Literati is thrilled to welcome author Megan Griswold who will be sharing her new book The Book of Help.
About The Book of Help:
The Book of Help traces one woman’s life-long quest for love, connection, and peace of mind. A heartbreakingly vulnerable and tragically funny memoir-in-remedies, Megan Griswold’s narrative spans four decades and six continents — from the glaciers of Patagonia and the psycho-tropics of Brazil, to academia, the Ivy League, and the study of Eastern medicine.
Megan was born into a family who enthusiastically embraced the offerings of New Age California culture — at seven she asked Santa for her first mantra and by twelve she was taking weekend workshops on personal growth. But later, when her newly-wedded husband calls in the middle of the night to say he’s landed in jail, Megan must accept that her many certificates, degrees and licenses had not been the finish line she’d once imagined them to be, but instead the preliminary training for what would prove to be the wildest, most growth-insisting journey of her life.
Megan Griswold went to Barnard College, received an MA from Yale, and went on to earn a licentiate degree from the Institute of Taoist Education and Acupuncture. She has trained and received certifications as a doula, shiatsu practitioner, yoga instructor, personal trainer, and in wilderness medicine, among others. She has worked as a mountain instructor, a Classical Five Element acupuncturist, a freelance reporter, an NPR All Things Considered commentator and an off-the grid interior designer. She resides (mostly) in a yurt in Kelly, Wyoming.
Literati is excited to welcome back author Polly Rosenwaike who will be reading and discussing her new short story collection Look How Happy I’m Making You.
About Look How Happy I’m Making You:
“A beautifully written and beautifully conceived series of stories about, well, conception…Among the thousands of books for prospective and new parents, I doubt any will make you feel more understood and less alone than this one.”–ANTHONY DOERR, author of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
A candid, ultimately buoyant debut story collection about the realities of the “baby years,” whether you’re having one or not.
The women in Polly Rosenwaike’s Look How Happy I’m Making You want to be mothers, or aren’t sure they want to be mothers, or–having recently given birth–are overwhelmed by what they’ve wrought. Sharp and unsettling, wry and moving in its depiction of love, friendship, and family, this collection expands the conversation about what having a baby looks like.
One woman struggling with infertility deals with the news that her sister is pregnant. Another woman nervous about her biological clock “forgets” to take her birth control while dating a younger man and must confront the possibility of becoming a single parent. Four motherless women who meet in a bar every Mother’s Day contend with their losses and what it would mean to have a child.
Witty, empathetic, and precisely observed, Look How Happy I’m Making You offers the rare, honest portrayal of pregnancy and new motherhood in a culture obsessed with women’s most intimate choices.
POLLY ROSENWAIKE has published stories, essays, and reviews in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013, The New York Times Book Review, Glimmer Train, New England Review, The Millions, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The fiction editor for Michigan Quarterly Review, she lives in Ann Arbor with the poet Cody Walker and their two daughters.
Literati is excited to welcome the Creative Writing Sub-concentration seniors in the English Department at the University of Michigan for a night of poetry and prose readings!
Each year the Creative Writing Sub-concentration selects no more than 14 students who spend their senior year working with faculty to complete a creative thesis of poetry or fiction. These collections, the same size as many MFA theses, are first attempts to create book-length manuscripts, and to prepare the writers for their work in the future.
Readers include…
Laura Dzubay is a writer specializing in short fiction, long fiction, and articles about all the music she loves. She is mostly from Indiana and has published work in Blue Earth Review, Bad Pony, Belle Ombre, and others, and has won three Hopwood Awards. She enjoys UltimateGuitar.com and pretending it’s fall year-round.
Sophia Christos is a senior studying English, creative writing, and entrepreneurship. She’s one of the founders of EMPOWER, an online young women’s magazine that promotes positivity and inspiration. Sophia’s also a development intern at the Alzheimer’s Association, where she is working to find the first survivor of Alzheimer’s. In her spare time, Sophia loves to scuba dive, ski, and travel the world.
Nitya Gupta is a senior from the Chicago suburbs studying English with a sub-concentration in creative writing and a minor in the environment. She’s a Daily Arts Writer for The Michigan Daily as well as an Editorial Assistant at Michigan News. When she’s not reading or writing, she enjoys practicing and teaching yoga.
Ana Lucena is a senior studying English with creative writing and pre-law at the University of Michigan. Her favorite themes are psychological horror and social justice. Her writing is deeply inspired by film and comics as well. If her writing career doesn’t take off, she plans to go to law school in the hopes of furthering her research skills and her understanding of society to the benefit of her writing.
Cailean Robinson is a writer, reader, introvert, and feminist. Her work has appeared in the 2016 Cafe Shapiro Anthology. If Cailean could do anything for a day, she would people-watch with Libba Bray and Jane Austen, and if she could go anywhere for a month, she would visit New Zealand. Cailean enjoys acting and listening to musicals, and her plans after graduating (please stop asking) are to live, to travel, and to finish her book. She is from Ann Arbor, MI and Kennesaw, GA.
Matthew Solway is a poet at the University of Michigan. He has worked in various medical research labs studying diabetic complications and is committed to understanding the natural world through poetry and science with a specific focus on improving the lives of those who cannot help themselves. This fall, he will continue his studies Wayne State School of Medicine.
