Book Beat is celebrating its 40th anniversary on August 28, from 12 pm- 5 pm. This community-wide event features local authors, musicians, artist-venders, local small press publishers, and cake! Author signings, music, and vendor tables will be outdoors as a sidewalk sale and also under a large tent. Below is an outline of Book Beat’s anniversary party thus far. Please call (248) 968-1190 for further information. Tell a friend, bring a friend! Thank you for sharing and helping us spread the news.
Author & Music Schedule
12-2 PM: Meet The Topsy Turvy Bus in Person! Fun & Learning for the Family with author Anita Fitch Pazner
The Topsy Turvy bus will be pulling into the Book Beat parking lot at about noon. The Topsy Turvy Bus runs on solar power and vegetable oil and helps bring attention to the importance of caring for the earth and environment. Kids can meet the Topsy Turvy Bus and book author Anita Fitch Panzer, work on recycling and compost projects, and see the inside of the Topsy Turvy Bus.
“Cast your eyes upon the Topsy-Turvy bus. It makes as much sense as it doesn’t. It’ll make you laugh and cry. Understand it if you can, but don’t hold out hope. Because the weirdness is just beginning.” — Watch the Topsy Turvy Bus in action on Fox2 News
Anita Fitch Pazner, author of the Topsy Turvy Bus lives in Michigan with her husband, Bruce, and a needy Portuguese water dog named Finn. She has a degree in journalism from Oakland University and an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A lifelong learner, she also earned a master’s degree in gardening from Michigan State University, so she could write a gardening column for a local newspaper. Th The Topsy Turvy Bus is her first children’s book. Climb aboard as it travels around the country teaching communities the importance of taking care of the earth through the use of alternative energy sources, and out-of-the-box thinking, while giving young people hope for a better, cleaner, healthier world.”
12-1: 30 pm: Cathy Collison, author of Meet the Pets
Meet the Pets introduces young readers to a slice of United States history through the stories of presidential animals, from President George Washington to President Joe Biden and many in between. The playful poems will delight all ages, and each page also features fascinating presidential facts. For older readers who look closely, they will spot the historical documents and newspaper articles that are part of the collage element layered within the whimsical illustrations.
Cathy Collison is a former Detroit Free Press journalist and now a freelance editor, journalist and author.”Many of my years were with Yak’s Corner, a pioneering and award-winning literacy program to reach young readers in Detroit, and later syndicated in dozens of newspapers across the country. I continue to write for young readers, as well as adults. Among my books for young readers are G is for Galaxy with Janis Campbell (Sleeping Bear Press), Why is the Barn Red? (Detroit Free Press) and two books also co-authored with Janis Campbell in the Women Who Won’t Be Silenced series for Lucent Press, profiling Reese Witherspoon and then-Sen. Kamala Harris. Just out in 2021 is a four-book civics series with Campbell (under pen name Campbell Collison) with Bearport. Our most recent release with illustrator and gifted muralist Wendy Popko is Meet the Pets: Presidential Animals from A to Z.” –from the author’s website.
12-1 PM Author and Illustrator Shelley Johannes: More Than Sunny
Rain or shine, two siblings always find the silver lining in this joyful, shining picture-book debut
Is there anything better than a sunny day?
How about a day that’s sunny . . . and birdy?
Or breezy and buzzy?
Blue and wishy?
Cloudy and fishy?
“A bouncy and boyant take on the changing seasons.”
-Kirkus
In this enchanting, buoyant picture-book debut from Shelley Johannes, a pair of siblings find the bright side during all the seasons of a year—bringing optimism, curiosity, and wonder to each situation they encounter, no matter the weather.
Shelley Johannes, is the author and illustrator of: More Than Sunny, Middle Grade Titles: Beatrice Zinker: Upside Down Thinker, Beatrice Zinker: Incognito, Beatrice Zinker: Sabotage. Before becoming an author-illustrator, Shelley began her creative career with ten years in architecture—where she fell in love with felt-tip pens, tracing paper, and the greatness of black turtlenecks. She currently lives in Metro Detroit, Michigan with her husband, two sons and two adorable birds.
