Calendar

Dec
3
Tue
Zell Visiting Writers: Arthur Sze @ U-M Museum of Art Apse
Dec 3 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Literati is pleased to be the official bookseller for the Zell Visiting Writing Series, produced by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. 

Arthur Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He has published ten books of poetry, including Sight Lines, Compass Rose, The Ginkgo Light, Quipu, The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998, and Archipelago, all from Copper Canyon Press. He has also published The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese and edited Chinese Writers on Writing. A bilingual Chinese/English selected poems, Pig’s Heaven Inn, was published in Beijing, and he has also collaborated with sculptor Susan York to create a book and installation, The Unfolding Center.

Known for his difficult, meticulous poems, Sze’s work has been described as the “intersection of Taoist contemplation, Zen rock gardens and postmodern experimentation” by the critic John Tritica. The poet Dana Levin described Sze as “a poet of what I would call Deep Noticing, a strong lineage in American poetry… Dispassionate presentation of ‘the thing itself’ is its prevailing attribute, yet Sze’s attention is capacious; it’s attracted to paradox; it takes facing opponents and seats them side by side.” In addition, K. Michel, a Dutch poet writing for Poetry International says, “Sze’s work is characterized by its unusual combination of images and ideas, and by the surprising way in which he makes connections between diverse aspects of the world. In his poetry he combines images from urban life and nature, ideas from modern astronomy and Chinese philosophy as well as anecdotes from rural and industrial America. In this way, he creates texts that capture and reflect the complexity of reality.”

Sze’s many awards include The Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Lannan Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellowships, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, and five grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. From 2012-2017, he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and, in 2017, was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This event is free and open to the public. Onsite book sales will be provided by Literati Bookstore.

The Zell Visiting Writers Series brings outstanding writers to campus each semester. UMMA is pleased to be the site for most of these events. The Series is made possible through a generous gift from U-M alumna Helen Zell (BA ’64, LLDHon ’13). For more information, please visit the Zell Visiting Writers Program webpage: https://lsa.umich.edu/writers

Grace Talusan: The Body Papers: A Memoir @ Literati
Dec 3 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We’re pleased to welcome Grace Talusan for a reading in support of her memoir, The Body Papers, Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection. Free and open to the public, a book signing will follow. 

About the book: Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather’s nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family’s legal status in the country has always hung by a thread—for a time, they were “illegal.” Family, she’s told, must be put first.

The abuse and trauma Talusan suffers as a child affects all her relationships, her mental health, and her relationship with her own body. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. And she discovers another devastating family thread: cancer. In her thirties, Talusan must decide whether to undergo preventive surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher. On a fellowship, Talusan and her husband return to the Philippines, where she revisits her family’s ancestral home and tries to reclaim a lost piece of herself.

Not every family legacy is destructive. From her parents, Talusan has learned to tell stories in order to continue. The generosity of spirit and literary acuity of this debut memoir are a testament to her determination and resilience. In excavating such abuse and trauma, and supplementing her story with government documents, medical records, and family photos, Talusan gives voice to unspeakable experience, and shines a light of hope into the darkness.

Grace Talusan was born in the Philippines and raised in New England. A graduate of Tufts University and the MFA Program in Writing at UC Irvine, she is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines and an Artist Fellowship Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Talusan teaches the Essay Incubator at GrubStreet and at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts. She is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University for 2019–2021. The Body Papers, winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, is her first book.

The Moth Storyslam: Traditions @ Greyline
Dec 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.

TRADITIONS: Prepare a five-minute story about birthrights and rituals, customs and lore from those who went before. Friday night football or family FaceTime each Sunday. Chinese food on Christmas day or a New Year’s leap into the ocean. Bat mitzvahs, Quinceañeras, first piercings or tattoos. Rites of passage that are dreaded or real comforts. Sometimes traditions are both!

 

Dec
4
Wed
Author’s Forum: June Howard: The Center of the World: Regional Writing and the Puzzles of Place-Time, with Josh Miller @ 202 S. Thayer (Osterman Common Room)
Dec 4 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

June Howard (English, American culture, women’s studies) and Joshua Miller (English, Judaic studies) discuss Howard’s latest book, followed by Q & A.

