Nov. 17 & 18. RC students perform Theresa Rebeck’s 2011 Broadway drama about 4 young writers, their professor, and the tensions and romances that develop as they attend a 10-week intensive writing seminar.
8 p.m., Keene Theatre, East Quad, 701 East University. Free; donations welcome. 763-0176.
The Driftwood Shrine author, John Gendo Wolff, will discuss poetry by Americans like Emily Dickinson, and William Carlos Williams, highlighting the influence of Zen in their work. 45 minute duration, followed by Q&A.
https://www.driftwoodshrine.com
John Gendo Wolff, Sensei, is a Zen priest and teacher in the White Plains Asanga. He is the Dharma heir of Susan Myoyu Andersen, Roshi, and the Spiritual Director of the Great Wave Zen Sangha in Northern Michigan. He is a college professor of writing and literature with numerous publications of poetry and essays, and also a graduate of Huron High School in Ann Arbor.
Crazy Wisdom Bookstore & Tea Room., 114 South Main Street. Free. (734) 276-5979. Chris@wuigglemylegs.comhttps://www.driftwoodshrine.com
Nov. 17 & 18. RC students perform Theresa Rebeck’s 2011 Broadway drama about 4 young writers, their professor, and the tensions and romances that develop as they attend a 10-week intensive writing seminar.
8 p.m., Keene Theatre, East Quad, 701 East University. Free; donations welcome. 763-0176.
Postponed from September. This civil rights icon and Georgia congressman is joined by writer Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell to discuss March, the graphic novel trilogy Lewis wrote with their help. It chronicles Lewis’s role in the civil rights movement, and the final book recently won the National Book Award.
7 p.m., Hill Auditorium. Free. 668-8463.
Literati is thrilled to partner with Current Magazine for an evening of Poetry and Fiction!
Come celebrate the submissions and winners of Current Magazine’s Poetry and Fiction contest.
Meet Current’s editor and contributors, and hear readings from the winners. Special guests Molly Raynor and Anthony Zick will be reading their work as well. If time permits there will be an open mic at the end.
Local writer Natalie Bakopoulos, author of The Green Shore, offers tips on revising your written work and how to get published. Q&A. In conjunction with the end of National Novel Writing Month, a nonprofit promotion challenging teens and adults to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of November.
1-2:30 p.m., AADL Westgate Branch West Side Room, Westgate shopping center, 2503 Jackson. Free. 327-8301.
Jewish Theological Seminary modern Jewish history professor David Fishman discusses his recent book about ghetto residents who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts from the Nazis and the Soviets.
6:30 p.m., Beth Israel Congregation, 2000 Washtenaw. Free. 665-9897.
Come join us for our first ever Books We Love and Love to Share Panel!
Buying gifts for friends and family throughout the holiday season can be quite stressful. What do you get the brother-in-law who (thinks he) has everything? What about the niece whose interests alter as constantly as our peculiar Michigan weather? And of course, there are the rowdy kids and the beloved partner and the cordial neighbors and….Just thinking about it makes us unstoppably anxious.
So in order to help you buy books for the woods walking naturalist, or the news junkie, or the literary fiction enthusiast, or the esoteric indie book reading hipster, we will be hosting a panel to provide options, answers, and most importantly, soothing advice regarding a vast array of titles. With a stellar line up of booksellers, writers, editors, critics, and one of our favorite publisher reps, we hope this event might make the burden of holiday shopping somewhat lighter–maybe even entertaining? We hope to see you there!
Our list of panelists…
Keith Taylor teaches at the University of Michigan. He has published many books over the years: collections of poetry, a collection of very short stories, co-edited volumes of essays and fiction, and a volume of poetry translated from Modern Greek. His most recent collection, published by Wayne State University Press, is The Bird-while.
Claire Vaye-Watkins is the author of Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn, which won the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. A Guggenheim Fellow, she has been a professor at Bucknell University and Princeton, and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. She is also the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada. She earned her MFA from the Ohio State University, where she was a Presidential Fellow. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, Tin House, Freeman’s, The Paris Review, Story Quaterly, New American Stories, Best of the West, The New Republic, The New York Times, and many others. A recipient of fellowships from the Sewanee and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, Claire was also one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35.”
Polly Rosenwaike’s story collection, Look How Happy I’m Making You, will be published by Doubleday in 2019. Her stories have appeared in Colorado Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Copper Nickel, Indiana Review, and Glimmer Train. Her story “White Carnations” was selected for the O. Henry Prize Stories 2013. She has published book reviews and essays in the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times Book Review, The Millions, and The Brooklyn Rail. She lives in Ann Arbor and teaches creative writing at Eastern Michigan University.
Kate McCune is a publisher representative for Harper Collins. She is a voracious reader who has been known to write outstanding reviews. It is often quite difficult for her to speak about a book without making you want to immediately read said title.
Jill Zimmerman is a bookseller, children’s book buyer, and manager at Literati Bookstore. When she isn’t ordering the latest children’s books, making sure the deposits make it to the bank in a timely manner, or helping customers find that perfect title for a close friend, she enjoys spending time with her lovely daughter and phenomenol husband.
Hilary Gustafson is a co-owner of Literati Bookstore. A serious reader, authentic cat lover, and dedicated coffee drinker, Hilary chooses the titles for Literati’s signed first edition book club, Literati Cultura, in addition to running the bookstore.
Laura Kasischke’s most recent book, from which she will read, brings new poems together with work from her previous nine collections of poetry, published over the last twenty-five years. The citation for the National Book Critics Circle Award, which she received in 2011, reads: “No poet alive has worked harder to depict the contemporary American life course: she has shown herself, in sharply vivid poems, as a girl, as a wayward teen, as a young adult, as a passionate and worried mother with a baby, a child, and now a teenaged son…And no poet now at work does better than Kasischke in finding ways to depict not just how we feel about life stages and the people in them but also how we change as those stages go by…Kasischke stands for many among us.” Her collection of new and selected poems gathers together the breadth of this vision, and Kasischke will offer readings from both her earliest and most recent work.
For questions, contact Julie Sparkman at jmallard@umich.edu
Literati is excited to welcome author Richard Retyi who will be discussing his debut book The Book of Ann Arbor: An Extremely Serious History Book. Rich will discuss his book—one of the inaugural releases from the Ann Arbor District Library’s Fifth Avenue Press—as well as reading one of the 41 stories from the book, with photos, music, and details that just wouldn’t fit on the page. He’s also open to answering questions from the audience, no matter how shockingly personal in nature.
About The Book of Ann Arbor:
A suicide submarine parade. Ann Arbor’s top 10 astronauts. Shakey Jake, the Embassy Hotel, and train/building collisions. The birth of Iggy Pop. Nazis getting punched. Visits from heads of state, from presidents to a dictator. The Music Mobile, the Naked Mile and a round-the-world flight. Plus, a few tales of murder, because it happens here too. These are a few of the stories that make up The Book of Ann Arbor.
Richard Retyi is the communications and marketing manager at the Ann Arbor District Library and part of the Ann Arbor Stories podcast.
