Fifty comics from around Michigan, both veterans and upstarts, take turns telling the 1st joke they’ve written in 2018. Similar events, which began at the Bell House in Brooklyn more than a decade ago, now also take place in New Orleans and L.A.
8 p.m., The Ark, 316 S. Main. Tickets $10 in advance at the Michigan Union Ticket Office (muto.umich.edu) and theark.org, and at the door. To charge by phone, call 763-TKTS.
AADL storyteller Laura Pershin Raynor and local drum teacher Lori Fithian lead a storytelling program with movement and music for kids in grades preK-3.
4-4:45 p.m., AADL Downtown Youth Story Corner, 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-4200.
Jan. 8 & 15. Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit that also produces a weekly public radio show. Ten storytellers are selected at random to tell a 3-5 minute story–this month’s themes are “Backwards”(Jan. 8) & “Drive” (Jan. 15)–judged by a 3-person team recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Seating limited, so arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. General admission tickets $10 in advance only at themoth.org beginning a week before each event. 764-5118.
Jan. 8 & 15. Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit that also produces a weekly public radio show. Ten storytellers are selected at random to tell a 3-5 minute story–this month’s themes are “Backwards”(Jan. 8) & “Drive” (Jan. 15)–judged by a 3-person team recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Seating limited, so arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. General admission tickets $10 in advance only at themoth.org beginning a week before each event. 764-5118.
Talk by this CNN political commentator and bestselling writer, author of For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough, winner of the American Library Association Stonewall Award for Nonfiction in 2013.
2 p.m., EMU Student Center Auditorium, 900 Oakwood, Ypsilanti. Free. 487-1849.
Panel discussion on U-M Afroamerican and African studies professor Naomi André’s book, with André, RC and U-M women’s studies professor Abigail Stewart, and U-M musicology professor Gabriela Cruz.
3:30 p.m., 2239 Lane Hall, 204 S. State. Free. 764-9537
Hannah Ensor, a poet living in Ypsilanti, RC alum, and assistant director the Hopwood Program, has published on topics of pop culture, sports, and mass media. She co-wrote the chapbook, at the intersection of 3, and was associate editor of Bodies Built for Game, an anthology of contemporary sports literature. Love Dream With Television is her first book of poems.
Suzi F. Garcia is an editor at Noemi Press and a representative for the Latinx Caucus. She is also a CantoMundo Fellow and a Macondista. Her writing has been featured in or is forthcoming from the Offing, Vinyl, Barrelhouse Magazine, Fence Magazine, and more. She can be found at: www.suzifgarcia.com.
All writers welcome to read their own or other favorite poetry or short fiction afterward at open mic. Hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and Dave Jibson
see our blog at Facebook/Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series.
Crazy Wisdomn Bookstore and Tea Room, 114 S. Main St. Free. 7346652757.info@crazywisdom.net www.crazywisdom.net
Literati is proud to be the bookseller at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of Ann Arbor’s event with Kentaro Toyama at the Washtenaw Community College.
The Future of Work
Speaker’s Synopsis: Will artificial intelligence (AI) take away jobs or usher in a prosperous utopia? Will self-driving cars reduce our use of fossil fuels or accelerate emissions? What will a college degree be worth when knowledge work can be done by machine? This talk considers these and other questions through the lens of technology’s “Law of Amplification.” Paradoxically, what is needed most in a world of advanced technology is greater attention to human values.
Kentaro Toyama is W. K. Kellogg Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan School of Information, a fellow of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, and author of Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology. In previous lives, Kentaro taught at Ashesi University in Ghana and co-founded Microsoft Research India, where he did research on the application of information and communication technology to international development.
Yale law professor James Forman, Jr. reads from his Pulitzer-winning book examining the response by African American elected officials and citizens to the surge in crime and drug addiction that began in the 1970s.
4-5:30 p.m., 1010 Weiser Hall, 500 Church. Free. 615-8482.
Transformation, Aesthetics, and Beauty: Translating Zen Master Ikkyu and Classical Chinese Poetry
Translators Sarah Messer and Kidder Smith will introduce Zen Master Ikkyu, an unconventional 14th century enlightened Zen Master who wrote poems in Classical Chinese, upended gender roles, and transformed the aesthetics of medieval Japan. They will also discuss how they translated Ikkyu’s poetry since Sarah didn’t know any Chinese at the start. All of us together will then translate a poem from Chinese into English, using the same method that Sarah and Kidder employed. We will conclude by enjoying some cheese from White Lotus Farms (where Sarah works), understanding that cheesemaking also involves transformation, aesthetics, mindfulness, and beauty.
RC alumna Sarah Messer is the author of four books, a hybrid history/memoir, Red House (Viking), a book of translations, Having Once Paused: Poems of Zen Master Ikkyu (University of Michigan Press) and two poetry books Bandit Letters (New Issues), and Dress Made of Mice (Black Lawrence Press). Messer co-founded One Pause Poetry and teaches Creative Writing at the RC and is a cheesemaker at White Lotus Farms.
For many years Kidder Smith taught Chinese history at Bowdoin College in Maine, where he also chaired the Asian Studies Program. He is the lead translator of Sun Tzu—the Art of War (Shambhala), and (with Sarah Messer), Having Once Paused: Poems of Zen Master Ikkyu (University of Michigan Press).
