Calendar

Sep
3
Tue
John U. Bacon: Overtime @ Hill Auditorium
Sep 3 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Tickets available here.

Literati Bookstore is thrilled to welcome national bestseller John U. Bacon to the historic Hill Auditorium on the campus of the University of Michigan as he launches his latest book, Overtime: Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines at the Crossroads of College FootballFollowing an introduction by Sam Webb and Ira Weintraub of WTKA’s The Michigan Insider, John will give a book talk and answer audience questions.

The event is general admission, free and open to the public, but getting a free ticket secures your admission. You can also get a free ticket plus pre-order a signed copy of Overtime for the price of the book plus tax–those paid, pre-ordered copies will be picked up at the event.  A book signing will follow the event, and guests will be released by row to join the signing line. Guests must have a copy of Overtime they wish to have signed to join the signing line. Guests with pre-signed copies may join the signing line to have those copies personalized. 

A map of walkable parking structures can be found here

About OvertimeFor the past year, John U. Bacon has received unprecedented access to Jim Harbaugh’s University of Michigan football team: coaches, players, and staffers, in closed-door meetings, locker rooms, meals, and classes. Overtime captures this storied program at the crossroads, as the sport’s winningest team battles to reclaim its former glory. But what if the price of success today comes at the cost of your soul? Do you pay it, or compete without compromising?

Overtime delivers a riveting and revealing insider’s account of the Harbaugh era, a deeply reported human portrait of a big-time college football program.

In the spirit of HBO’s Hardknocks, Overtime follows the Wolverine coaches, players, and staffers through the 2018 season, including Harbaugh, offensive stars Shea Patterson and Karan Higdon, NFL-ready defensive standouts Rashan Gary, Devin Bush Jr., and Chase Winovich, second-stringers striving to find their place on the team, and their parents’ reactions to it all. Bacon met with them every week during a season that saw the Wolverines ride a ten-game winning streak to #4 in the nation, then take a beating at the hands of arch-rival Ohio State, led by controversial coach Urban Meyer, Harbaugh’s foil. Overtime also previews the crucial 2019 campaign ahead.

Above all, this is a human story. In Overtime we not only discover what these public figures are like behind the scenes, we learn what the experience means to them as they go through it – the trials, the triumphs, and the unexpected answers to a central question: Is it worth it?

John U. Bacon is the author of the national bestseller The Great Halifax Explosion and four bestselling books about college football, including Three and OutFourth and LongEndzone, and Bo’s Lasting Lessons, co-authored with Michigan coach Bo Schembechler. A former feature writer for the Detroit News, his writing has been recognized three times in The Best American Sports Writing series. He appears often on NPR and national television, including ESPN’s 2019 documentary series on college football. He has taught at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and the University of Michigan. A popular public speaker, he lives in Ann Arbor with his wife and son.

Questions? Email John@LiteratiBookstore.com

Sep
4
Wed
Reception: Cynthia Sowers: Daughters of Memory: Paintings and Poems on the Nine Muses @ RC Art Gallery (East Quad)
Sep 4 @ 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm

Daughters of Memory: Paintings and Poems on the Nine Muses is an interdisciplinary show of works by Cindy Sowers exploring the elusive sources for the ancient figures of the Muses, as well as the appropriation of these figures by different artists through the ages.

Reception for the Artist: September 6, approximately 4:30pm. Refreshments will be served.

Cindy Sowers received her B.A. from Oakland University, her M.A. from University of Michigan in Comparative Literature, and her Ph.D. also from the University of Michigan in Comparative Literature. During her Masters program in 1973, she started teaching at the Residential College in the First Year Seminar and French programs. Her dissertation, The Shared Structure of Craft and Song: A Study of Homer’s Narrative Art, revealed passions for narrative and visual analysis comparatively understood that would characterize her teaching thereafter. She participated in an interdisciplinary group composed of Residential College humanities and fine arts faculty who together constructed the Arts and Ideas in the Humanities concentration. Cindy’s recent course offerings have included critical approaches to the literature and visual arts of classic modernism, postmodernism, Shakespeare and Rome, the heritage of Greece, the psychoanalytic interpretation of the arts, and many others. She combines analyses of literary texts, visual arts, and philosophy to hone in on the animating spirit of a cultural moment and space. She has presented at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2006 U-M residency, as part of the RC Faculty Colloquium, for the LSA Comparative Literature and the Colloquium on Critical Theory sponsored by the LSA Department of English Language and Literature, and at the Residential College’s 50th Anniversary celebration. She has received the Ford Foundation Fellowship, the Rackham Prize twice, the U-M Excellence in Teaching Award, the Matthews Underclass Teaching Award, and is a member of the Medieval Academy of America. Cindy retires from her position as a Senior Lecturer and Lecturer IV, having served in the Residential College for 46 years. She has an active art practice, and her work will be displayed in the RC Art Gallery in a fall 2019 exhibition. She also maintains a personal website, cynthiasowers.rc.lsa.umich.edu, where she publishes essays, poetry, and visual artwork.

