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Breakfast with the Authors
Saturday, June 25, 2011
We're pleased to announce our annual Breakfast with the Authors. This is an opportunity for people to meet and converse with our visiting authors and to hear them talk about their writing journeys in an informal and friendly atmosphere. Featured authors at the breakfast this year will include poets Roger Bonair-Agard, Kevin Coval, Angel Nafis, Jamaal May, francine j. harris, and Karrie Waarala; fiction writers Adam Mansbach [appearance cancelled], Karen Simpson, Margaret Yang, and Jeff Kass; young adult novelist Lara Zielin, non-fiction writer Lori Tucker-Sullivan; children's book author Cynthia Furlong Reynolds, and science fiction author Jim C. Hines. The event will be em-ceed by noted local storyteller Laura Pershin Raynor.
Cost: $25
Time: 8:30 am
Place: Room 2435, North Quad. 105 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.
Click here to order your tickets. Limited space so please don't delay!
Questions? Call Jeff at (734) 223-7443.
Mistress of Ceremonies
| Laura Pershin Raynor |
Laura Pershin Raynor has performed as a Teller in Residence at the International Storytelling Center in 2005, and she has been featured at the Celebration of Light, Timpanogos and Colonial Williamsburg festivals. Laura brings to life the colorful cast of characters from her unique and loving family. Her Grandma Dinah, who lived to be 105 years old, raised her on the tales of the Old Country, providing Laura with a landscape for her own stories, told in an animated and intimate style. Laura performed at the 2004 National Storytelling Festival. In 2006 she won the Award of Merit for Children's Librarian of the Year in the State of Michigan. Her storytelling home is in the Ann Arbor District Library where she happily tells tales to enthusiastic listeners every week.
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Featured Authors:
| Roger Bonair-Agard |
Roger Bonair-Agard is a native of Trinidad and Tobago and author of two collections of poems: tarnish and masquerade (Cypher Books, 2006) and GULLY (Cypher Books, Peepal Tree Press 2010). A Cave Canem fellow, Roger is a 2-time National Poetry Slam Champion and co-founder and Artistic Director of New York's louderARTS Project. Roger is an MFA candidate in the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine. He teaches at Fordham University in NYC and the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in Chicago. He is poet-in-residence at Young Chicago Authors.
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| Kevin Coval |
Kevin Coval is author of the forthcoming, L-vis Lives! (Haymarket Books, Fall 2011), Everyday People and Slingshots (A Hip-Hop Poetica), named a Book of the Year finalist by the American Library Association. Coval has been called "the voice of the new Chicago" by Rick Kogan of The Chicago Tribune and is one of the most widely read poets in the country. He has performed in seven countries on four continents, toured the country, appeared on four seasons of HBO's Def Poetry Jam, and is Co-Founder of Louder Than a Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival, the largest youth poetry festival in the world, which is the subject of the award-winning documentary by the same name. Coval is the Artistic Director of Young Chicago Authors and teaches at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago.
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| Cynthia Furlong-Reynolds |
An award-winning journalist, Cynthia Furlong Reynolds has written a dozen children's books, a chapter book series for elementary students, several novels, six histories, and a writing textbook. She has won two Michigan Notable Book Awards, a 2008 Mom's Choice Award, the Young Hoosier Book Award 2004-05, four CASE awards, and several Press Association awards. She frequently works with students of all ages on writing projects within schools, and she offers Teachers as Writers workshops for faculty members. A resident of Dexter, Michigan, she is finishing up a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Stonecoast, in Wolf's Neck, Maine.
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| francine j. harris |
francine j. harris has recent work appearing in Rattle, Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review, and is the author of the recent chapbook, between old trees. She is a Cave Canem fellow, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan in 2011. Her first collection, allegiance, is scheduled for publication by Wayne State University Press as part of the Made in Michigan series in the spring of 2012.
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| Jim C. Hines |
Jim C. Hines is an award-winning fantasy author from Holt, Michigan. His seventh novel, The Snow Queen's Shadow, comes out in July of this year, wrapping up a series once described as the Brothers Grimm crossed with Charlie's Angels. He's also published more than forty short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and maintains a popular blog at www.jimchines.com. Jim's books have been translated into French, Czech, Polish, Russian, and German. (His goblin books were especially big in Germany.) He lives with his wife and two children, as well as half an ark's worth of pets. Jim is currently working on a new fantasy series to be set in Michigan.