12-1 PM: Lisabeth Posthuma: Baby & Solo
“Baby & Solo warmed my heart like an oversized flannel, made me laugh and cry (often in the same sentence), and kept me guessing to the very end. Set in a 90s video shop, the book is steeped in nostalgia and pop culture references, while also examining issues of gender identity, sexuality, mental health, love, lust, and the lost art of kindly rewinding. I am obsessed with this book. I’m guessing you will be too.” -David Arnold, New York Times best-selling author of Mosquitoland
Lisabeth Posthuma was a teacher, photographer, and (most importantly) video rental clerk before becoming a writer. She holds one of those degrees from a really expensive private liberal arts college that no one can afford (including her). She grew up obsessed with teen soaps (which her therapist says explains a lot) and likes to brag about that one time she attended a cast party for The OC. She resides in Michigan where winters are too long.
1:00 – 2:00 PM: Stephen Mack Jones & the August Snow Series
SMJ is the author of the infectious #1 Mexican-African-American badass Detective series featuring Detroit retired cop and warm-hearted foodie August Snow.
“August Snow is a terrific character; rough and tumble, undaunted and implacably tenacious, his wit so sharp it’ll make you bleed. In Stephen Mack Jones’s new book, Dead of Winter, Snow protects his neighborhood from rapacious one percenters, Mack Jones skillfully weaving relevance into a blue streak, bone-breaking story. Highly, highly recommended.”
—Joe Ide, author of the IQ Series
Stephen Mack Jones is a published poet, an award-winning playwright, and a recipient of the prestigious Hammett Prize, Nero Award, and the Kresge Arts in Detroit Literary Fellowship. He was born in Lansing, Michigan, and currently lives in the suburbs of Detroit. Dead of Winter is his third novel.
1-2 PM: Kathe Koja author of Dark Factory
It’s a novel, it’s an experience, it’s a creative mash-up beyond anything I’ve done before. BoingBoing calls it “unbelievably cool”. -Kathe Koja
Dark Factory is Kathe Koja’s wholly original new novel from Meerkat Press, that combines her award-winning writing and her skill directing immersive events, to create a story that unfolds on the page, online, and in the reader’s creative mind. www.Darkfactory.club
Kathe Koja is a writer of fiction and short stories for adults and YA readers. She also is creator and producer of immersive fiction and live blow-your-mind theater events. Koja has won multiple awards for her seventeen novels, including; the Shirley Jackson Award, Bram Stoker Award, ASPCA Henry Bergh Award, Gustavus Myers Award, Locus Award, Spectrum Award, Parents’ Choice Award, ALA Best Book for Young Adults, finalist for the Stoker Award, Philip K. Dick Award and World Fantasy Award.
1:00- 2:00 PM: Author Brynne Barnes: Black Girl Rising
This enduring anthem for Black girls celebrates their power, potential, and brilliance—for themselves and for the world.
You are a thousand curls
unfurling in your hair.You are a thousand fists
standing proudly in air.You are the song of swallows,
lifting sun as they sing—breaking light with their beaks,
breaking sky with their wings . . .
Black girlhood is beautiful! In this deeply moving celebration and rallying cry, and in the face of the many messages that still work to convince Black girls that they should shrink themselves, hide their light, know their place, Brynne Barnes and Tatyana Fazlalizadeh reclaim that narrative: A Black girl’s place is everywhere, and her selfhood is everything she can dream it to be.
Brynne Barnes is living her dream as an author and English Professor. She lives with her husband and their son in Michigan with their dog, Bruiser. And she knows a secret – that the whole world is a giant coloring book and the most beautifully potent crayons are words, laughter and song. Barnes is the author of Colors of Me, and Books Do Not Have Wings.
1:00-2:00 PM: Rick Lieder, Wait- and See
Longtime collaborators Helen Frost and Rick Lieder team up for a breathtakingly beautiful glimpse at the praying mantis—and entice us to take the time to open our eyes to the world in front of us.
Rick Lieder is a photographer, artist and a favorite collaborator of poet Helen Frost. Their latest book is Wait and See, (Candlewick, 2022). This sixth stunning collaboration between Helen Frost and Rick Lieder urges young readers into the wild outdoors, inviting them to “wait and see” what wonders patient observation has in store. Helen Frost and Rick Lieder team up for a breathtakingly beautiful glimpse at the praying mantis—and entice us to take the time to open our eyes to the world in front of us. Other books in the series include: Wake Up! Wake Up! Step Gently Out, Among a Thousand Fireflies, and Sweep Up The Sun.