Josie Tolin is just glad to be here. She’s from Chesterton, Indiana—a town so unremarkable it’s almost remarkable. Her short fiction has appeared in The Google Drive Folder (a premier publication co-founded by Nitya Gupta, Kate Velguth, and Ellie Zak) as well as Emails to Her Friends (subject line: “can u tell me if this sux, lol”).
Literati is pleased to be partnering with the Neutral Zone to host poet Aldo Leopoldo Pando Girard.
Join us for the release of a poetry book by Aldo Leopoldo Pando Girard, Ann Arbor’s Youth Poet Laureate! Aldo’s work explores the intersection of multiple identities and homelands, painting a complex, vulnerable and vivid self-portrait. Aldo will read from his collection, followed by a Q&A and book signing.
Aldo Leopoldo Pando Girard is an Afro-Cuban poet born and raised in Ann Arbor, MI. He loves music, walking through the woods, has an intense fascination with mountains, & thinks that the ultimate goal of life is to increase happiness in the world. He was a feature for Poetry Night in Ann Arbor 2018 and a member of the 2018 Ann Arbor slam team. He spends a lot of time at the Neutral Zone sharing poems, ideas, & energy. He is now a student at the University of Michigan studying vocal performance and civil engineering.
Literati is proud to be partnering with the Helen Zell Writers Program to host author Edwidge Danticat at the University of Michigan Art Museum Apse.
Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah’s Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and the novel-in-stories, The Dew Breaker. She is the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures , Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2, and Best American Essays 2011. She has written six books for young adults and children– Anac aona, Behind the Mountains, Eight Days, The Last Mapou, Mama’s Nightingale, and Untwine–as well as a travel narrative, After the Dance, A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow.
With the young republic in crisis, President Washington chose as general an aging brigadier whose private life was mired in scandal. Follow the story of General Anthony Wayne, drawn from his own passionate letters where he vividly confessed his deepest thoughts. Writer and historian Mary Stockwell was an Earhart Foundation Fellow at the Clements Library. Her book “Unlikely General: ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America” was published by Yale University Press in 2018. She has a B.A. in history from Mary Manse College and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Toledo. Register online.
Literati is honored to host author Rebecca Soffer who will be sharing her new book Modern Loss: Candid Conversations About Grief. Beginners Welcome.
About Modern Loss:
Inspired by the website hailed as “redefining mourning” by the New York Times, a wise and irreverent collection of essays and tips on navigating grief in the modern age
Let’s face it: most of us have a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We’re awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit.
And at a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, when intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it’s clear we are exploring this modern landscape of loss without a road map.
Enter Rebecca Soffer and Gabrielle Birkner, who can help us do better. Each having lost parents as young adults, they cofounded the website Modern Loss, responding to a need to change the dialogue around the messy experience of grief. Now, in this wise and often funny book, they offer the insights of the Modern Loss community to help us cry, laugh, grieve, identify, and–above all–empathize.
Soffer and Birkner, along with more than forty guest contributors, including rocker Amanda Palmer, CNN’s Brian Stelter, and Dr. Lucy Kalanithi (widow of When Breath Becomes Air author Paul Kalanithi), reveal their own stories on a wide range of topics, such as triggers, intimacy, secrets, inheritance, and more. Accompanied by beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and witty how-to cartoons, each contribution provides a unique perspective on loss as well as a remarkable life-affirming message.
Brutally honest and inspiring, Modern Loss invites us to talk intimately and humorously about grief, helping us confront the humanity (and mortality) we all share. Beginners welcome.
Rebecca Soffer is the cofounder and CEO of Modern Loss. A former producer for the Peabody Award-winning Colbert Report, Rebecca is a nationally recognized speaker on the topics of loss and resilience. She is a Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism alumna and contributes regularly to books, magazines, and other media. Rebecca lives in New York City and the Berkshires with her husband and two children.
BRING ABOUT SIX COPIES OF YOUR WORK. COPIES WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU.
Hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and Dave Jibson; see our blog at Facebook/Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series
Literati is honored to welcome back poet Clayton Eshelman who will be reading from his new collection Pollen Aria.
About Pollen Aria:
That Clayton Eshleman has not ceased from exploration over a career spanning more than 60 years is witnessed by the bulk, range, and diversity of his prior work. Now in his 80’s Eshleman presents us with a last collection of his poems-mostly recent, a few older. That he has sought to open up his life and work, to entwine and entangle it with others, through observation and vision, research and scholarship, translation and editing, and collaboration and conversation, all of this reflects Eshleman’s life commitment, indeed a commitment to life in writing poetry.
Clayton Eshleman has had published roughly 100 books and chapbooks of original poetry, translations, and nonfiction writings, and edited seventy issues of magazines and journals, including the ground-breaking Caterpillar and Sulfur. His writings have appeared in over 500 literary magazines and journals around the world and his books and writings have been translated into over a dozen languages. He has won many poetry awards, fellowships, and translation awards for his works through the years. It is undoubtedly unnecessary to observe that he made and has fulfilled a life commitment to poetry. Now in his 80’s he resides with his wife Caryl in Ypsilanti, MI.
Literati is proud to be partnering with the Helen Zell Writers Program to host author Edwidge Danticat at the University of Michigan Art Museum Helmut Stern Auditorium.
Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah’s Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and the novel-in-stories, The Dew Breaker. She is the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures , Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2, and Best American Essays 2011. She has written six books for young adults and children– Anac aona, Behind the Mountains, Eight Days, The Last Mapou, Mama’s Nightingale, and Untwine–as well as a travel narrative, After the Dance, A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow.
