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.
Coffee and (_______)
14409 Jefferson Ave E, Detroit, Michigan 48215
The Line Up:
Diana Dinverno
Keith Taylor
Kristin Lenz
Laura Hulthen Thomas
Sarah Rose Sharp
Aubri K. Adkins (host)
DIANA DINVERNO began her writing life by authoring essays and features for numerous Michigan publications. She was a finalist for the New Rivers Press 2015 Short Story Prize and the recipient of awards from Detroit Working Writers (fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry), Rochester Writers (memoir), and the Poetry Society of Michigan. Her work appears in The MacGuffin, Peninsula Poets, and American Fiction, Volume 15, The Best Unpublished Stories by New and Emerging Writers. Recently, she completed a work of historical fiction set in Renaissance Florence. Diana, a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Detroit School of Law, lives and works in metro Detroit. www.dianadinverno.com
KEITH TAYLOR has authored or edited 16 books and chapbooks, including his most recent small collection, Fidelities (Alice Greene and Co., 2015). His most recent full length collection The Bird-while, was published by Wayne State University Press in February, 2017. His collection, If the World Becomes So Bright, was published in 2009. He has also co-edited several collections of fiction and non-fiction, including a recent collection of contemporary Michigan ghost stories. His poems, stories, reviews and translations have appeared widely in North America and in Europe. He has received Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. He teaches at the University of Michigan where he also serves as Associate Editor of Michigan Quarterly Review and director of the Bear River Writers Conference. He spends his summers teaching at the University of Michigan Biological Station near Pellston. http://www.keithtaylorannarbor.com/
KRISTIN BARTLEY LENZ is a social worker and writer who has lived in Michigan, Georgia, and California. She has a B.A. in psychology from the University of Michigan and a MSW from Wayne State University. She writes for Detroit non-profits including the Skillman Foundation and Gleaners Food Bank, and manages the Michigan Chapter blog for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Her first novel, The Art of Holding On and Letting Go, was published in September 2016 and was the winner of the Helen Sheehan YA Book Prize and a Junior Library Guild Selection. http://www.kristinbartleylenz.com/
LAURA HULTHEN THOMAS’s short fiction and essays have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including The Cimarron Review, Nimrod International Journal, Epiphany and Witness. She received her MFA in fiction writing from Warren Wilson College. She currently heads the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of Michigan’s Residential College, where she teaches fiction and creative nonfiction. Her short story collection, States of Motion, is forthcoming this spring from Wayne State University Press.
SARAH ROSE SHARP is a Detroit-based writer, activist, photographer and multimedia artist. She writes about art and culture in Detroit for Hyperallergic, Art in America, and others. She has been to all 50 states and shown work in New York and Detroit. She is not a huge fan of bios.http://sarahrosesharp.com/
AUBRI K. ADKINS is a short story writer and memoirist. Her short story, Midday Tumbler, was published in the Tusculum Review. She has a B.A. in the Liberal Arts from Lawrence University in Appleton, WI and a M.A. in Industrial and Organizational Psyhology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in Chicago, IL. She is the host of the East Side Reading Series and would love to talk to you
Readings by featured poets, preceded by a poetry open mike.
Mar 19: Reading by Neutral Zone staffer Fiona Chamness, a winner of the Beloit Poetry Journal Prize who was featured in the 2010 HBO documentary Brave New Voices.
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7-9 p.m. (sign-up begins at 6:30 p.m.), Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry.
Local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal host an open house for writers to connect with one another and/or work on their projects.
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.
U-M English professor Eileen Pollack reads from her new novel that explores the moral complexities of scientific discovery through the story of a brilliant research biologist obsessed with finding the genetic marker for a neurodegenerative disorder that killed her mother. Followed by a conversation about the novel with Pollack and U-M physics and astronomy professor Tom McKay. Q&A. Signing. Photo credit: Dwight Burnette.
5:30-7 p.m., 100 U-M Hatcher Grad Library Gallery, enter from the Diag. Free. 764-3166
“Stories for a Spring Evening” – Ann Arbor Storytellers’ Guild members Lyn Davidge, Jane Fink, Darryl Mickens and Patti Smith in a concert of favorite stories. Judy Schmidt will add smidgens of history from 25 years of storytelling in Ann Arbor. Copies of the Guild’s new 2-CD package Tellabration! LIVE with the Ann Arbor Storytellers’ Guild available for sale.
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.
Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit storytelling organization that also produces a weekly public radio show. Each month 10 storytellers are selected at random from among those who sign up to tell a 3-5 minute story on the monthly theme. The 3 judges are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Space limited, so it’s smart to arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), $10. 764-5118.