1:00-2:00 PM; Paul Vachon and Becoming the Motor City
Vachon’s latest book, Becoming the Motor City: A Timeline of Detroit’s Auto Industry, is an in-depth look at the Detroit automobile industry. He delves into how a collection of motivated individuals were able to create one of the most powerful industries in the world, right in Detroit.” —Oakland Press
Paul Vachon is a freelance writer and public speaker. He’s been a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors since 2010. Vachon has a strong interest in Detroit history, and has written five previous books devoted to the subject including Detroit: An Illustrated Timeline, and has written several guidebooks on Michigan for Moon Travel Guides.
1:30 -3:00 pm Book Launch: Photographs From Detroit 1975-2019 a book signing with photographer Bruce Harkness
“Bruce Harkness is a masterful hunter, communicator, and seer in the visual language of photography. His photographs are charged with an emotional level that transfixes the viewer into wanting to know more.”—Adger Cowans, photographer and author of Adger and Personal Vision: Photographs
A retrospective survey of Bruce Harkness’s striking social documentary photographs and an invaluable historical record that bears witness to irrevocably lost swaths of Detroit’s social and urban fabric.
Photographs from Detroit, 1975–2019 (Ohio University Press) is the first monograph to focus in depth on the photography of Bruce Harkness. With these intimate social documentary photographs and oral histories, Bruce Harkness and editor John J. Bukowczyk have sensitively collaborated with and amplified the stories of Detroit’s often overlooked people and lost neighborhoods. The result is an unforgettable portrait of Detroit’s hard-won resiliency.
Bruce Harkness holds an MFA from Wayne State University and is the former city photographer of Dearborn, Michigan. His photographs have been published in Detroit Images: Photographs of the Renaissance City, Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream, and Before Fair Lane: Historic Houses from Henry Ford’s Hometown, Dearborn, Michigan (1832–1916), as well as in the Detroit Free Press. The Bruce L. Harkness Poletown collection of prints and digital images is housed in the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University. Historians, filmmakers, and urban planners often use Harkness’s photographs as valuable reference material.
2-3 PM: Kelsey Ronan and Chevy in the Hole
Kelsey Ronan at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club.
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
A gorgeous, unflinching love letter to Flint, Michigan, and the resilience of its people, Kelsey Ronan’s Chevy in the Hole follows multiple generations of two families making their homes there, with a stunning contemporary love story at its center.
Kelsey Ronan grew up in Flint, Michigan. Her work has appeared in Lit Hub, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review and elsewhere. She lives in Detroit and teaches for InsideOut Literary Arts. Chevy in the Hole is her first novel and was praised in the New York Times. Ronan shared details about growing up in Flint, her favorite books, and the background story of Chevy in the Hole in a previous Book Beat newsletter.
2-3 PM: Jean Alicia Elster author of How It Happens
How It Happens follows the story of author Jean Alicia Elster’s maternal grandmother, Dorothy May Jackson. Born in Tennessee in 1890, Dorothy May was the middle daughter of Addie Jackson, a married African-American housekeeper at one of the white boarding-houses in town, and Tom Mitchell, a commanding white attorney from a prominent family. Through three successive generations of African-American women, Elster intertwines the fictionalized adaptations of the defining periods and challenges—race relations, miscegenation, sexual assault, and class divisions—in her family’s history.
Jean Alicia Elster is a 2017 Kresge Artist Fellow in Literary Arts and a former attorney, (BA, University of Michigan; JD, University of Detroit School of Law) and most recently the author of the young adult novel How It Happens (Wayne State University Press, September 2021). How It Happens was honored as a 2021 Foreword INDIES Silver Winner for Young Adult Fiction and as a 2022 Midwest Book Award Silver Winner in Young Adult Fiction. It was also awarded the 2022 Bronze Medal in Young Adult Fiction by the Independent Publisher Book Awards. Elster is also the author of the novel The Colored Car—for ages 8 and older—published by Wayne State University Press and released in September 2013.
2-3 PM: Lynn Crawford: author of Paula Regrossy
“Lynn Crawford has created a shrewd and accomplished novel in Paula Regossy. Crawford, like her characters, is not fearful, but bold and courageous in molding a novel that is unafraid to push the envelope of both our own expectations of genre and narrative, and how it should be deployed to expand a writer’s creative range.”