*Regional Writing and the Puzzles of Place-Time* is a study of literary regionalism. It focuses on the fiction of the United States and considers the place of the genre in world literature. Regionalism is usually understood to be a literature bound to the local, but this study explores how regional writing shapes ways of imagining not only the neighborhood or the province, but also the nation, and ultimately the world. Its key premise is that thinking about place always entails imagining time. It analyzes how concepts crystallize across disciplines and in everyday discourse and proposes ways of revising American literary history and close readings of particular authors’ work. It demonstrates, for example, the importance of the figure of the school-teacher and the one-room schoolhouse in local color and subsequent place-focused writing. Such representations embody the contested relation in modernity between localities and the knowledge they produce, and books that carry metropolitan and cosmopolitan learning. The volume discusses fiction from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, including works by Sui Sin Far/Edith Eaton, Sarah Orne Jewett, Ernest Gaines, Wendell Berry, and Ursula LeGuin as well as romance novels and regional mysteries.

Poetry Series at Crazy Wisdom: George Tysh and Chris Tysh @ Crazy Wisdom
Dec 4 @ 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.

December 4 – George Tysh has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Kresge Foundation. His 11 books of poetry include The Slip (2015) and The Imperfect (2010), with a new collection, Twisted Flesh, forthcoming in 2020. He teaches film studies and poetics at College for Creative Studies in Detroit.

and Chris Tysh is author of several plays and collections of poetry. Her latest project, Hotel des Archives, features verse “transcreations” from the novels of Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Marguerite Duras, published by Station Hill Press. She holds fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and the Kresge Foundation.

 

 

Poetry Salon: One Pause Poetry @ Argus Farm Stop
Dec 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.

 

 

 

Dec
5
Thu
Laurie Lounsbury: Kingdom Forgotten @ Zal Gaz Grotto Club
Dec 5 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

Laurie Lounsbury is a national award-winning journalist and editor who spent most of her career covering northern Michigan, including Charlevoix, Petoskey, Boyne City, Gaylord and Beaver Island. She has spent a portion of every summer of her life in Charlevoix.

She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she is an exceptionally mediocre singer in a popular dance band.

Kingdom Forgotten is the story of James Strang, self-proclaimed Mormon king of Beaver Island in Lake Michigan.

Dec
6
Fri
Webster Reading Series: Meagean L. Dugger and Logan Lane @ UMMA Auditorium
Dec 6 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

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.

 

Dec
7
Sat
Detroit Writing Room’s Inaugural Holiday Book Fair @ Detroit Writing Room
Dec 7 @ 12:00 pm – 4:00 pm

The Detroit Writing Room’s inaugural Holiday Book Fair will feature over a dozen local authors will be selling and signing their book, including RC creative writing alumni Laura Thomas, Elizabeth Schmuhl, and Anna Clark.

Come browse, shop and meet some of the best authors in Michigan!

Admission is free. Please register in advance.

Author Lineup:
– Rosemarie Aquilina, “Triple Cross Killer” (Bowker)

– Angela Berent, “List Your Life: A Modern-Day Memoir” and “Trace Your Travels: An Adventure Journal”

– Anna Clark, “The Poisoned City” and “A Detroit Anthology” (Metropolitan Books / Belt Publishing)

– Kelly Fordon, “Goodbye Toothless House” and “Garden for the Blind” (Kattywompus Press and Wayne State University Press)

– Sylvia Hubbard, “Daddy’s Girl,” “Beautiful” and “Author’s Guide to Writing, Publishing & Marketing” (HubBooks Literary)

– Shaun Manning, “Macbeth: The Red King,” “Hell, Nebraska,” “Interesting Drug” and “Star Wars Adventures” (Lucha Comics/Shooting Star Press)

– Keith Owens, “Detroit Stories Quarterly”

– Ben Pauli, “Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis” (MIT Press)

– Craig Rush, “No Time to Hate” (Third Eye Pyramid Publishing)

– Elizabeth Schmuhl, “Premonitions” (Wayne State University Press)

– Syntell Smith, “Call Numbers” (Syntell Smith Publishing)

– Laura Thomas, “States of Motion” (Wayne State University Press)

– Bill Vlasic, “Once Upon A Car” (William Morrow)

You Wrote a Novel… Now What? With Lillian Li @ AADL Westgate, West Side Room
Dec 7 @ 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm

Calling all writers! Whether you participated in this year’s National Novel Writing Month or you just love to write, join author Lillian Li for a presentation and discussion on the writing and revising process, getting published, and get your questions answered!

Lillian Li is the author of Number One Chinese Restaurant, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and an NPR Best Book of 2018. Her work has been published in the New York Times, GrantaOne Story, Bon Appetit, and Jezebel. Originally from the D.C. metro area, she lives in Ann Arbor.

This program is associated with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and all aspiring authors are welcome! This event includes a signing with books for sale.

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