This legendary punk rocker and award-winning writer reads from M Train, her new memoir told through the prism of the cafés and haunts she’s worked in around the world, from Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul in Mexico to a meeting of an Arctic explorers society in Berlin to her favorite Greenwich Village café. Illustrated with her black-and-white polaroids, the memoir meditates on travel, detective shows, literature, and coffee.
7 p.m., Michigan Theater. Tickets $24.50 & $35 in advance at ticketmaster.com; ticket purchase includes a copy of the book.
Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright who lives in Chicago. A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Great Lakes Book Award, and a finalist for the Story Prize, he is the author of six novels, Office Girl, The Great Perhaps, The Boy Detective Fails, Hairstyles of the Damned, How the Hula Girl Sings, and Tender as Hellfire. His short story collections are Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir and Demons in the Spring. His short fiction has been published in the likes of McSweeney’s, One Story, Swink, LIT, TriQuarterly, Other Voices, Gulf Coast, and broadcast on NPR. He was a contributing editor to Punk Planet, the seminal underground arts and politics magazine. His non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times and Chicago Magazine.
Nina Revoyr was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a white American father, and grew up in Tokyo, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles. She is the author of four novels. Her first book, The Necessary Hunger, was described by Time magazine as “the kind of irresistible read you start on the subway at 6 p.m. on the way home from work and keep plowing through until you’ve turned the last page at 3 a.m. in bed.” Southland, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and “Best Book of 2003,” a Book Sense 76 pick, an Edgar Award finalist, and the winner of the Ferro Grumley Award and the Lambda Literary Award. The Age of Dreaming, was a finalist for the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Wingshooters was published in 2011. It was a Booklist Editors Choice for 2011 and an O: Oprah Magazine’s “Book to Watch For,” and has won an Indie Booksellers Choice Award and the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award. Her fifth novel, Lost Canyon was published in August, 2015. Nina is also co-editor of the college textbook Literature for Life: A Thematic Introduction to Reading and Writing. Nina is executive vice president and chief operating officer of a large nonprofit organization serving children affected by violence and poverty in Central and South Los Angeles. She has also been an Associate Faculty member at Antioch University, and a Visiting Professor at Cornell University, Occidental College, and Pitzer College. Nina lives in Northeast Los Angeles with her spouse and their dogs.
Benjamin Paloff will read from his second collection And His Orchestran.
Paloff grew up in Atlantic City and is a poetry editor at Boston Review. His poems have appeared in The New Republic, A Public Space, The Paris Review, and elsewhere, and he writes frequently for such publications as The Nation and the Times Literary Supplement. The recipient of grants and fellowships from the US Fulbright Program and the National Endowment for the Arts, he is also the translator of several works from Central and Eastern European literatures. He teaches at the University of Michigan.
Acclaimed local poet Carson and Oscar-winning actress Binoche discuss the current production of Antigone (see Oct. 14 listing) that stars Binoche and was translated by Carson. The program begins with a staged reading of Antigonick, Carson’s alternate translation of Antigone.
All invited to read and discuss their poetry or short stories. Bring about 6 copies of your work to share. Hosted by local poets and former college English teachers Joe Kelty and Ed Morin.
Eileen Pollack will read from her latest, The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still A Boys’ Club.
The Only Woman in the Room shows us the struggles women in the sciences have been hesitant to admit, and provides hope for changing attitudes and behaviors in ways that could bring far more women into fields in which even today they remain seriously underrepresented.
Eileen Pollack is a member of the MFA faculty of the Department of English at the University of Michigan. She is the author of a collection of short fiction, The Rabbi in the Attic, and a novel, Paradise, New York.
Tasha Alexander talks about her latest Lady Emily mystery, The Adventuress.
Local adult fiction writer Lara Zielin and short story writer Alex Kourvo host an open house for writers to connect with each other and/or work on their projects.
Jon Falk is the author of Forty Years in the Big House. He is in his 40th season as the head equipment manager for the Michigan football program. He is responsible for the overall budgeting of the athletic department’s equipment needs and oversees a staff of five fulltime assistants and student workers.
In 1994, Falk was honored for his dedication to the department, becoming an “Honorary ‘M’ Man” and was recognized in 2000 by the U-M Club of Detroit with the naming of the annual Hatch-Falk Scholarship for a Student Football Manager.
One of the most respected equipment managers in the nation, Falk was executive director of the Athletic Equipment Managers Association (AEMA) for 24 years and was one of the organization’s founding members. He won the association’s 2001 Glen Sharp National Equipment Manager of the Year award and received the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.
A native of Oxford, Ohio, Falk graduated from Talawanda High School (1967) — where he was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2012 — and earned his degree in physical education from Miami University (1971). He worked as a student manager at Miami in football and baseball as an undergraduate. Upon graduation, Falk accepted an assistant equipment manager position at Miami before accepting the head job with Bo Schembechler at Michigan in 1974.
Falk and his wife, the former Cheri Boychuck of Ann Arbor, reside in Pinckney with their daughter Katie. They also have two adult children, Joe and Nicki Winkle, and two grandchildren, Joey and Abby.
Literati is the bookseller for this installment of “Exploring the Mind: Community Talks by University of Michigan Psychology Faculty.” Dr. Richard E. Nesbitt, the author of Intelligence and How to Get It and Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking will take on the question, “Can college make you smarter? (Or just teach you stuff?)”
Scientific and philosophical concepts can change the way we solve problems by helping us to think more effectively about our behavior and our world. Surprisingly, despite their utility, many of these tools remain unknown to most of us. In Mindware, the world-renowned psychologist Richard E. Nisbett presents these ideas in clear and accessible detail. Nisbett has made a distinguished career of studying and teaching such powerful problem-solving concepts as the law of large numbers, statistical regression, cost-benefit analysis, sunk costs and opportunity costs, and causation and correlation, probing the best methods for teaching others how to use them effectively in their daily lives. In this groundbreaking book, Nisbett shows us how to frame common problems in such a way that these scientific and statistical principles can be applied to them. The result is an enlightening and practical guide to the most essential tools of reasoning ever developed-tools that can easily be used to make better professional, business, and personal decisions.
“The most influential thinker, in my life, has been the psychologist Richard Nisbett. He basically gave me my view of the world.” – Malcolm Gladwell, New York Times Book Review