–Eric Maroney, from The Colorado Review
Lynn Crawford is a fiction and arts writer. She is a founding board member of Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), a 2010 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow and a 2016 Rauschenberg Writing Fellow. Her books include Solow (House of Outside Press/Hard Press Editions, 1995), Blow (Hard Press Editions, 1998), Fortification Resort (Black Square Editions, 2005) a series of art-related sestinas, Simply Separate People (Black Square Editions/Hammer Books, 2002), Simply Separate People, Two (Black Square Editions and the Brooklyn Rail, 2011) and Shankus & Kitto: A Saga (DittoDitto, 2016). She has worked in various psychiatric, community, hospital, museum and school settings. She lives with her family in a suburb north of Detroit.
2-3 PM: The Smooth Soul Inspirations of Darnell Kendricks
Soul Singer, Darnell Kendricks’ Music has been enjoyed both locally, nationally and internationally and has become classics on urban ballroom and stepping dance floors across the country. Singer, Promoter, Song Writer, Visual Artist, and Creator of The Smooth Soul Café that features his popular dessert waffle. A Renaissance man and Soul Ambassador are two of the description he feels describe him the best.
“Sounding vocally like a combination of Brian McKnight and fellow Detroiter Mike Winans, Kendricks has put together an auspicious debut album filled with attractive, melodic mid-tempo cuts that should appeal to an adult soul audience. Tunes like “A Soft Answer” and “Jones In My Bones” are absolutely infectious, as is the ballad “Because of You.” And while Strawberry Lemonade is a secular soul album, there’s a lot of church lurking underneath, especially coming through on the very nice duet, “Faithful,” with Andrea Curtis. The compositions and performances are strong throughout the disc, but the clear highlight is the title cut, a jazzy, piano laden track that is as enjoyable a Summer song as you may hear this year. It caps a fine first effort by this talented young artist, and should portent more good things to come. Recommended.” -quoted from Soul Tracks, by Chris Rizik
Darnell Kendricks sings Please Believe Me from his album Smooth Soul Cafe.
2-3 pm: Romance Novelist Beverly Jenkins: Catch a Raven Book Launch!
Historical romance author Beverly Jenkins returns to sign her latest book To Catch a Raven: Women Who Dare, available in hardcover or paperback. Most of the Jenkin’s award winning backlist will also be available. This long anticipated signing is a rare chance and opportunity to meet face-to-face with her readers, a connection that has always been special and unique with Ms. Jenkins.
“A living legend.”
– Julia Quinn
“Beverly Jenkins has reached romance superstardom.”
– Detroit Free Press
“The signature elements of Jenkins’s work come together in spectacular form in Wild Rain, a boldly feminist narrative about a female rancher…[The novel] showcases Jenkins’s talent for writing intriguing individual stories that illuminate bigger historical themes.”
– New York Times (1/9/2022)
“Romance rock-star Beverly Jenkins offers not only lessons in love, but lessons in history.”
—CBS Sunday Morning
Beverly Jenkins is the recipient of the 2018 Michigan Author Award by the Michigan Library Association, the 2017 Romance Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the 2016 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for historical romance. She has been nominated for the NAACP Image Award in Literature, was featured in both the documentary Love Between the Covers and on CBS Sunday Morning. Since the publication of Night Song in 1994, she has been leading the charge for inclusive romance, and has been a constant darling of reviewers, fans, and her peers alike, garnering accolades for her work from the likes of The Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, and NPR.
2:00- 3:00 PM Wong Herbert Yee
The Award winning Who Likes Rain? is newly released in paperback!
With spring come April showers. It’s time to put on a raincoat, grab an umbrella, and head outdoors. The worms like rain, and so do the fish and frogs. But what about the cat and dog? In this lyrical picture book, one spunky little girl discovers just who likes rain–and who doesn’t–as she explores the rainy-day habits of the world around her.
Here is the second offering in Wong Herbert Yee’s charming seasonal quartet. The simple text and interactive question-and-answer format make this book perfect for reading aloud with preschoolers any time of the year.
Who Likes Rain? is a 2008 Bank Street – Best Children’s Book of the Year.
Wong Herbert Yee is the author and illustrator of Tracks in the Snow, Who Likes Rain, Fireman Small, Summer Days and Nights, Big Black Bear, and the fabulous Mouse and Mole series, 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.
2:00-3:00 PM: Heidi Woodward Sheffield Ice Cream Face
The Ezra Jack Keats Award–winning creator of Brick by Brick brings to delicious life the anxiety and elation involved in waiting in line to get ice cream.
