Calendar

Feb
4
Tue
Fiction at Literati: Jennifer Acker: The Limits of the World @ Literati
Feb 4 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome debut novelist Jennifer Acker in support of The Limits of the World.

About the book: Spanning four generations and three continents, The Limits of the World illuminates the vast mosaic of cultural divisions and ethical considerations that shape the ways in which we judge one another’s actions. A dazzling debut novel–written with rare empathy and insight–it is a powerful depiction of how we prevent ourselves, unwittingly and otherwise, from understanding the people we are closest to.

The Limits of The World is such a smart, compassionate and elegant novel, so deeply invested in morality and the subtleties of families, cultures, and continents, that it feels delicious and exciting to recall that this is Jennifer Acker’s debut.”–Lauren Groff, author of Florida

Jennifer Acker is founder and editor in chief of The Common. Her short stories, essays, translations, and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, Literary Hub, n+1, Guernica, The Yale Review, and Ploughshares, among other places. Acker has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and teaches writing and editing at Amherst College, where she directs the Literary Publishing Internship and organizes LitFest. She lives in western Massachusetts with her husband. The Limits of the World is her debut novel.

Feb
5
Wed
Poetry and the Written Word: Poetry Workshop @ Crazy Wisdom
Feb 5 @ 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.

 

Feb
6
Thu
Zell Visiting Writers: Rya Kaminsky @ UMMA Auditorium
Feb 6 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 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. 

Ilya Kaminsky’s widely acclaimed parable in poems, Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019), reads like a two-act political drama in which lyric poems trace the experiences of citizens living under martial law. A New Yorker review called it a work of “profound imagination.” Poems from Deaf Republic were awarded Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize and the Pushcart Prize.

Kaminsky is also the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), and Musica Humana (Chapiteau Press, 2002). Kaminsky has won the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and the Foreword Magazine’s Best Poetry Book of the Year award. Recently, he was on the short-list for the Neusdadt International Literature Prize. His poems have been translated into numerous languages and his books have been published in many countries including Turkey, Holland, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain and China, where his poetry was awarded the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize. His poems have been compared to work by Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, and Marina Tsvetaeva.

He is the editor of several anthologies, among them The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Ecco, 2010), co-edited with Susan Harris, which John Ashbery praised as “immediately indispensable;” A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith(Tupelo Press, 2012), co-edited with Katherine Towler; Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poets and Prose (Tupelo Press, 2014), co-edited with Katie Farris and Valzhyna Mort; and In the Shape of the Human Body I am Visiting the Earth: Poems from Far and Wide (McSweeney’s, 2017) with Dominic Luxford and Jesse Nathan. With Jean Valentine, he has co-translated Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva.

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

Feb
7
Fri
Fiction at Literati: Madeline Miller: Circe @ Literati
Feb 7 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We’re pleased to welcome acclaimed author and Orange Prize for Fiction recipient Madeline Miller in support of her beloved novel, Circe. This event is free and open to the public. Seating will be limited and will be first come / first served. We will seek accommodate additional standing room guests in an overflow area with audio from the event. 

About the book: Follows Circe, the banished witch daughter of Helios, as she hones her powers and interacts with famous mythological beings before a conflict with one of the most vengeful Olympians forces her to choose between the worlds of the gods and mortals.

Madeline Miller was born in Boston and attended Brown University where she earned her BA and MA in Classics. She lives in Narbeth, PA with her husband and two children. The Song of Achilles was awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction and has been translated into twenty-five languages.

Feb
10
Mon
Dan Murphy: Start By Believing @ Literati
Feb 10 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome ESPN investigative reporter and Peabody Award recipient Dan Murphy to discuss start by Believing: Larry Nassar’s Crimes, the Institutions that Enabled Him, and the Brave Women Who Stopped a Monster.  A book signing will follow the author talk. The event is free and open to the public. 

About the book: The definitive, devastating account of the largest sex abuse scandal in American sports history-with new details and insights into the institutional failures, as well as the bravery that brought it to light.