 

Jessica Care Moore: We Want Our Bodies Back @ AADL Downtown (Fourth Floor)
Sep 4 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

jessica Care moore, an internationally renowned poet, playwright, performance artist, and producer from Detroit, will preview her newest work: “We Want Our Bodies Back.”  Moore first came to national prominence when she won the “It’s Showtime at the Apollo” competition a record breaking five times in a row.  She is the 2013 Alain Locke Award Recipient from the Detroit Institute of Arts, and her poetry has been heard at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the London Institute of Contemporary Arts.  She is the CEO of Moore Black Press, Executive Producer of Black WOMEN Rock!, and founder of the literacy-driven Jess Care Moore Foundation.

This event includes a book signing and books will be for sale.

Poetry Salon: One Pause Poetry @ Argus Farm Stop
Sep 4 @ 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm

ONE PAUSE POETRY SALON is (literally) a greenhouse for poetry and poets, nurturing an appreciation for written art in all languages and encouraging experiments in creative writing.

We meet every Weds in the greenhouse at Argus Farm Stop on Liberty St. The poems we read each time are unified by form (haiku, sonnet, spoken word), poet, time / place (Tang Dynasty, English Romanticism, New York in the 70s) or theme / mood (springtime, poems with cats, protest poems). We discuss the poems and play writing games together, with time for snacks and socializing in between.

Members are encouraged to share their own poems or poems they like – they may or may not relate to the theme of the evening. This is not primarily a workshop – we may hold special workshop nights, but mostly we listen to and talk about poems for the sake of inspiring new writing.

Whether you are a published poet or encountering poetry for the first time, we invite you to join us!

$5 suggested donation for food, drinks and printing costs.

8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.

 

 

 

Sep
6
Fri
Randall Monroe in Conversation with Jim Ottaviani @ Rackham Auditorium
Sep 6 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE TICKETS

Literati Bookstore is thrilled to welcome Randall Munroe to Rackham Auditorium in downtown Ann Arbor in support of his latest book, How to: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems. The program will feature a presentation, conversation, and Q&A. A book signing will follow. Detailed instructions for the book signing to come.

Tickets are general admission and include a hardcover copy of How to, to be picked up at the venue the evening of the event. Literati will have additional copies of Randall Munroe’s previous titles available for purchase. Parking in downtown Ann Arbor on Friday evenings can be difficult. Surface spots are sparse, but a detailed map of available (and walkable) parking structures can be found here.

For any task you might want to do, there’s a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It’s full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.

Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you’re a baby boomer or a 90’s kid by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and powering your house by destroying the fabric of space-time. And if you want to get rid of the book once you’re done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapor, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth’s mantle, or launching it into the Sun.

By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn’t just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, Munroe invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.

Randall Munroe is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer, the science question-and-answer blog What If, and the popular webcomic xkcd. A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full-time. He lives in Massachusetts.

Event Questions? Email john@literatibookstore.com

Sep
9
Mon
Fiction at Literati: Rachel DeWoskin: Banshee @ Literati
Sep 9 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome Rachel Dewoskin back to our store in support of her new novel, Banshee, which Cheryl Strayed calls “Sexy and sad, dark and funny, ruthless and kind, this is Rachel Dewoskin’s ferociously feminist masterpiece,” as part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati series. Free and open to the public. A book signing to follow. 

About the book:Samantha Baxter has a full, sane life–creative job, lovely family, and all the trappings of middle-age happiness. But when she gets a diagnosis that terrifies her, a lifetime of polite pleasing and putting others first ignites in her a surprising, pure rage. Maybe Sam will survive the surgery, and maybe not, but either way, she’ll spend the next three weeks burning her life down: sleeping with a student her daughter’s age, speaking every truth she’s ever swallowed, and refusing to apologize for her wildest, most essential self.

Rachel DeWoskin is the author of Someday We Will Fly (Penguin, 2019); Blind (Penguin, 2014); Big Girl Small (FSG, 2011); Repeat After Me (The Overlook Press, 2009); and Foreign Babes in Beijing (WW Norton, 2005). She is on the core fiction faculty at the University of Chicago, and is an affiliated faculty member of the Centers for East Asian Studies and Jewish Studies.

Sep
10
Tue
Poetry at Literati: Jeff Kass: Teacher/Pizza Guy @ Literati
Sep 10 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome Jeff Kass back to Literati for a reading from his new poetry collection, Teacher/Pizza Guy, as part of our ongoing Poetry at Literati series. Free and open to the public, book signing to follow. 

About the book: Explores the emotional and physical labor necessary to work nights as a pizza delivery driver and days as a high school English teacher.

Jeff Kass teaches tenth-grade English and creative writing at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is the founder of the Literary Arts Program at Ann Arbor’s teen center, The Neutral Zone, where he was program director for twenty years. He is also the author of the award-winning short story collection Knuckleheads, the poetry collection My Beautiful Hook-Nosed Beauty Queen Strut Wave, and the thriller Takedown. He lives in Ann Arbor with the author Karen Smyte and their children, Sam and Julius.