As far as this ice-cream-loving kid is concerned, every meal should include ice cream. In any form, in every flavor, he loves it all. But what he doesn’t love is seeing other people with ice cream . . . while he’s still waiting in line for his. That’s when he can get his mad, “no-ice-cream-yet, waiting-in-a-long-line face”–until he finally gets his cone, and his mad face melts into something sweet. Heidi Woodward Sheffield gently explores a range of emotions as they relate to this delicious, everyday experience.
Heidi Woodward Sheffield is an award winning author and illustrator. Her debut book Brick by Brick received the Ezra Jack Keats Award for Illustration and has been chosen by the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. Her latest picture book, Ice Cream Face is about the anxiety and elation involved in waiting in line to get ice cream. Publisher’s Weekly calls it an
“amiable meditation on the joys of a rich emotional life starring a funny, self-aware protagonist who wears their ice-cream-loving heart on their sleeve.” ICE CREAM FACE is also on The Children’s Book Council’s June 2022 Hot Off the Press reading list. Heidi loves to create books that reflect the beauty of the world. Her colorful
collages feature unusual textures like leaves, vintage embroidery and buttons. She lives in Northville, Michigan.
Music Performance 3-4 PM: Ukrainian Vocalist Olga Yalovenko with Musician Yaroslav Gnezdilov
Olga Yalovenko will perform a set of classical, folk and pop music with her accompanist Yaraslav Gnezdilov. Ms. Yalovenko has performed in solo concerts across the United States and Europe. In 2018, Olga Yalovenko sang the lead role of the Countess in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro in Barcelona, Spain. In 2020, Yalovenko opened her own singing studio for children in Ukraine. She has recently moved to the Detroit area as a refugee of the war in Ukraine.
Yaroslav Gnezdilov, is a concert pianist and winner of numerous international music competitions. He is a performing member of Tuesday Musicale of Detroit, Comic Opera Guild and LaCorda music associations. He holds a Master degree in Piano Performance and currently gives solo and collaborative concerts with prominent musicians, choirs and bands in concert tours across the United States and Europe. Gnezdilov is a also a recent refugee from the war in Ukraine.
3-4 PM: Frank Anthony Polito & Renovated to Death
Frank Anthony Polito’s fabulous new cozy mystery series features a gay couple who solve crimes while renovating houses in suburban Detroit as part of their hit reality show Domestic Partners.This is the first book in a new series!
Real-life domestic partners and stars and producers of the new hit reality home renovation show Domestic Partners, bestselling mystery author Peter “PJ” Penwell and actor JP Broadway are enjoying work and life in their sleepy Detroit suburb of Pleasant Woods—until a suspicious death makes an unscripted appearance… With a killer on the loose, this is one fixer upper that may prove deadly…
Frank Anthony Polito is an award-winning author and playwright. His novels include the Lambda Award-winning Drama Queers!, Lost in the ‘90s, The Spirit of Detroit, and Band Fags!, among many others, and his plays have been produced around the country. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon and a BFA in Theatre from Wayne State. After growing up in the Detroit suburbs, Polito lived in New York City for 18 years before moving to Pleasant Ridge, Michigan with his partner Craig Bentley and their two dogs.
3-4 PM: Donald Levin author of Savage City
Detroit, 1932. The fates of four people converge during a violent week in the hardest-hit city of the Great Depression. This engrossing novel blends history and fiction against the backdrop of the bloody Ford Hunger March.
“Savage City set in 1932 during the height of the Depression and one of the few black cops on the Detroit force is trying to solve an apparent lynching of a young black man. But, the story unfolds along with the labor organizing of the period including the Ford Hunger March Massacre, the Purple Gang, the Black Legion, Fr. Coughlin, Henry Ford, all played out among familiar streets with acute attention to city history. Highly recommended.” -Peter Werbe.
Donald Levin is a retired dean of the faculty and Professor of English at the former Marygrove College in Detroit. He has written seven Martin Preuss mysteries: In the House of Night (2020), Cold Dark Lies (2019), An Uncertain Accomplice (2018), The Forgotten Child (2017), Guilt in Hiding (2016), The Baker’s Men (2014), and Crimes of Love (2011). Levin is a resident of Ferndale, Michigan.
