Welcome to the magical world of Kelly Link. Fantastically full of fantasy, light horror, and magical realism, Link writes short stories about haunted convenience stores, apocalyptic poker parties, zombies, marriage, superheroes, and witches in a way that is supremely unique, wacky, and wonderful. She has an original voice that you can hear LIVE this Friday at the Literati Bookstore!
What: Kelly Link Reading
Where: Literati Bookstore
When: Friday, February 20 at 7 pm
How Much?: Free!
P.S. If you have never read her stories I highly recommend them, and you can read one of the stories from her new collection, “Get in Trouble,” right over here!
As part of the Michigan Theater’s Penny Stamps Speaker series, humanitarian and civil rights activist Jose Miguel Sokoloff will be coming to speak.
Where: Michigan Theater
When: Thursday, February 19 @ 5:10 PM
FREE TO THE PUBLIC
As the Michigan Theater states in their description, Sokoloff has led a wide campaign against the FARC guerrillas to demobilize in Colombia and end the war.
Even better, you can view a TED Talk, titled “How Christmas lights helped guerrillas put down their guns” to get a better idea of what you can look forward. In the process of advocating peace, he has won a slurry of awards and never stops working.
Additional Appearance at MOCAD: Friday, February 20th at 7 PM.
Every year, a book is selected for the “Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads” program as a chance to promote literacy and civic dialogue in the community. This year, the council has chosen Ruth Ozeki’s emotionally touching novel, “A Tale for the Time Being.” The story intertwines the lives of Nao, a suicidal Japanese teenager, and a novelist in Canada who finds Nao’s diary washed up on shore.
This Wednesday, the novelist, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest herself will be speaking at Rackham Auditorium! Even if you haven’t read the novel, please still attend if you have any interest in Japanese culture or writing in general! As a writer myself, I find it always very comforting to hear successful authors tell me about their bumps in their road along the way.
What: Ruth Ozeki Reading and Book Signing
When: Wednesday, Feb 11 at 7-9 pm
Where: Rackham Auditorium
How Much?: Free!
Come celebrate the 2015 Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Read and be a part of your literary community!
What: Handel’s Messiah
Who: Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra and the UMS Choral Union
Where: Hill Auditorium
When: Saturday, Dec. 16th at 8pm
and Sunday, Dec. 17th at 2pm
It has been said that ‘the holiday season in Ann Arbor is never officially underway until Handel’s Messiah is performed at Hill Auditorium.’ While the local radio stations may disagree, the truth is that Handel’s Messiah is consistently one of the best performances you will see at Hill. It has become a familial tradition for many people to attend every year, and for good reason. Handel’s Messiah is a grandiose piece in both in terms of quality and the talent required to put on a performance of it. The talent that will be performing this weekend consists of the UMS Choral Union in conjunction with the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra.
Françoise Mouly, current art director for the New Yorker, shares the story of how she became who she was today. In an effort to make this a divergence from the wikipedia page, I will try my best to add as much of her charm to this as possible.
Mouly began her presentation at the beginning — with baby pictures. First was a picture of herself in Catholic school next to a picture of her husband, Art Spiegelman, as a kid. Mouly was born in Paris and growing up decided to pursue a degree in architecture. But midway through her schooling she realized that a future in architecture did not appeal to her. Alumni would come to the school and talk about their experiences and how much they remembered fondly the days of school better than their days at work. She was not fond of this disconnect between the idealized structure put forth by the architect, who does not always have a direct hand in the realization of the work, and therefore who subject to change it was.
So for a change of pace, Françoise moved from Paris to New York. Making the move does not sound like it would be an easy task – with job, housing, etc to consider – but when Françoise talked about it, she made it sound like it was a fond memory in her past, whether or not it was a difficult one. It turned out to be a great turning point in her life, as she expected. She came in contact with many different artists and filmmakers, and most specifically a comic artist named Art Speigelman. Françoise would spend her time reading Art’s comics in MAD magazine to help learn English. She invested a lot of time in studying the way comics were made and even took classes in print-making and bought her own press for home. Along with developing a strong bond with Art, she also found a strong bond to the comics he made. She loved the means of reproduction involved in executing the final product that is the comic. She fond greater control in the process in that it bridged the gap between what you design and what gets built. It offered a lot more control over production than she felt architecture ever did.
One of her first jobs was working as a colorist for Marvel magazine, and also started her own business publishing maps and guides of SOHO and Tribeca. At the time she was living with Art and his parents were very keen on the two of them getting married. So, in order to appease their wishes, she and Art had a “taudry wedding,” according to Françoise, which was really only done to make good with the in-laws. Art and her decided to have another marriage ceremony in 1988, and that one was the real deal, she said.