For decades, osteopathic physician Larry Nassar built a sterling reputation as the go-to doctor for America’s Olympians while treating countless others at his office on Michigan State University’s campus. It was largely within the high-pressure world of competitive gymnastics that Nassar exploited young girls, who were otherwise motivated by fear and intimidation, sexually assaulting hundreds of them under the guise of medical treatment.

In Start by Believing, John Barr and Dan Murphy confront Nassar’s acts, which represent the largest sex abuse scandal to impact the sporting world. Through never-before-released interviews and documents they deconstruct the epic institutional failures and individuals who enabled him. When warnings were raised, self-serving leaders chose to protect their organizations’ reputations over the well-being of young people.

Following the paths traveled by courageous women-featuring a once-shy Christian attorney and a brash, outspoken Olympic medalist-Barr and Murphy detail the stories of those who fought back against the dysfunction within their sport to claim a far-from-inevitable victory. The gymnasts’ uncommon perseverance, along with the help of dedicated advocates brought criminals to justice and helped to fuel the #MeToo revolution.

Start by Believing reveals the win-at-all-costs culture in elite athletics and higher education that enabled a quarter century of heinous crimes.

Dan Murphy is an investigative reporter at ESPN. He was honored with a Peabody Award and the IRE Sports Investigations Award in 2019. His coverage of college athletics and broader issues in the world of sports has appeared on ESPN’s digital, television and print outlets. Based now in Michigan, Murphy is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Feb
11
Tue
Christopher Fort: translator of Abdulhamid Sulaymon o’g’li Cho’lpon: Night and Day @ Literati
Feb 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome Christopher Fort, who holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literature from the University of Michigan in support of his translation of preeminent Uzbek poet and litterateur Abdulhamid Sulaymon o’g’li Cho’lpon, Night and Day. The event is free and open to the public, signing to follow. 

About the book: Night and Day, an unfinished dilogy by Uzbek author Cho’lpon, follows the terrible fate of a young Uzbek girl condemned to marry a sexual glutton. The novel raises questions about the nature of Russian colonialism, resistance to it, and the intentions of the author, whose life was lost to Stalinist terror.

Christopher Fort holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Michigan and an MA in Russian Area Studies from The Ohio State University. He is also the translator of Uzbek author Isajon Sulton’s “The Eternal Wanderer”.

Feb
18
Tue
Poetry at Literati: Adam Falkner: The Willies @ Literati
Feb 18 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome poet and scholar Adam Falkner in support of his debut full-length collection, The Willies. 

About the collection: The Willies, poet and scholar Adam Falkner’s first full-length collection, offers a sharp and vulnerable new portrait of the journey into queerhood in America. In a voice that Dr. Cornel West heralds as “prophetic in bleak times,” Falkner departs from a more familiar coming out narrative to center the stories of several dueling selves. Masquerading white boy. Child of an addict. Closeted varsity athlete. Grief-struck friend. Through snapshots of “Willies” both tragic and humorous, merciless and humane, Falkner offers powerful new ways of understanding the intersectional linkage that binds queer shame to cultural appropriation. The Willies traverses Wu-Tang Clan listening parties to pine forests in the Catskill Mountains to rehab waiting rooms to depict the various costumes we hide within toward navigating the legacies of toxic masculinity, and the many interior tensions synonymous with queer life. At it’s core, The Willies asks us to consider not Who will we become if we give name to that which scares us? but rather Who might we become if we do not?

Dr. Adam Falkner is a poet, educator and arts & culture strategist. He is the author of Adoption (Winner of the 2017 Diode Editions Chapbook Award) and The Willies (Button Poetry, 2020), and his work has appeared in a range of print and media spaces including on programming for HBO, NBC, NPR, BET, in the New York Times, and elsewhere. A former high school English teacher in New York City’s public schools, Adam is the Founder and Executive Director of the pioneering diversity consulting initiative, the Dialogue Arts Project, and Special Projects Director for Urban Word NYC.