3-4 PM: Book signing with Vicki Brett-Gach from Ann Arbor Vegan Kitchen
Whether you’re a seasoned pro, just starting to think about new healthy habits, or somewhere in between, The Plant-Based for Life Cookbook is the book for you – with delicious recipes you’ll want to make again and again.
Master Vegan Lifestyle Coach, Plant-Based Culinary Instructor, and Certified Personal Chef, Vicki Brett-Gach has been creating and sharing fabulous whole food plant-based recipes for more than a decade on her popular blog, Ann Arbor Vegan Kitchen. She has helped people from all walks of life, and from all across the nation, and now she’s here to help you too, with this beautiful resource.
Getting nutrition from plant-based foods is one of the best decisions you can make for your health!
“If you can add just one whole food, plant-based cookbook to your library, make it this one. This book is vibrant, beautiful, and creative. It is jam-packed practical pearls that will move your culinary skills to the next level. The recipes tick all the boxes for nutrition, disease prevention or reversal, and flavor. Whether you are new to the plant-based lifestyle, or are a seasoned vegan, be prepared to be delighted and inspired.”
– Brenda Davis, RD, plant-based pioneer, speaker, and co-author of Becoming Vegan and Nourish
“Vicki creates mouthwatering recipes that fit the way I eat – exclusively from WHOLE plants without any added oil and refined sugar. And I love how the salt is optional. Her easy to prepare recipes are as healthy as they are delicious, and even non-plant eaters will love them!”
– Chef AJ, author of The Secrets To Ultimate Weight Loss and Unprocessed
Vicki Brett-Gach is a Master-Certified Vegan Lifestyle Coach, Plant-Based Culinary Instructor, Certified Personal Chef, and author of The Plant-Based for Life Cookbook: Deliciously Simple Recipes that Nourish, Comfort, Energize, and Renew.
3-4 PM: Craig Maki, author of Tomorrow Brings Memories
In 1939, a new record from a shadowy storefront on Detroit’s east side starts showing up in juke boxes all over town. It quickly becomes a smash hit, sending men scrambling to cash in, by creating Detroit’s first home-grown record company, Universal, which evolves into Mellow Records. Here’s the untold story of an unlikely pair of tattooed hustlers: an ex-con, and a shell-shocked World War I vet, plus: jukeboxes, the mafia, Hamtramck mamas, Wayne County grifters, the first all-female western swing act on records, the first rockabilly trio — all playing roles in sensational music originally pressed on 78 rpm discs that document the dawn of Detroit’s recording industry.
Signed copies of Tomorrow Brings Memories are available online in the Book Beat gallery.
“Detroit is not only a city of extremes, but one where things always seem to happen first: the inventive ingenuity of industry and the multi-cultural migration that fueled it; the arc of wealth, poverty, urban crisis and ruin; and, most recently, reckoning and rebirth. A culture of creativity has underscored it all, and it’s this trailblazing spirit —coupled with its often inevitable invisibility — that Craig Maki zeroes in on, as he unveils the never-before-told tale of the city’s very first record producers, and the roots of the now-storied recording revolution that they sparked.” — MICHAEL HURTT, co- author of Mind Over Matter: The Myths and Mysteries of Detroit’s Fortune Records
Craig Maki is co-author of the ground-breaking Detroit Country Music: Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies (with Keith Cady, University of Michigan Press, 2013); contributed to M.L. Liebler’s anthology Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond (Wayne State University Press, 2016).
Read an interview with the author at Mellow Music: An Interview with Craig Maki (from our April newsletter).
3-4 PM: Collin J. Rae, Pandemic Portraits Volume 1 & 2
Pandemic Portraits is a large format collection of Facebook Messenger photos taken through distorting lenses made from found pieces of glass and plastic. Collin J. Rae will present a second volumme of Pandemic Portraits along with a new soundtrack he’s been working on as a companion to the books.
“Rae’s musical and photographic work has always been engaging and provocative. But in this new project he manages to create a haunting feeling of passion and panic held captive behind a glass screen. The images are stunning but also relatable to a time we all shared in emotional isolation.” – Craig Brewer – Film Director: Hustle and Flow, Black Snake Moan, Dolemite is my Name, Coming 2 America and more
Collin J Rae is a Michigan born visual and aural artist currently living and working in northern Virginia. His photos have been published by TASCHEN books, European Photography Magazine, Secret Magazine and many others. His “asemic” works have been features in various online and physical journals. His current project is a series of books created throughout the covid pandemic.
