Richard Retyi and Brian Peters are Ann Arbor Stories, a podcast featuring stories of Ann Arbor’s distant and not so distant past, produced in partnership with the Ann Arbor District Library. Join them at Literati Bookstore for two all new live stories from Ann Arbor’s past, including photos, spoken word and music, as well as a Q&A session with the creators.
Learn more about the podcast and share your own memories of Ann Arbor as well. Check out Ann Arbor stories at aadl.com/annarborstories or visit them on Twitter and Instagram at @annarborstories.
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
Tickets are $35 dollars, and bundled with a hardcover copy of the book. A Q&A and book-signing will follow the presentation. Please note that this event will not include a musical performance, but a one-of-a-kind oral presentation by one of folk music’s great storytellers.Doors at 6:30.
Skiffle a do-it-yourself music craze with American jazz, blues, folk, and roots influences is a story of jazz pilgrims and blues blowers, Teddy Boys and beatnik girls, coffee-bar bohemians and refugees from the McCarthyite witch hunts. Skiffle is reason the guitar came to the forefront of music in the UK and led directly to the British Invasion of the US charts in the 1960s.
Emerging from the trad-jazz clubs of the early 50s, Skiffle was adopted by the first generation of British teenagers working class kids who grew up during the dreary, post-war rationing years. Before Skiffle, the pop culture was dominated by crooners and mediated by a stuffy BBC. Lonnie Donegan hit the charts in 1956 with a version of Lead Bellys Rock Island Line and soon sales of guitars rocketed from 5,000 to 250,000 a year.
Like punk rock that would flourish two decades later, Skiffle was home grown: all you needed were three guitar chords and you could form a group, with mates playing tea-chest bass and washboard as a rhythm section.
Roots, Radicals & Rockers is the first book to explore the Skiffle phenomenon in depth Billy Braggs meticulously researched and joyous account shows how Skiffle sparked a revolution that shaped pop music as we have come to know it.
Billy Bragg is an English singer-songwriter and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, with lyrics that mostly span political or romantic themes. Billys music is heavily centered on bringing about change and getting the younger generation involved in activist causes.
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.
Literati is delighted to be the bookseller for the Chang Lecture on Art and Medicine at the University of Michigan’s Ford Auditorium, which will be delivered by Dr. David Watts.
The process of healing is a mystery that cannot be explained completely by a scientific approach. Analysis will miss the humanistic qualities that are required to address and serve the complexity of the human spirit. If Health Care Professionals are to achieve optimum healing we must attend to both the science and the humanity of health care. Poems and stories provide balance to the provider’s life and move us away from the Cold and Distant Physician into a deeper under-standing of human nature and an affection for the patient and his/her suffering.
David Watts, M.D., is a gastroenterologist and Clinical Professor at the UCSF School of Medicine, a physician writer who has published six books of poetry, four anthologies, and two books of short stories about the complexities of the Doctor-Patient Relationship. He has also written two novels, one a mystery and the other best-selling western. He is a classically trained musician, a TV and radio host, and an NPR commentator. He has taken particular interest in measures to warm the cold and distant physician and is a strong advocate for literature and humanities in the medical school curriculum.
The authors will discuss how their fiction transforms home into character. How do writers use assumptions about familiar places to find the unexpected and surprising? When is a hometown the whole trouble, and also the last, best hope for change? The authors will also talk about how the unique landscape of the upper Midwest inspires their fiction.
Kelly Fordon’s work has appeared in The Florida Review, The Kenyon Review (KRO), Rattle and various other journals. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks. The first one, On the Street Where We Live, won the 2012 Standing Rock Chapbook Award and the latest one, The Witness, won the 2016 Eric Hoffer Award for the Chapbook and was shortlisted for the Grand Prize. Her novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind, was chosen as a Michigan Notable Book, a 2016 Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, an Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist in the short story category. She works for The College for Creative Studies, Springfed Arts and The InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit.
Laura Hulthen Thomas is the author of the short fiction collection, States of Motion, published by Wayne State University Press. Her 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.
Membership event for the new Michigan chapter of Sisters in Crime, Saturday, July 29, 2:30 PM. Refreshments, membership sign up, and a panel discussion on “Bad Guys” with author Sarah Zettel, Judge Terrence P. Bronson, Retired U.S. Marshall Louis Stock and Pinkerton Vice President Jason Porter. The panel will be moderated by Judy Lee Burke and the event introduced by Michigan Sisters in Crime President Jan Rydzon. The panel discussion will take place at the Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase (across the street from Aunt Agatha’s), 212 S. 4th Ave.
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.
Shalom Hartman Institute (Jerusalem) Muslim Leadership Initiative facilitator Haroon Moghul discusses his coming-of-age memoir about growing up as a 2nd-generation American Muslim in a post-9/11 world. Signing.
7-8:30 p.m., AADL multipurpose room (lower level), 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-4555.
