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

The Moth Storyslam: Neighborhoods @ Greyline
Sep 3 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Open-mic storytelling competitions. Open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night’s theme. Come tell a story, or just enjoy the show!

6:30pm Doors Open | 7:30pm Stories Begin

*Tickets for this event are available one week before the show, at 3pm ET.

*Seating is not guaranteed and is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Please be sure to arrive at least 10 minutes before the show. Admission is not guaranteed for late arrivals. All sales final.

Media Sponsor: Michigan Radio.

NEIGHBORHOODS: Prepare a five-minute story about communities.Nosy grandma two doors down, kids on the stoop, block parties and other local flavors. The guy at the corner store, the church down the road, the playground down the block. Keeping up with the Joneses, glass houses, cups of sugar, banging on the ceiling, parking spot battles or the girl-next door.

 

Sep
4
Wed
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
Emerging Writers: Top Ten Writing Myths @ AADL Westgate, West Side Room
Sep 9 @ 7:00 pm – 8:45 pm

Do writers have to write every day? Is writer’s block real? Can you write a book in your spare time? In this workshop, Bethany Neal and Alex Kourvo look at the top ten myths of a writer’s lifestyle, and get real about what it takes to make writing your career.

This is part of the monthly Emerging Writers Workshops, which offer support, learning, and advice for local authors. Each month, two weeks after the workshop, there is a meet-up where the instructors will read samples of your work and offer advice and assistance in a casual, supportive atmosphere.

Do you have a completed manuscript? Consider submitting it to the library’s imprint Fifth Avenue Press.

 

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.

 

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