3-4 PM: Robin Eichele, Book Launch: The Wayland Sessions 2017-2020
“Robin Eichele is a Midwest literary treasure. His work takes his readers deep into the many dimensions of self and nature. His highly original metaphors and images translate the unknown world that lies below for the soul of our humanity that awaits the opportunity to be awaken by the poetry of life and beauty. Robin Eichele’s poetry makes this world a better place, and it makes us more enlightened to be alive in it.” – M.L. Liebler
Robin Eichele has written poetry and fiction for over half a century. His most recent collection of poetry is The Wicking of the Broken Heart (2022). We expect to have Eichele’s latest collection:The Wayland Sessions 2017-2020 (Ridgeway Press, 2022) available on August 28, which is also poet Eichele’s arrival day on the planet.
Robin Eichele was an original 1964 co-founder of the Detroit Artists’ Workshop Society and the manager of the first Artist Workshop Press. Eichele’s work has graced countless publications, radio programs, poetry conferences, arts festivals, bookstores and cafes over the years. He cites among his influences Creeley, Olson, Duncan and other Black Mountain School poets as well as Whitman and Dickinson.
4-5 PM: Music Performance with Carolyn Striho and Scott Dailey
Carolyn Striho is a legendary Detroit songwriter, singer and musician. From her early days in late 70s Detroit fronting The Cubes with an art/punk pop sound, to her stint in the mid-80s with the Detroit Energy Asylum , to her recent evocative and enchanting music, as heard on Promised Land, Striho’s alluring vocal delivery with powerful rock and roll has hypnotized crowds for years onstage and on her recordings.
Striho was on the Grammy Awards First Ballot 2022 for Best Spoken Word Album for Detroit/Maiden Energy and was on the Grammy Awards First Ballot 2018 for Best Rock Album for Afterthought. She has won 11 Detroit Music Awards and a Billboard Award. She is also a full time educator and cancer survivor.
Please Note: Before her performance, between 3-4 pm, Striho will be signing Detroit (Maiden Energy) a collection of her lyrics and poems.
Scott Dailey is a talented and award-winning guitarist, songwriter/singer and performer. Dailey has won several Detroit Music Awards, and was nominated in both 2014 and 2017 for Outstanding CD of the Year in both Acoustic/Americana and Country. Daily and Striho are married and have worked on music together for the past 11 years, performing at numerous festivals and clubs in the USA and abroad.
Artists, Vendors & other Guests
• Chelsea Lisiecki of Carosello Pasta in Dexter, Michigan, and Side Oats Farm in Pinckney, Michigan, returns with homemade organic pasta, locally grown organic veggies and native plants. She will set up from 12-5 PM.
• Laura Grimshaw will display Gary Grimshaw rock n’ roll posters and rock memorabilia.
• Wendy Sample: will have laser-cut wooden holiday ornaments and unique card gifts. She will be set up from 1-5 PM.
• Leni Sinclair will present her classic rock and jazz photography.
• Marcia Hoveland is a renowned Metro-Detroit based artist, specializing in handmade ceramic tiles and jewelry. Marcia currently owns and operates a successful gallery shop in Royal Oak, Michigan. She will be set up from 12-5 PM.
• Tom Carey is an artist specialized in relief printing, book-making, drawing, and live shadow-puppet theater. He will be displaying a selection of his handmade books and prints from 1-3 pm. Carey is also the artist responsible for our 40th Anniversary Tee-Shirt.
• Peter Werbe, author of Summer on Fire will represent The Fifth Estate and Black & Red Press. Author Alan Franklin will also be at the Black and Red press booth with his book Lives of the Saints (2022).
• Willie Williams will display selected titles from Detroit’s revered and legendary Broadside Press.
• M.L. Liebler is a poet, educator, activist and longtime supporter of the arts. Since 1975, Liebler has also been active as the founding editor of small press publisher Ridgeway Press. Liebler will represent Ridgeway’s books and authors.
I’m sure I’ve been a patron from almost the beginning. Colleen would leave messages on my voice mail telling me about a book that just came out that she was sure I would love so she is holding it for me behind the desk. How about the time I wanted to discuss one of those books and she encouraged me to start a book group; so in 1988 I did. And now my grandchildren love the Book Beat. Yep, the beat goes on……..