Reading by Mike Zhai, founder of One Pause Poetry Salon. The program begins with open mike readings.
7-8:30 p.m., Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea, 123 W. Washington. Free. 994-6663.
YDL is honored to welcome Holocaust survivor, professor, and author Irene Butter. Her memoir, Shores Beyond Shores, details her journey during the Holocaust and explores how the heart keeps its humanity during inhumane times. Dr. Butter has inspired students from across the country with her message of the importance of caring for one another, regardless of our color, religion, or race. Book sale and signing to follow. Youth welcome.
The Ypsilanti District Library- Whittaker Branch, 5577 Whittaker Road, Ypsilanti. Free. 734-482-4110.info@ypsilibrary.org https://www.ypsilibrary.org/event/an-evening-with-irene-butter/
Tom Brzezina has had work in Chiron, Rusty Truck, Red Fez, Third Wednesday, Peninsula Poets, and The 5-2. His poems draw heavily upon drug experiences of his youth, the underbelly of society, and growing up in Detroit. He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife, dog, and way too many books.
Lynn Gilbert is a founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and currently associate editor of Third Wednesday in Ann Arbor. Her poems have been published in The Texas Observer, Kansas Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, Southwestern American Literature, Peninsula Poets, and Water Music: The Great Lakes State Poetry Anthology, which she co-edited.
Crazy Wisdomn Bookstore and Tea Room, 114 S. Main St. Free. 7346652757.info@crazywisdom.net www.crazywisdom.net
Every Wed. Members read and discuss poems around themes TBA. Followed by collaborative writing games and exercises. Attendees invited to read their poems. Snacks & socializing.
8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.
Literati is excited to welcome author Vernon Smith who will be sharing his new novel The Green Ghetto.
About The Green Ghetto:
Mitchell Hosowich is pleased as a puppy with two tails that the great American rust-out has rendered parts of Detroit rural again, wild. For him, the “Green Ghetto,” as the bureaucrats have come to call it, is a safe place to grow some fairly decent Detroit dope. But when two DEA agents start sniffing around his spread, only to wind up dead, Mitchell finds himself with a lot of explaining to do. Left with two stiffs, a dead dog, a shot cow, and fifty-nine missing marijuana plants, Mitchell decides not to wait around for the law to come down on him. Instead, he goes after his stolen pot, a chase that becomes a tense, and at times hilarious, cross-border road trip to nearby rural Canada. Set in a hyper post-9/11 culture, The Green Ghetto explores the universal theme of being compromised. But mostly, it is the story of how America got here from there in the war on drugs, terror, and words.
Windsor native Vern Smith grew up twenty minutes from the green ghetto – an actual Detroit phenomenon. His fiction has appeared in Concrete Forest: The New Fiction of Urban Canada (McClelland & Stewart), as well as the Insomniac Press anthologies, Iced, Hard Boiled Love, and Revenge. His novelette, “The Gimmick,” was a finalist for Canada’s highest crime-writing honor, the Arthur Ellis Award. A veteran of four newspapers and three magazines, Smith’s non-fiction has appeared in The Detroit Free Press, The Ottawa Citizen, The Vancouver Sun, Eye, Broken Pencil, and Quill & Quire, among other publications. He most recently managed CJAM 99.1 FM, where he founded the twenty-four-hour radio marathon Joe Strummer Day to Confront Poverty in Windsor-Detroit. He now lives on the edge of Chicago where urban Illinois meets the prairie.
One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends – a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including prose by Colin Shephard and poetry by Augusta Funk.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State. Free. 764-6330.
7 p.m. Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry.
Literati is delighted to host the contributors to Community High School’s recently published literary magazine, VOICE: Issue 1, for a night of poetry and prose readings!
VOICE is a student-run journal of literary and visual arts at Community High School located in Ann Arbor, MI. Its first edition was published in December 2018. It features poetry, prose (fiction and essays), and art by Community High School students.
Readers Include….
Chloe Di Blassio is a student and artist at Community High School in Ann Arbor. She began drawing when she was 2 years old and has never stopped since. She works primarily with the figure, capturing small moments of emotional subtleties and inward gazes.
Nicole Tooley is a senior at Community High School. She grew a love for words in her literature and creative writing classes at school. In her spare time when she’s not composing short poems or reading a good memoir, she can probably be found dancing.
Every Wed. Members read and discuss poems around themes TBA. Followed by collaborative writing games and exercises. Attendees invited to read their poems. Snacks & socializing.
8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.
