm in partnership with Les Go Social Media & Marketing. Light refreshments.
Storytellers Guild members present a program of old tales and personal stories for grownups.
Free; donations accepted. annarborstorytelling.org, facebook.com/annarborstorytellers. 665-2757.
