Highland-based psychic medium and writer Kristy Robinett discusses her book.
7 p.m., SDL, 555 N. Maple, Saline. Free; preregistration required. 429-5450.
New America think tank CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former U.S. State Department policy planning director, presents a talk adapted from her new book, The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Dangerous World. Reception follows; signing.
4-5:30 p.m., 1010 Weiser, 500 Church. Free. 763-9200.
Literati is thrilled to welcome acclaimed novelist John Scalzi who will share his latest, Head On: A Novel of the Near Future
About Head On:
John Scalzi returns with Head On, the standalone follow-up to the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed Lock In. Chilling near-future SF with the thrills of a gritty cop procedural, Head On brings Scalzi’s trademark snappy dialogue and technological speculation to the future world of sports.
Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent’s head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are “threeps,” robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden’s Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it.
Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.
Is it an accident or murder? FBI agents and Haden-related crime investigators, Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, are called in to uncover the truth–and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost, and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.
John Scalzi is one of the most popular and acclaimed SF authors to emerge in the last decade. His massively successful debut Old Man’s War won him science fiction’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, and Redshirts; which won 2013’s Hugo Award for Best Novel. Material from his widely read blog, Whatever, has also earned him two other Hugo Awards. Scalzi also serves as critic-at-large for LA Times. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.
New York Times bestselling author Rosalind Wiseman, whose book about teen girls, “Queen Bees and Wannabes,” inspired Tina Fey’s movie “Mean Girls,” visits Greenhills April 17 to speak with the public about the social dynamics that govern the lives of boys and girls. Wiseman, who also wrote “Masterminds and Wingmen” about the lives of boys, hopes to shift the way we think about the emotional and physical well-being of teens. The event, which includes a book signing, is free and open to the entire Ann Arbor community. We hope you’ll join us. Please RSVP at www.ghwiseman.eventbrite.com
Greenhills School, 850 Greenhills Dr. Free. 734-769-4010. www.greenhillsschool.org
Readings by the five finalists in the library’s 3rd annual Youth Poet Laureate contest. The finalists were chosen by a panel of local poets, some of whom are on hand tonight to announce the winner, whose debut collection will be published by the Neutral Zone’s Red Beard Press. Also, last year’s Ann Arbor Youth Poet Laureate, Zaphra Stupple,reads from their new book, There Will Still Be the Body.
7-9 p.m., AADL 4th-floor meeting rm. Free. 327-4200.
Known for his acidic humor, sharp-witted verbal elegance, and sardonically incisive social critiques, this popular satirist made his comic debut in 1992 on NPR’s Morning Edition recounting his strange-but-true experiences as a Macy’s elf clad in green tights. Tonight he reads from his newest book, a collection of his diaries entitled Theft By Finding Diaries (1977-2002).
7:30 p.m., Michigan Theater. Tickets $52-$62 in advance at Ticketmaster.com & all other Ticketmaster outlets. To charge by phone, call (800) 745-3000.
Yale University law professor James Forman discusses his new book about the current U.S. mass incarceration crisis. Signing.
4:30 p.m., 100 U-M Hatcher Grad Library Gallery, enter from the Diag. Free. 763-8994.
All adults invited to sign up for a 5-minute slot to showcase their poetry, prose, music, or comedy. All invited to listen.
7-8:30 p.m., Serendipity, 113 W. Middle, Chelsea. Free. Sign up by calling 475-8732, ext. 503.
This Ann Arbor native reads from his recent poetry collection, Silencer, which focuses on the politics of middle-class black respectability. “There is not a moment in this book when you are allowed to forget the complexities of a black man’s life in America,” notes writer Roxane Gay. “There is the quiet, ironic pleasure of life on a cul-de-sac juxtaposed with the tensions of always wondering when a police officer’s gun or fists might get in the way of the black body.”
7-8:30 p.m., AADL Downtown multipurpose rm. Free. 327-4200.
Literati is thrilled to be celebrating the work and formal career of the poet and close friend of the store, Keith Taylor. Keith will be retiring from the University of Michigan at the end of the Winter 2018 Semester. Keith will be joined by fellow poet Cody Walker for a discussion of his work.
Poet and writer Keith Taylor teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs in creative writing at the University of Michigan, directs the Bear River Writer’s Conference, and is the former poetry editor for Michigan Quarterly Review. His sixteenth collection, The Bird-while, was published by Wayne State University Press February 2017. Fidelities was published in 2015 by Alice Greene & Co. Keith’s work has appeared in such publications as Story, The Los Angeles Times, Alternative Press, The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, The Iowa Review, Witness, Chicago Tribune, and Hanging Loose. Other books are Marginalia for a Natural History published by Black Lawrence Press, and Ghost Writers, a collection of ghost stories co-edited with Laura Kasischke, published by Wayne State University Press.
Cody Walker is the author of The Self-Styled No-Child (Waywiser, 2016) and Shuffle and Breakdown (Waywiser, 2008). His poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Yale Review, Slate, Salon, and The Best American Poetry (2015 and 2007); his essays have appeared online in The New Yorker and the Kenyon Review. The former Poet Populist of Seattle, he now lives with his family in Ann Arbor, where he directs the creative writing minor at the University of Michigan. His new collection, The Trumpiad (Waywiser, 2017), was released last April.
