Literary Detroit: Monday is for (Book) Lovers

January 04, 2013

Literary Detroit: Monday is for (Book) Lovers

Dear Detroiters and neighbors,

Amazing things are happening. Bookish enthusiasts are meeting because we want to see Detroit become a more vibrant literary city: excellent readings, interviews, discussions, and workshops, featuring extraordinary national and international authors.

We're plotting who we want to bring to the city in 2013, and how, and where, and why our events won't be standard-issue, but uniquely and wonderfully "Detroit."

As one of us put it, we want authors to have such a memorable experience, they tell their publisher, publicist, and writer friends about it. We want them to share stories about their time here when they are interviewed, say, on a radio show in Los Angeles. We want them to come here and be rock stars.

Authors haven't been coming to Detroit in part because they, and publishers, don't know who could host them here. We're changing that. And we want you with us.

Join me and others who are putting together a lit team to bring book events to Detroit.

Meet us Monday, January 7, 6:30-8pm at Traffic Jam & Snug.

An RSVP to annaleighclark - at - gmail - dot - com is appreciated.

All are welcome. Coming for all or part of the meeting doesn't commit you to anything; we're just looking for the brilliance of ideas that we can boil into first steps toward a more vibrant literary culture in the city.

Your friend,

Anna

Posted at 04:07 PM in Creative Nonviolence, Culture, Detroit Stories, Isak, Literary Life, Media, Poetry | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c627153ef017ee6f336d1970d

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Literary Detroit: Monday is for (Book) Lovers:

Comments

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

Posted by: |

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Your comment could not be posted. Error type:

Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Post a comment

Isak

Isak is a space to celebrate tales and truth in the curious, joyful way embodied by the writer for which it is named. The name "Isak," after all, means "laughter," as she was fond of pointing out.

By tales, I mean fiction (especially short fiction), as well as other literary and artistic narratives. By truth, I mean the world in which we live. I especially have my eye on creative social justice.

Isak: The Extended Version

Support Isak

For more than seven years, I've edited Isak, supporting it with my time and treasure. This site has always been ad-free. I do this because I believe in this as a project and because it is a joy. If you find this website valuable, and are moved to contribute a donation, I will be deeply grateful.

Featured Book Reviews

Rebecca Solnit: Motion Studies: Time, Space and Eadweard Muybridge
I would be interested in this book if it focused solely on the “annihilation of time and space” that hooked public and professional attention in the late-nineteenth century, but certainly Muybridge’s life and work is a compelling way to focus this story. And Solnit seems primed as the perfect guide. But a wealth of intriguing material is, unfortunately, diluted into a pile of anecdotes linked more by association than anything more meaningful. Read the review here.
Francine Prose: Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife
I felt relieved by Prose's stance that takes the diary seriously as a work of art. Her case for Frank as both an ambitious and talented writer, rather than an incidental one, is convincing. She also pays particular attention to how the Frank line about "people being really good at heart" has been mutated and decontextualized beyond belief. But. Something is missing. Read the review here.
William Styron: Lie Down in Darkness
What a dark and strange novel this is. I came away impressed with Styron's guts, both as a technician and an imagination. Indeed I was surprised by how far Styron was willing to go with the macabre; the overtures of incest complicated the rendering of love that threads through the novel. At times, though, I itched at the book's pretension. Read my review here.
Amelie Nothomb: Hygiene and Assassin
An unlikeable, combative Nobel laureate finds out that he will die soon from a rare form of cancer, and he grants five journalists very rare interviews. See my video book review here
Rob Vollmar: Bluesman Complete
There's a lot going for Bluesman, including woodcut-style art that often bends out of the box. The thick, exaggerated lines and heavy shadows hit just the right note for a story about roots musicians. And there's a fearlessness in how the book faces the Gothic mythos and religiosity that informs so much of the blues. Ultimately, though, it felt thin. What was probably intended as archetypes felt like caricature.
Read my review here.
Melissa V. Harris-Perry: Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America
Harris-Perry's unconventional book wobbles as it straddles academic rigor and mainstream accessibility, intimacy and analysis, but its ideas have worth, interest, and urgency. Read the review here.
Toni Morrison: Sula
Sinking into Toni Morrison's fiction is like sinking into loamy earth. She writes novels that are ground heels-down into a planet of soil and water and stone. Read my review here.
Carla Speed McNeil: Finder Library Volume 1
The first thing to know about Finder is that it is really weird. This a book full of beginnings, a provocative pile-up of crushing characters. Read my review here.
Vladimir Nabokov: Pale Fire
Nobody does a madman like Vladimir Nabokov. He revels in the voices of those who inhabit a space where reality blurs: voices that are by turns disconcerting, obnoxious, hilarious, provocative, and altogether intoxicating. Read my review here.
Best European Fiction 2012
The hybridic nature of this anthology gives it a rare dynamism. But the fiction feels more mixed than in previous editions, with more middling stories and few that I was head over heels for. More.