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| Jeff Kass |
Jeff Kass teaches Creative Writing at Pioneer High School and Eastern Michigan University and is the Literary Arts Director at The Neutral Zone. He has won numerous poetry slam competitions and has had poems, stories and essays published in dozens of newspapers, magazines, journals and anthologies. His one-man performance poetica Wrestle the Great Fear debuted in April, 2009, his poetry chapbook Invisible Staircase was published by Winged City Press in January, 2010, and his short story collection Knuckleheads was published by Dzanc Books in April, 2011. From the front of the Room, a collection of essays about teaching is forthcoming from The Teacher's Voice in May, 2011, and a how-to-teach Creative Writing book is on its way from Red Beard Press and scheduled for release in June, 2011.
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| Adam Mansbach |
Adam Mansbach's novels include The End of the Jews, winner of the California Book Award, and the bestselling Angry Black White Boy, which is taught at more than 100 schools. His new book, Go the Fuck to Sleep, is a national bestseller, and is forthcoming as a feature film from Fox 2000. A regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The Believer, he is the 2011 New Voices Professor of Fiction at Rutgers University.
[Please note that Adam Mansbach's appearance unfortunately has been cancelled.]
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| Jamaal May |
Jamaal May is a Cave Canem Fellow, Callaloo Fellow and student in Warren Wilson's MFA for writers. He is the author of a poetry chapbook (The God Engine, Pudding House Press, 2009) and editor of the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Series. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, Indiana Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Blackbird and Verse Daily among other magazines and anthologies. May has received two scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, an International Publication Prize from Atlanta Review, and he was a finalist for the 2010 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. Recently, he was named the 2011-2012 Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University.
May is a two-time Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam Champion, two-time Detroit Slam Champion, five time team member, and two-time Individual World Poetry Slam finalist. He has coached three Brave New Voices youth slam teams and teaches poetry classes through the Inside Out Literary Arts Project.
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| Angel Nafis |
Angel Nafis is an Ann Arbor, Michigan native where she resided as the VOLUME Youth Poetry Project's Poet-in-Residence at the Neutral Zone two years. She represented Ann Arbor in the Brave New Voices festival two years in a row as a member of the Ann Arbor Youth Slam Team and performed on the finals stages at the San Francisco Opera House and the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Her work has appeared in FOUND Magazine's Requiem for a Paper Bag (2006); Unsquared, Ann Arbor Writers Unleash their Edgiest Poems and Stories; Decibels: An anthology of work by the VOLUME Youth Poetry Project, GirlSpeak Webzine, and The Bear River Writing Review. This spring she represented the legendary Louderarts Poetry Project from New York City at the Women of the World Poetry Slam. Her own chapbook of poetry is scheduled to be released in 2011. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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| Karen Simpson |
Karen Simpson resides in Ann Arbor Michigan and is the author of Act of Grace. She received her bachelor's degree in Animal Husbandry from Michigan State University and a M.S. in Historic Preservation from Eastern Michigan University. A historic preservationist trained in heritage interpretation and administration, she has designed exhibits for museums and other historical groups that deal with issues of cultural diversity and racial reconciliation. The subjects and themes from her fiction are often taken from the stories she discovered while doing historical research. Simpson has participated in many literary conferences including the Hurston Wright and Callaloo Creative Writing Workshops. In 2009 she was awarded the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Older Writers Grant. Act of Grace is her first novel..
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| Lori Tucker-Sullivan |
Lori Tucker-Sullivan received her BA in Communication from the University of Michigan. She has worked as a freelance writer, and has contributed works to a variety of trade publications and literary journals. She is currently completing her MFA in Creative Nonfiction writing at the Spalding University Low Residence program in Louisville, KY. She lives with her two children in Dexter.
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| Karrie Waarala |
Karrie Waarala is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing from University of Southern Maine. Her work has appeared in PANK, Arsenic Lobster, Foundling Review, Stymie, two national poetry slam anthologies, and on a coffee shop floor in Arizona. Karrie recently debuted her one-woman show, LONG GONE: A Poetry Sideshow, which is based on her forthcoming collection of circus persona poems. She really wishes she could tame tigers and swallow swords.
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| Margaret Yang |
Margaret Yang is a past winner of the Ann Arbor Writer's Festival Short Story contest. A former restaurant critic, she now spends her days as a full-time parent and writer. She has published numerous short stories and one novel. More about Margaret and links to her published work can be found at www.yangandcampion.com.
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| Lara Zielin |
Lara Zielin is the author of the young adult novels DONUT DAYS and THE IMPLOSION OF AGGIE WINCHESTER. By day she edits LSA Magazine, an alumni publication at the University of Michigan. By night, she writes, eats cheese, and bedazzles stuff that she probably shouldn't. Learn more at www.larawrites.com or www.help4writers.com.
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