Sep
11
Wed
Lara Zielin: Author Your Life @ AADL Westgate
Sep 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:45 pm

As a published young-adult and romance author, Lara Zielin was always asking what her characters wanted and what would make them happy. Her life changed forever when she began to ask those same questions about herself.

At the start of 2018, Lara began a book she unimaginatively titled Lara’s Life to test whether writing about the life she wanted to have could actually help it come to pass.

Every day she wrote about herself like a character in the third person, and wrote about the things she wanted to have happen to this person. After a year of doing this, her life was markedly different.

Come hear Lara talk about the process of third-person writing and the reasons why writing about yourself this way can change cognitive patterns and lead to breakthroughs. Lara will explain how you can begin to put pen to paper in this way yourself, and she’ll give you prompts and writing tips for your own story.

This event includes a book signing and books will be on sale.

 

Poetry and the Written Word: Poetry Workshop @ Crazy Wisdom
Sep 11 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and David Jibson • Second and Fourth Wednesdays, 7-9 p.m. in the Crazy Wisdom Tea Room • Second Wednesdays are poetry workshop nights. All writers welcome to share and discuss their own poetry and short fiction. Sign up for new participants begins at 6:45 p.m.

Fourth Wednesdays have a featured reader for 50 minutes and then open mic for an hour. All writers welcome to share. Sign up begins at 6:45 p.m. Free. Contact Ed at 668-7523; eacmorso@sbcglobal.net or cwpoetrycircle.tumblr.com.

 

Sister Helen Prejean: River of Fire @ First United Methodist Church
Sep 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Tickets available now. Click here.

Literati is pleased to welcome Sister Helen Prejean to First United Methodist Church of Ann Arbor in support of her latest, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey. Sr. Helen will be introduced by Ashley Lucas, Director of the Prison Creative Arts Project at the University of Michigan, and joined in conversation by Rev. Nancy S. Lynn. A Q&A and book signing will follow. 

limited number of book bundle tickets are available, and these include a hardcover copy River of Fire, reserved general admission seating at the front of the venue, and signing line priority (note that for parties wishing to sit together in this reserved area, each member must purchase a book bundle ticket).

Copies of River of Fire and a selection Sister Helen’s previous books will be available for purchase for all guests. Any person with books to sign may join the signing line, following all Book Bundle guests. 

Please note that FUMC’s sanctuary is not air-conditioned. Guests are welcomed and encouraged to bring personal fans if it proves to be a particularly warm evening. 

Parking in downtown Ann Arbor can be difficult. Surface spots are sparse, but a detailed map of available (and walkable) parking structures can be found here

About the Book: In this revelatory, intimate memoir of her childhood, her spiritual evolution, and how she became “lit” to her crusade, Sister Helen chronicles her journey from one who prayed for God to solve the world’s problems to one engaged full-tilt, hands-on, in the work to transform societal injustices. She writes about growing up in a well-off Baton Rouge family, one that still employed black servants in the racially segregated South, and how she joined the Sisters of St. Joseph at the age of eighteen. Life in the novitiate, which aimed at spiritual holiness, set strict boundaries of separation from the (sinful) “world” – but all that changed in the wake of Vatican II, which brought the winds of change in the Catholic Church. Inspired by Catholic activists such as Dorothy Day in the inner city and Jesuit priests who went to prison for destroying draft files in opposition to the Vietnam war, Sister Helen started to immerse herself in the struggle of poor people in New Orleans forced to live on the margins of society. River of Fire is at turns honest and humorous, and she writes openly about her friendships with other women who have inspired and nurtured her, as well as a close friendship with a priest— obsessively intent on marrying her—and how  these relationships challenged her vocation in “new territory of the heart” and propelled her further into deepening both her life in the Sisterhood and her engagement in  social justice, where she is today.

River of Fire is a story of faith and spirituality, doubt and belief, addressed to believers, agnostics, and “nones” alike.  It tells about  “catching on fire” to purpose and passion. Accessible, humorous, luminous and on point for these polarized times when awakened social conscience and citizen action have never been more needed, Sister Helen shows us how to live a spiritual life that is wide awake to the sufferings and creative opportunities of our world.

Helen Prejean, CSJ, is the author of the #1 national bestseller Dead Man Walking. A member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, she has appeared on 60 MinutesFrontlineThe Oprah Winfrey Show, ABC’s World News TonightThe Rachel Maddow ShowDemocracy Now!Crossfire, NBC’s special series on the death penalty, and NPR’s All Things Considered, and has been featured in The New York Times MagazineUSA TodayLos Angeles Times, and The New York Review of Books.

About First United Methodist Church: At First United Methodist Church of Ann Arbor, we welcome everyone of every ability! Young or old, Democrat or Republican, gay or straight, genderqueer or cisgender, filled with doubts or firm in your faith–you are invited to join us. Our congregation is grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ, which tears down walls and builds up community. We are progressive and relevant–committed to seeking peace and building hope through worship, service, social justice, and educational opportunities in our local, national, and international communities. www.fumc-a2.org

Questions? Email John@LiteratiBookstore.com 

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