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Author Event | Vanishing Ann Arbor
What restaurant did Car & Driver magazine rank as one of the best places for ribs?
When did we finally get a professional fire department?
What was special about the downtown Denny's franchise?
Which longtime business got a Centennial Award even though it wasn't quite 100 years old?
And who exactly was the man whose name is still inscribed at Fourth Avenue and Ann Streets?!
Join Vanishing Ann Arbor authors Patti Smith and Britain Woodman as they take you on a tour of our city’s past, from Bach & Abel’s dry goods store to Aunt Agatha’s bookstore. Learn about the history of public schools in Ann Arbor beginning with the log cabin built at the corner of Main and Ann Streets, through the ward schools, and to Ann Arbor High. Find out how folks passed time in the 1880s, from ice skating to bowling to socials. Trace the history of bookstores from Wahr’s and Sheehan’s to Common Language and the Wooden Spoon. Walk the streets with school principal Mary Clark, philanthropist Elizabeth Dean, and publisher Alvin Chase.
Come along to reminisce about the places you remember—Maude’s, Fiegel’s, Drake’s—and learn about the places you don’t.
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Nerd Nite #65 - 10 Things you Need to Know about Language
You speak a language, so you know everything about how language works, right? Wrong! In this talk, Emily covers the Top 10 things most people don’t know about language. In doing so, she dispels several common myths and reveals some fascinating facts about the systems we use every day to communicate with each other. If you’ve ever wondered how many languages there are in the world, why language death is on the rise, where grammar comes from, or how it is that kids learn language so effortlessly – this talk is for you! Or, if you simply find yourself in need of a few high-quality conversation starters for your upcoming work party, this talk will prepare you to explain what exactly the Bilingual Advantage is, why British accents sound smart, how whistled languages work, whether Spanglish is a language, which high-profile court case was a glaring example of linguistic discrimination, and why English spelling is such a mess.
About Emily Rae Sabo:
By day, I’m a researcher and PhD student of Linguistics at The University of Michigan. By night, I’m a local standup comedian at dive bars near you. In my work as a linguist, I compare how monolingual and bilingual listeners respond to various types of lexical ambiguity and speech errors in order to investigate the cognitive mechanisms that underlie language processing as well as the social priming that modulates how people perceive Spanish-accented English in the U.S. today.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers for August 2019: Martin talks to David Maraniss about A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father.
In a riveting book with powerful resonance today, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss captures the pervasive fear and paranoia that gripped America during the Red Scare of the 1950s through the chilling yet affirming story of his family’s ordeal, from blacklisting to vindication.
Elliott Maraniss, David’s father, a WWII veteran who had commanded an all-black company in the Pacific, was spied on by the FBI, named as a communist by an informant, called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, fired from his newspaper job, and blacklisted for five years. Yet he never lost faith in America and emerged on the other side with his family and optimism intact.
In a sweeping drama that moves from the Depression and Spanish Civil War to the HUAC hearings and end of the McCarthy era, Maraniss weaves his father’s story through the lives of his inquisitors and defenders as they struggle with the vital twentieth-century issues of race, fascism, communism, and first amendment freedoms. A Good American Family powerfully evokes the political dysfunctions of the 1950s while underscoring what it really means to be an American. It is an unsparing yet moving tribute from a brilliant writer to his father and the family he protected in dangerous times.
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A2CAF 2019 - Author Spotlight: Lucy Knisley
A2CAF Special Guest Lucy Knisley (Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos) discusses her career in comics with Gina Gagliano (Random House Graphic).
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Author Event | Elizabeth George
Best-selling mystery author Elizabeth George discusses her newest book in the Lynley series, The Punishment She Deserves. Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers and Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley are forced to confront the past as they try to solve a crime that threatens to tear apart the very fabric of a quiet, historic medieval town in England. George's novel is a page-turner and a deeply complex story about the lies we tell, the lies we believe, and the redemption we need.
Elizabeth George is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty psychological suspense novels, four young adult novels, one book of nonfiction, and two short-story collections. Her work has been honored with the Anthony and Agatha awards, two Edgar nominations, and both France’s and Germany’s first prize for crime fiction, as well as several other prestigious prizes.
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Author Event | Llama Destroys the World
Meet Llama, the next great picture-book megastar, who has most definitely driven a bus and who loves tacos way more than you.
He also loves cake, and that’s where our story begins.
On Monday, Llama discovers a pile of cake, which he promptly eats.
On Tuesday, Llama squeezes into his dancing pants, which he promptly rips.
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Shockwaves from Stonewall: Gay Liberation in Michigan
In the first few years following the Stonewall Uprising in New York, Michigan experienced a surge in gay liberation activism, what today might fall under the umbrella of the LGBT movement. Historian Tim Retzloff explores the multiple queer organizations that sprang up in Metro Detroit and elsewhere in the early 1970s and key events from that time that sent political and social shockwaves through the state still felt today.
Tim Retzloff teaches history and LGBTQ studies at Michigan State University. He earned a B.A. in history from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. in history in from Yale University. His scholarship has appeared in the anthology Creating a Place for Ourselves, the journal GLQ, and the collection Making Suburbia. He is finishing his first book, Metro Gay, about gay and lesbian life and politics in Metro Detroit from 1945 to 1985.
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A2CAF 2019 - Kids' Comics Awards
Which comic in 2018 had the most epic adventure? Which comic had the best friends? Kids voted in these and other categories, including their favorite characters and graphic novels! Help us celebrate the seventh annual Kids’ Comics Awards! With puppets, cartoonists, and lots of laughs!
This event was part of A2CAF 2019, an annual all-ages Comic Arts Festival!
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A2CAF 2019 - Author Discussion: Raina Telgemeier and Jerry Craft
Join Jerry Craft and Raina Telgemeier for a discussion on Jerry's graphic novel, New Kid. Together they'll explore Jerry's journey as a young artist to a published graphic novelist, and how young people might find their own path into comics.
This event was part of A2CAF, an annual all-ages Comic Arts Festival!
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Author Event | Graphic Novelist Box Brown
In Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America, acclaimed New York Times best-selling graphic novelist Box Brown delves deep into the troubling history of marijuana and offers a rich, entertaining, and thoroughly researched graphic essay on the legacy of cannabis legislation in America. Join us for an audio and visual presentation of this highly-buzzed about book.
Box Brown is an Ignatz Award-winning cartoonist, illustrator, and comic publisher from Philadelphia. His books include the New York Times best-selling Andre the Giant: Life and Legend and Tetris. Box Brown's independent comics publishing house, Retrofit Comics, was launched in 2011.