Literati is proud to be partnering with the Helen Zell Writers Program to host poet Major Jackson at the University of Michigan Art Museum Helmet Stern Auditorium.
Major Jackson is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors. He teaches at the University of Vermont and is the poetry editor of the Harvard Review. His first book, Leaving Saturn, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. Each of his last two collections, Hoops and Holding Company, was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature-Poetry. He lives in South Burlington, Vermont.
Join us as we welcome author and award-winning music journalist Jas Obrecht as he shares his new book Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London September 1966 – June 1967.
About Stone Free:
A compelling portrait of rock’s greatest guitarist at the moment of his ascendance, Stone Free is the first book to focus exclusively on the happiest and most productive period of Jimi Hendrix’s life. As it begins in the fall of 1966, he’s an under-sung, under-accomplished sideman struggling to survive in New York City. Nine months later, he’s the toast of Swinging London, a fashion icon, and the brightest star to step off the stage at the Monterey International Pop Festival. This momentum-building, day-by-day account of this extraordinary transformation offers new details into Jimi’s personality, relationships, songwriting, guitar innovations, studio sessions, and record releases. It explores the social changes sweeping the U.K., Hendrix’s role in the dawning of “flower power,” and the prejudice he faced while fronting the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In addition to featuring the voices of Jimi, his bandmates, and other eyewitnesses, Stone Free draws extensively from contemporary accounts published in English- and foreign-language newspapers and music magazines. This celebratory account is a must-read for Hendrix fans.
Jas Obrecht is an award-winning music journalist and former editor of Guitar Player magazine. He has written for Rolling Stone, Living Blues, and many other publications. His many books include Talking Guitar: Conversations with Musicians Who Shaped Twentieth-Century American Music. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Poets invited to read their own work, or a favorite poem by another writer, on the theme of love. Acclaimed Lao American writer (and Steiner High School grad) Bryan Thao Worra reads his speculative poetry exploring memory and geography in the Lao diaspora.
7 p.m., Bookbound, Courtyard Shops. Free. 369-4345.
7 p.m. Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry.
Scholar, poet and playwright Dr. Carolyn Dunn will lecture on the aesthetics of Native and Indigenous Theater. Dunn was born in Southern California and is of Cherokee, Muscogee Creek, Seminole, Cajun, French Creole, and Tunica-Biloxi descent. She earned a BA from Humboldt State University, an MA from UCLA, and a PhD from the University of Southern California. Her collections of poetry include Outfoxing Coyote (2001) and Echolocation: Poems and Stories from Indian Country L.A. (2013). She has edited the anthologies Through the Eye of the Deer (1999) and, with Paula Gunn Allen, Hozho: Walking in Beauty: Native American Stories of Inspiration, Humor, and Life (2001). Dunn is the coauthor, with Ari Berk, of the nonfiction book Coyote Speaks: Wonders of the Native American World (2008). Her play The Frybread Queen was produced by the Montana Repertory Theater in Missoula, Montana, and Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles.
Dunn’s scholarly work focuses on American Indian women’s literature and American Indian identity. She has taught at Humboldt State University, Four Winds Indian School, and California Polytechnic State University. A founding director of the American Indian Theatre Collective, she is also a member of the female Native American drum group the Mankillers. She is director of the American Indian Resource Center at UC Santa Cruz.
All events are free and open to the public. Visit www.lsa.umich.edu/world-performance for more info.
If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to participate in this event, please contact Center for World Performance Studies, at 734-936-2777, at least one week in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the University to arrange.
This residency is co-sponsored by the U-M Residential College, CEW+, Institute for Research on Women & Gender, SMTD Department of Theatre & Drama, Institute for Humanities, SMTD Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Department of American Culture.
This lecture is on Foster Care and Orphans of War with Mark Jonathan Harris, producer, known for Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000), The Long Way Home (1997) and Breaking Point: The War for Democracy in Ukraine (2017).
Room 1423, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free. rc.communications@umich.edu https://lsa.umich.edu/rc/news-events/all-events.detail.html/59958-14803942.html
Feb. 11, 12, 18, 19, & 21.
U-M students, nominated by their instructors, read their poems and short stories. Light refreshments.
7-8:30 p.m., U-M Shapiro Undergrad Library Lobby, 919 South University. Free. 764-7493.
Literati is thrilled to welcome author Maryse Meijer who will be sharing her new collection of stories RAG.
About RAG:
From the author of Heartbreaker, a disquieting collection tracing the destructive consequences of the desire for connection
A man, forgotten by the world, takes care of his deaf brother while euthanizing dogs for a living. A stepbrother so desperately wants to become his stepsibling that he rapes his girlfriend. In Maryse Meijer’s decidedly dark and searingly honest collection Rag, the desperate human desire for connection slips into a realm that approximates horror.
Meijer’s explosive debut collection, Heartbreaker, reinvented sexualized and romantic taboos, holding nothing back. In Rag, Meijer’s fearless follow-up, she shifts her focus to the dark heart of intimacies of all kinds, and the ways in which isolated people’s yearning for community can breed violence, danger, and madness. With unparalleled precision, Meijer spins stories that leave you troubled and slightly shaken by her uncanny ability to elicit empathy for society’s most marginalized people.
Maryse Meijer is the author of the story collection Heartbreaker (FSG, 2016), which was one of Electric Literature‘s 25 Best Short Story Collections of 2016. Her work has appeared in Meridian, Portland Review, Washington Square Review, Indiana Review, and actual paper. She lives in Chicago.
Local storyteller and language maven Jim Glenn continues his series on English by taking a lively look at cultural influences on the American dialect. Learn the origins of words and phrases that have entered common speech from the realms of politics, crime, war, transportation, and food.
Local storyteller Jim Glenn performs the 3rd part of his storytelling program on the history of English, focusing on the influence of immigrants and various historical events on American English. For grade 8-adult.
7-8:30 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200.
