Dear Readers,
We have a few late events and wanted to bring them to your attention.
Tuesday October 24 at 7:00 PM we will host our annual online meeting and celebration of the artist Ray Johnson. This year Julie Thompson has invited two young scholars from Black Mountain Collage who have written new papers on Ray. If you’re interested in attending send us your name and email and we’ll add you to the list. An email with a Zoom link will be sent on the day of the meeting. For more information see: Ray Johnson (Un)birthday.
Wednesday, October 24 at 7:00 PM our reading group will meet to discuss the classic gothic horror novel Carmilla by Sheridan LaFanu. For more information read the October reading selection.
Thursday, October 26 at 6:00 PM MOCAD will be hosting a panel discussion Revisiting Vision in a Cornfield. Organized and moderated by curator Abel González Fernández, the panel will include the curators of the historic exhibition: Cary Loren, artist, editor, and cultural instigator; Rebecca Mazzei, former MOCAD Deputy Director, publisher, and curator; and M. Saffell Gardner, painter, sculptor, and co-founder of the art collective Ogun. For more information see Revisiting Vision in a Cornfield. For a background to the installation and preparation for the panel talk see our repost: The Art of Aaron Ibn Pori Pitts & the Vision in a Cornfield
Sunday, October 29 at 2:00 PM romance and historical fiction author Beverly Jenkins will speak, meet fans, and sign books. She has two new releases this year including A Christmas to Remember out soon and we will have a good selection of her backlist on hand. For more information see: Beverly Jenkins at Book Beat.
Wednesday, November 8 from 6:00 -7:00 PM, join us at the Southfield Public Library for Into the Writer’s Mind: A Young Adult Author Panel featuring Rebecca Mix, Andrea Hannah, Aimée Carter, and Meriam Metoui.
Tom Bowden, author of a monthly column of book reviews i arrogantly recommend…, is now in Shanghai, China, teaching English and will return in a few months. He now shares photos and notes from a side adventure made to Fengdo: Ghost City.
In the spirit of Halloween, here is a 2008 repost on the fifteenth anniversary of her death: VAMPIRA 1921-2008, ALWAYS UNDEAD.
We enjoyed taking part in the 9th annual Detroit Art Book Fair held at Trinosophes on Oct. 14-15. At the fair, we met a few incredible bookmakers and small publishers making fantastic creations. Keep an eye on the Book Beat gallery where we’ll be displaying more unique books and art soon.
Trinosophes has always been one of our favorite community spaces and has now become a non-profit. Their online journal Three Fold Press is a gem for readers and haven for local writers. The new issue contains an essay on blaxploitation films and an interview with William Crain, director of Blackula, “a complex film, far more interesting than ‘blaxploitation’ would suggest.”
This past week, Detroit was host to the Heartland Fall Forum, a regional meeting of publishers and booksellers. It’s always a pleasure meeting new and old colleagues and getting an advance peek at new titles. One of the seminars we attended was on zines which we hope to display and stock more of in the near future. As new titles begin arriving we’ll try to share those deserving more attention, especially from university presses and small publishers who are the most unrepresented.
Good reading and as Sir Graves used to say, Happy Hauntings!
~Cary, Colleen and the Book Beat staff