Have you ever wanted to write a Choose Your Own Adventure story or text-based adventure game like Zork? Come and learn how to write your own interactive fiction using a simple coding language and then play through the stories that you and others have written.
We welcome college All-American and NFL wide receiver Braylon Edwards in support of his book with Tom VanHaaren, Doing It My Way: My Outspoken Life as a Michigan Wolverine, NFL Receiver, and Beyond.
About the book: Braylon Edwards has heard all the talk–that he’s only out for himself, only about the money; he’s a bust, a bad guy, a troublemaker, a typical wide receiver who doesn’t get it. He’s also heard the cheering fans, heard them singing “The Victors” after wins in the Big House, and cherished the smiles he saw in the crowd. All of it leaves an impression, just as Edwards has left his mark in return. In this frank, unflinching autobiography, Edwards reveals the heartbeat behind the padded armor and shares how football helped him find his place and gave him a voice. He details his transformative time in Ann Arbor, how he felt when he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns, what was going through his head when he got traded to the Jets, and lays bare all the bumps, bruises, and unexpected turns along the way.
Braylon Edwards played college football at the University of Michigan, where he received unanimous All-American honors and became the first receiver in Big Ten Conference history to record three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons. He played in the NFL for the Cleveland Browns, New York Jets, San Francisco 49ers, and Seattle Seahawks. Tom VanHaaren has covered college football and recruiting for ESPN since 2011. A Michigan native, Tom started his career in 2009, focusing on Michigan Wolverines football and recruiting. Tom, his wife, Laura, and their three children currently reside in southeast Michigan.
Jasmine An comes from the Midwest. Her first chapbook, Naming the No-Name Woman, won the 2015 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize and her second, Monkey Was Here, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. Her work has been supported by residencies at Hedgebrook and Willapa Bay AiR and can be found in Stirring: A Literary Collection, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Nat. Brut and Waxwing, among others. Currently, she is an Editor at Agape Editions and pursuing a PhD in English and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan.
The event begins with an Open Mic session when area poets can read their own work or share a favorite poem by another author in a welcoming atmosphere. This is part of a monthly series on the 2nd Thursday of most months in partnership with Les Go Social Media Marketing and Training. Signing to follow.
“In clear and luxurious language, Jasmine An navigates the slippery worlds of identity politics, botany, and desire—and pulls us toward an elegant horizon. I’m grateful for such a sumptuous and (not-so) safe passage of fine poems and the fragrant world that she’s created in such a small space, one where “…even the saplings wear crabs as crowns.”” — Aimee Nezhukumatathil
We are delighted to host local poets Doug Smith with Jane Bridges for a night of poetry.
About the Book
Selections from This Iris and Ransom Note Poems There are 8 poems that center around life with her husband of 40 years, his sudden death, and her response to it. There are 8 poems that are made with cut-out words from magazines, which she calls ransom note poems. These poems are inspired by classic Japanese haiku, and while they aren’t haiku, they are zen-like.
Social Work and Other Myths These poems emerge from the writer’s long experience as a social worker and community organizer. Doug Smith has worked with low income households, the afflicted, and the homeless for more than forty years. His carefully crafted work reflects that experience and conveys his hard-won insights. Writers, critics, and others have already taken notice of Social Work and Other Myths. Keith Taylor, author of The Bird While (from the Wayne State Press) says: “The poems are right. They sing beautifully, and they remember.” Carol McCabe, founding Director of Avalon Housing, says: (Smith’s) “eye for detail and his heart for the struggle come through with a rare combination of grit and warmth.” Brian Cox, an award-winning Michigan playwright, observes that “Smith is a poet who creates an awareness that burrows into you and changes how you see.” Jill Dearman, editor of Mudfish Anthology, says simply: “Smith has a great collection here. I was truly moved.”
About the Author
Jane Bridges spent her early years were in Texas, New Hampshire and India and all of her adult years in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She studied biology and taught science and English in both public and private schools. Her husband of 40 years died suddenly in 2002 and their two children were adults at that time. Her love of nature has taken her to wild places in the tropics. Crows and butterflies that come to her backyard are of particular interest to her.
She is grateful to many poetry teachers, including Richard Tillinghast, Marge Piercy, Gerry LaFemina, Matthew Lippman, and Zilka Joseph. Members of Paper Kite and Tornado Wine have helped take her poems to wild places. She has won and placed in several national contests, and has been published in The MacGuffin, Paterson Literary Review, Margie, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Third Wednesday, Mudfish, and elsewhere.
Local poet Douglas Smith is co-editor of Mayapple Press’s In Drought Times: Scenes from Rural and Small Town Life. He was a finalist in the 2016 Mudfish Magazine and the 2017 New Guard Knightville Poetry contests. His poetry has been published in numerous journals and publications. Smith’s latest collection of poems is Social Work and Other Myths. Award-winning Michigan playwright Brian Cox calls this work a “poignant expression of compassion. These poems beseech us to identify with the humanity in the desperate, the afflicted, the abandoned, the evicted and the exiled.. Smith is a poet who creates an awareness that burrows into you and changes how you see.”
Join all of your favorite AADL storytellers for an evening of tales and music that will entertain all ages!