Feb
20
Thu
Zell Visiting Writers: Catherine Lacey, Roundtable Q and A @ Angell Hall, Room 3222
Feb 20 @ 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Catherine Lacey’s short story collection, Certain American States (FSG, 2018), portrays Americans tortured by the mundanity of their lives. The Chicago Tribune calls it “exactly what you would expect from Lacey: perfect sentences, penetrating insights, devastating epiphanies.”

Lacey is also the author of The Answers (FSG, 2017), a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2017, and Nobody is Ever Missing (FSG, 2014), a New Yorker Best Book of 2014. She has won a Whiting Award, was a finalist for the NYPL’s Young Lions Fiction Award, was named one of Granta Magazine’s Best Young American Novelists, and has been compared to both Don DeLillo and Margaret Atwood.

Writing about The Answers, The Los Angeles Times said, “Like the work of Clarice Lispector or Rachel Cusk, Lacey’s novels seem to be on the verge of inventing a new genre somewhere between prose poem and fugue state.” Discussing The Answers with Interview Magazine, Lacey notes, “I want things to be both beautiful and readable. I’m not trying to alienate a reader, or make someone think they can’t read it because they like more commercial things. I hope that there’s room for any sort of mind to encounter the book.”

Her work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and German. With Forsyth Harmon, she co-authored a nonfiction book, The Art of the Affair. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Believer, The Paris Review Daily, The Atlantic, and others.

This event is free and open to the public.

The Zell Visiting Writers Series brings outstanding writers to campus each semester. 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

Zell Visiting Writers: Catherine Lacey @ UMMA Auditorium
Feb 20 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Catherine Lacey’s short story collection, Certain American States (FSG, 2018), portrays Americans tortured by the mundanity of their lives. The Chicago Tribune calls it “exactly what you would expect from Lacey: perfect sentences, penetrating insights, devastating epiphanies.”

Lacey is also the author of The Answers (FSG, 2017), a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2017, and Nobody is Ever Missing (FSG, 2014), a New Yorker Best Book of 2014. She has won a Whiting Award, was a finalist for the NYPL’s Young Lions Fiction Award, was named one of Granta Magazine’s Best Young American Novelists, and has been compared to both Don DeLillo and Margaret Atwood.

Writing about The Answers, The Los Angeles Times said, “Like the work of Clarice Lispector or Rachel Cusk, Lacey’s novels seem to be on the verge of inventing a new genre somewhere between prose poem and fugue state.” Discussing The Answers with Interview Magazine, Lacey notes, “I want things to be both beautiful and readable. I’m not trying to alienate a reader, or make someone think they can’t read it because they like more commercial things. I hope that there’s room for any sort of mind to encounter the book.”

Her work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and German. With Forsyth Harmon, she co-authored a nonfiction book, The Art of the Affair. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Believer, The Paris Review Daily, The Atlantic, and others.

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

Feb
21
Fri
William Lopez: Separated – Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid @ Literati
Feb 21 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

We welcome clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, Willaim Lopez, in support of his book Separated.

About the book:

In Separated, William D. Lopez examines the lasting damage done by this daylong act of collaborative immigration enforcement in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Exploring the chaos of enforcement through the lens of community health, Lopez discusses deportation’s rippling negative effects on families, communities, and individuals. Focusing on those left behind, Lopez reveals their efforts to cope with trauma, avoid homelessness, handle worsening health, and keep their families together as they attempt to deal with a deportation machine that is militarized, traumatic, implicitly racist, and profoundly violent.

Lopez uses this single home raid to show what immigration law enforcement looks like from the perspective of the people who actually experience it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with twenty-four individuals whose lives were changed that day in 2013, as well as field notes, records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and his own experience as an activist, Lopez combines rigorous research with narrative storytelling. Putting faces and names to the numbers behind deportation statistics, Separated urges readers to move beyond sound bites and consider the human experience of mixed-status communities in the small everyday towns that dot the interior of the United States.

 

William D. Lopez is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health and the faculty director of public scholarship at the National Center for Institutional Diversity.

 

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