In addition to meeting Art, she also started to take her printing press to another level. She and Art founded RAW comics, an underground comic magazine. Her and Art’s goal was to provide a striking comic magazine that would hopefully garner more attention for adults and aid in the reviving of the adult comic readership, which at the time was suffering. The magazine feature friends and contributors from America and Europe mostly, but from all over the world really. Because she wanted to put a handmade element in every piece, so in one issue she and Art placed hand designed gum wrappers from the gum factory Art worked at into each issue. In another issue, she inserted a small flexi disc into the back cover of a copy of one of Reagan’s speeches. This emphasis on doing things by hand makes it more thoughtful, Françoise believed.
The opportunity to work for the New Yorker came when Art was offered to do one of the covers himself. A cover he suggested was considered too bold for the running style of the New Yorker, which had grown in recent years to feature landscapes and non-abrasive images. The current editor reached out to Françoise, seeing the work she did with her comic magazine, and asked for her to assist in the cover design process. Françoise knew what she wanted from comics – powerful images that made it hard to remember what you thought before having seen the images. This is what the current New Yorker was lacking. So she went through older covers from the 1940s and 50s issues of the New Yorker and used those as example for what a cover for the magazine should look like. There was more story telling in those covers, and more of a human attitude in them, that was lacking in the current issues.
In 1993, Mouly became art director of the New Yorker and also publisher of her new project, Toon Books, which specialized in hard cover comic books for young readers. She lives a dream, and the way she talks about it is as if it were what happens to any other person in a lifetime. Her humility and charm make her an exceptional story-teller and person. In her final words, Françoise said the New Yorker magazine will not lose itself in the modern age because its’ images have no time. People take the images out of context of any time period and make them something accessible to many generations and future generations to come.
For someone who never meant to be an artist or a writer, Chris van Allsburg has fallen into one giant success story of a career. With over 20 children’s books, including Caldecott Medal Winners ‘Jumanji’ and ‘The Polar Express’, Chris has undoubtedly one of the most magical voices in the literature world.
Sitting in the newly debuted second floor of the Literati Bookstore, I waited, buzzing with excitement, along with other fans, both young and old. A clean-cut man, with just a smattering of white hair trimmed carefully around his head and square black glasses, appeared behind the podium. He looked just like someone you would want writing your child’s stories.
“Well, let’s begin,” he said. Somehow, his almost solemn, dry humor could still light up the room, like the headlights of the Polar Express itself. Chris, a U-M graduate, told us his story about how in the good ole days, if you wanted to go to a university, you simply had an interview, brought in your high school transcript, and by the end of the talk, you knew if you were in or not. The college-age kids, including myself, let out a collective envious groan. Chris went into his U-M interview with his choice of school unmarked. With only his fingerprinting, model-building skills from 12 years ago to keep him afloat at college, he pressed on and said that he wanted to pursue Art and Design.
What began as a career in Sculpting (which he still does privately today), Chris fell into the publishing world when his wife showed his personal sketches to a children’s publishing house. They loved his work, and wanted him to illustrate their story ideas. But Chris refused to illustrate “stories about Duck’s first day of school.” He prefers to draw his own original drawings.
He went on to explain his style of “cognitive dissonance,” and showed us slides of his early drawings. A chair floating in the middle of an ocean.
Photo Courtesy of hermionish.com
How did the chair get there? Did it fall off a ship? Is it close to shore? How long has it been there? Is it missing a leg? “Cognitive dissonance” can be defined as the uncomfortable tension that occurs when two conflicting images are unexpectedly juxtaposed. Chris is drawn to this psychological phenomenon, which explains why such strange things happen in his unconventional stories. Rhinos stampede through a perfectly plain house? Cognitive dissonance. A locomotive train hisses through a sleepy suburb street to transport a boy to the North Pole? Cognitive dissonance.
Chris van Allsburg is never afraid of the new. He’s expanded his oeuvre to include a children’s non-fiction biography, called “Queen of the Falls,” about Annie Edson Taylor, the 62-year-old woman who was the first person to survive riding down Niagara Falls in a barrel. He has also written a book called “Bad Day at Riverbend” which questions the feelings of coloring book characters. Do they disdain the fact that one day, their entire blank world will be covered with a waxy colorful goo? It’s questions like these that give children the opportunity to grow and think about the world in a different way.
Photo Courtesy of gatheringbooks.org.
The actual purpose of van Allsburg’s reading was to promote his newest book, “The Misadventures of Sweetie Pie,” which follows the almost fatal escape of a hamster back to his place in the wilderness. I found the book a little disappointing in comparison to his older tales. Perhaps it was the absence of cognitive dissonance that did it. In some ways, writing about a hamster who feels lonely in his cage at school seemed just like the “duck’s first day of school” plotline line that Chris had rejected in the past. But I suppose it was worth a try.
Nevertheless, I think that Chris van Allsburg is an inspiration to all aspiring artists and storytellers alike. In an age when every day, we students are forced to think about our future and our career, van Allsburg is proof that ‘doing what you love and what you’re good at’ will get you where you need to be. When in doubt, just listen for the jingle of a sleigh bell…and keep faith.
