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Writing & Publishing

Emerging Writer's Workshop: Writing Fast and Slow

Thursday November 3, 2016: 7:00pm to 8:45pm
Traverwood Branch: Program Room
Grade 6 - Adult

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Writing & Publishing

Emerging Writer's Workshop: How to Deepen Your Fiction

Thursday October 6, 2016: 7:00pm to 8:45pm
Traverwood Branch: Program Room
Grade 6 - Adult

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Writing & Publishing

Emerging Writer's Workshop: Where Does My Book Fit on the Shelf?

Thursday September 8, 2016: 7:00pm to 8:45pm
Traverwood Branch: Program Room
Grade 6 - Adult

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Writing & Publishing

Emerging Writer's Workshop: Writing Your Novel One Scene at a Time

Thursday August 4, 2016: 7:00pm to 8:45pm
Traverwood Branch: Program Room
Grade 6 - Adult

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Writing & Publishing

Emerging Writer's Workshop: Go Big on the Bookshelf

Thursday July 7, 2016: 7:00pm to 8:45pm
Traverwood Branch: Program Room
Grade 6 - Adult

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Writing & Publishing

Emerging Writer's Workshop: Social Media for Writers

Thursday June 2, 2016: 7:00pm to 8:45pm
Traverwood Branch: Program Room
Grade 6 - Adult

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Lectures & Panel Discussions

Women's History Month Event: Great Girls in Michigan History

Saturday March 19, 2016: 2:00pm to 3:30pm
Malletts Creek Branch: Program Room
Grade 3 - Adult

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Blog Post

Leni Sinclair, 2016 Kresge Eminent Artist

by amy

Image removed.

Congratulations to Leni Sinclair, recently named the 2016 Kresge Eminent Artist!

AADL was privileged to work with Leni on the events and website surrounding the 40th anniversary of the John Sinclair Freedom Rally in 2011. You'll find several of Leni's photographs relating to the Rally and her years in Ann Arbor on AADL's Freeing John Sinclair site. Here you can also listen to an interview with Leni in which she recalls the origins of the Detroit Artists Workshop and their strategic retreat to Ann Arbor following the Detroit Riots, or a joint video interview with John Sinclair on their memories of the 1971 Rally. Read Leni's essay about her life in Ann Arbor's Hill House commune, or check out her work in Detroit Rocks (2012), co-authored with Gary Grimshaw.

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Blog Post

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #571 (and truly a small gem)

by muffy

As I was getting ready my Small Gems blog for this December, my copy of Anna and the Swallow Man * * arrived on my doorstep, and my choice is obvious. "I have never read anything quite like this book", wrote the reviewer for The Guardian, and neither have I.

"When Anna Lania woke on the morning of the sixth of November in the year 1939 - her seventh - there was several things that she did not know", one of them being her father, a Linguistics professor at the Jagiellonian University, would never return, having been rounded up by the Gestapos in Occupied Poland.

Turned out by a fearful family friend, hungry and cold, Anna met a tall and exceedingly thin man who not only shared Anna's command of languages, but he could also speak to the birds, and seemed to have more than a little magic up his sleeves. As the pair wandered the countryside together for years, they dodged bombs, tame soldiers, and in the process, the Swallow Man taught Anna lessons of survival while remaining an enigma until the end.

"Subtly crafted with an intelligent structure and beautiful language, this was a compelling and thought-provoking read." "Artful, original, insightful." Marketed as Teen fiction, Anna will nevertheless appeal to readers of any age.

A readalike for The Book Thief, it too, is "a story about growing up during a time of monumental changes. It reveals life's hardest lesson while celebrating its miraculous possibilities."

Debut novelist Gavriel Savit holds a BFA in Musical Theatre from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he grew up. An an actor and singer, he lives in Brooklyn.

* * = 2 starred reviews

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Blog Post

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #564

by muffy

Gold Fame Citrus * * *, the debut novel by UM Assistant Professor Claire Vaye Watkins is truly worth the wait. (No doubt, my eager anticipation is due in part, to the New York Times book review by Emily St. John Mandel).

Set in the near future, when extreme drought and water shortage laid waste to much of the western states, Los Angeles is not longer the land of gold, fame and citrus. With mass exodus to lusher regions, only a few hardy souls remain. Luz, a 25-year old former model and her boyfriend Ray, whose survival skills are keeping them alive, are holed up in the abandoned mansion of a Hollywood starlet. But when they take in a very strange little girl, they realize that it's time to seek a safer place.

Danger lurks as they head east - sinkholes, patrolling authorities, bandits and the brutal sun. Seeking refuge in a rumored desert commune, Luz comes under the sway of the charismatic leader of an outpost in the desert, threatening the bond of their make-shift family.

"Immensely moving, profoundly disquieting, and mind-blowingly original, Watkins’s novel explores the myths we believe about others and tell about ourselves, the double-edged power of our most cherished relationships, and the shape of hope in a precarious future that may be our own."

Readers might want to check out Claire Vaye Watkins’s multiple-awards winning story collection, Battleborn, among them, the National Book Foundation “5 Under 35”, and the Story Prize.

This debut novel would likely remind readers of Swamplandia! by Karen Russell; Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel; and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

* * * = 3 starred reviews