We welcome art historian Andrei Pop in support of his latest, A Forest of Symbols: Art, Science, and Truth in the Long Nineteenth Century. A book signing will follow. The event is free and open to the public.
About the book: A groundbreaking reassessment of Symbolist artists and writers that investigates the concerns they shared with scientists of the period–the problem of subjectivity in particular.
In A Forest of Symbols, Andrei Pop presents a groundbreaking reassessment of those writers and artists in the late nineteenth century associated with the Symbolist movement. For Pop, “symbolist” denotes an art that is self-conscious about its modes of making meaning, and he argues that these symbolist practices, which sought to provide more direct access to viewers and readers by constant revision of its material means of meaning-making (brushstrokes on a canvas, words on a page), are crucial to understanding the genesis of modern art. The symbolists saw art not as a social revolution, but as a revolution in sense and how to conceptualize the world. The concerns of symbolist painters and poets were shared to a remarkable degree by theoretical scientists of the period, who were dissatisfied with the strict empiricism dominant in their disciplines, which made shared knowledge seem unattainable.
The problem of subjectivity in particular, of what in one’s experience can and cannot be shared, was crucial to the possibility of collaboration within science and to the communication of artistic innovation. Pop offers close readings of the literary and visual practices of Manet and Mallarmé, of drawings by Ernst Mach, William James and Wittgenstein, of experiments with color by Bracquemond and Van Gogh, and of the philosophical systems of Frege and Russell–filling in a startling but coherent picture of the symbolist heritage of modernity and its consequences.
Andrei Pop is a member of the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago.
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.
Rumrunners and bootleggers and speakeasies, oh my! Mickey Lyons of DetroitProhibition.com takes us through Detroit’s intoxicating history during the prohibition years, from sloshing the stuff across the Detroit River to raiding the liquor cabinets and speakeasies with a whole lot of intemperance.
Mickey is a Detroit-based author and researcher on Detroit Prohibition history. Her upcoming book, City on a Still: Detroit During Prohibition, is in the works. In the meantime, she spends her days trudging through old bars and buildings and sifting through old newspapers.
This event is in partnership with the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor (CHAA), an organization of scholars, cooks, food writers, nutritionists, collectors, students, and others interested in the study of culinary history and gastronomy. Their mission is to promote the study of culinary history through regular programs open to members and guests, through the quarterly newsletter Repast, and through exchanges of information with other such organizations.
We welcome Cave Canem Poetry Prize winner Malcom Tariq in support of his collection, Heed the Hollow, as part of our ongoing Poetry at Literati Series, reading with Jonah Mixon-Webster. A Book signing will follow. The event is free and open to the public.
Malcolm Tariq is from Savannah, Georgia, and is the author of Extended Play, winner of the 2017 Gertrude Press Poetry Chapbook Contest. A graduate of Emory University, he has a PhD in English from the University of Michigan. He lives in New York.
Jonah Mixon-Webster is a poet and conceptual/sound artist from Flint, MI. His debut poetry collection, Stereo(TYPE), received the 2017 Sawtooth Poetry Prize from Ahsahta Press, the 2019 PEN America/Joyce Osterweil Award, and was a finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. He is the recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, The Conversation Literary Festival, ivoh, and Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. His poetry and hybrid works are featured in various publications including PEN America Poetry Series, Best New Poets 2017, PennSound, and Best American Experimental Writing 2018.
Sweetland’s Writer to Writer series lets you hear directly from University of Michigan professors about their challenges, processes, and expectations as writers and also as readers of student writing. Each semester, Writer to Writer pairs one esteemed University professor with a Sweetland faculty member for a conversation about writing. For this installment, host Shelley Manis will speak with Professor Jennifer Proctor.
Writer to Writer sessions take place at the Literati bookstore and are broadcast live on WCBN radio. These conversations offer students a rare glimpse into the writing that professors do outside the classroom. You can hear instructors from various disciplines describe how they handle the same challenges student writers face, from finding a thesis to managing deadlines. Professors will also discuss what they want from student writers in their courses, and will take questions put forth by students and by other members of the University community. If there’s anything you’ve ever wanted to ask a professor about writing, Writer to Writer gives you the chance.
Jennifer Proctor is an Associate Professor of Journalism and Screen Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and co-founder and director of the inclusive teaching initiative EDIT Media (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Teaching Media). She is a filmmaker and media artist whose internationally recognized, award-winning found footage work examines the history of experimental film, Hollywood tropes, and the representation of women in cinema. Her recent work, in particular, seeks to blur boundaries between avant-garde film practices and the scholarly video essay. Her 2018 film “Nothing a Little Soap and Water Can’t Fix,” which examines the bathtub as a feminized domestic space, won the Cutters Archival Film Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Top Grit at the Indie Grits Film Festival, and Best Experimental Film at the St. Francis College Women’s Film Festival, in addition to screening at more than forty film festivals around the world. Her recent video, “Am I Pretty?” appropriates the voices of tween girls from YouTube videos to explore the development of self-image and self-esteem in the modern era. In addition to screening at film festivals, including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, “Am I Pretty?” appears in a special issue on audiography in [in]Transition: The Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies.
