Come celebrate Book Beat’s 42nd birthday Sunday, September 29 from 12-5 p.m.
We will be having a storewide sale (some exclusions apply) and ice cream too! Our neighbors at Street Corner Music will be spinning records for the event!
In addition, come meet local authors and artists throughout the afternoon. Below you will find the schedule of appearances.
Felicia George 1-2 p.m.
Felicia B. George is a native Detroiter who loves Detroit history and culture. She earned her doctorate in anthropology from Wayne State University, where she is now an adjunct professor.
Her new book, When Detroit Played the Numbers: Gambling’s History and Cultural Impact on the Motor City, was released earlier this year. It’s a testament to the tenacious spirit embodied in Detroit culture and history, this account reveals how numbers gambling, initially an illegal enterprise, became a community resource and institution of solidarity for Black communities through times of racial disenfranchisement and labor instability.
Listen to an interview with Felicia George from earlier this year on WDET’s Created Equal.
Donald Levin is an award-winning fiction writer and poet. He is the author of the Michigan-based historical novels Savage City, The Arsenal of Deceit, and the third book in his urban Detroit crime series The Ghosts of Detroit. In addition, Levin has writen seven Martin Preuss mysteries set in and around metropolitan Detroit, as well as short fiction and poems that have appeared in numerous print and e-journals. Now writing full-time, he is retired dean of the faculty and Professor of English at the former Marygrove College in Detroit. He lives in Ferndale, Michigan, the setting for the Martin Preuss novels.
Photo © Aundre Larrow
Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. 2-4 p.m.
Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. (born 1948) was working a corporate job for AT&T when, at the age of 40, he discovered the art of letterpress printing on a tour of Colonial Williamsburg. Kennedy then devoted himself to the craft, earning an MFA at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and teaching at Indiana University. He now operates Kennedy Prints!, a communal letterpress center in Detroit. Borrowing words from social justice heroes Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and others, Kennedy layers bold statements on race, capitalism, history and politics in exuberant, colorful and one-of-a-kind posters. Kennedy has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine and the Economist, and his work has been exhibited by the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and other institutions through the US. He was the subject of a 2012 feature-length documentary, Proceed and Be Bold!
His new book, Citizen Printer, has recently released! Read an interview with Kennedy and Book Beat co-owner: Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., Citizen Printer.
Anne Carson 2-3 p.m.
Anne Carson is a poet, essayist, professor of Classics, and translator. “In the small world of people who keep up with contemporary poetry,” wrote Daphne Merkin in the New York Times Book Review, Carson “has been cutting a large swath, inciting both envy and admiration.” Carson has gained both critical accolades and a wide readership over the course of her “unclassifiable” publishing career. In addition to her many highly-regarded translations of classical writers such as Sappho and Euripides, and her triptych rendering of An Oresteia (2009), she has published poems, essays, libretti, prose criticism, and verse novels that often cross genres. Known for her supreme erudition—Merkin called her “one of the great pasticheurs”—her poetry can also be heart-breaking and she regularly writes on love, desire, sexual longing and despair. Always an ambitious poet whatever her topic or genre, Merkin wrote of Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband, “I don’t think there has been a book since Robert Lowell’s Life Studies that has advanced the art of poetry quite as radically as Anne Carson is in the process of doing.” Carson’s recent collections include Nox (2010), Red Doc> (2013), Float (2016), and Wrong Norma (2024). Her honors and awards are many, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the American Academy in Berlin. She has also received the Lannan Literary Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Griffin Poetry Prize.
Her latest collection is Wrong Norma, which was published earlier this year. Read a recent interview with Carson in The Paris Review.
DeAnn Wiley 2-3 p.m.
DeAnn Wiley is a self-taught illustrator with a master’s degree in counseling psychology, born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She advocates for social justice from the intersection of multiple identities—Black, Woman, Queer, and Disabled—and she stands in solidarity with other marginalized communities outside of her own.
When she’s not painting, she’s learning, growing, and healing, with each phase of her journey depicted in her art. She is the illustrator of Sarah Rising and the Sunday Adventures series.
Homegrown is her author-illustrator debut.
Photo © Christian Najjar
Rachelle Baker 2-3 p.m.
Rachelle Baker is a multi-disciplinary artist from Detroit, MI with a background in Relief Printing (Screenprinting, Lino/Woodcutting), Illustration, Comic Art, Video Art, and Music. She is inspired by Shoujo manga, anime and comics bad girls, stoic women dancing in the backgrounds of late 90’s/early 2000’s R&B videos, and the sound cats make when they’re yawning. She is a Capricorn with a Scorpio moon.
Published books include: Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream by Blair Imani, Shirley Chisholm is a Verb by Veronica Chambers, Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop by Clover Hope, Stamped (for Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X Kendi and Jason Reynolds, and A is for Aretha by Leslie Kwan.
Her newest book is Show Up and Vote by Ani Difranco.
Rick Lieder 2-3 p.m.
Rick Leider’s art has appeared on award-winning novels ranging from mysteries and science ficton, to books based on the X-Files TV series and Newberry Award-winning books for children. His fine art has been exhibited in galleries in the Midwest and Canada, and include painting, photography, and digital art.
His nature picture books are collaborations with award-winning novelist and poet Helen Frost, published by Candlewick Press. Their latest collaboration is The Mighty Pollinators.
Wong Herbert Yee 2-3 p.m.
Wong Herbert Yee is the author and illustrator of Tracks in the Snow, Who Likes Rain, Fireman Small and Big Black Bear, among other books. Born in Detroit, Michigan, one of his favorite memories of childhood is of leaving the first tracks on fresh-fallen snow. He also remembers his first grade teacher tacking one of his drawings on the bulletin board—ever since then, he’s been an artist.
He studied printmaking at Wayne State University. He lives with his wife and daughter in Troy, Michigan.
His newest book is Bicycle Dreams.