WINTER 2020 ZeLLVISITING WRITERS SERIES PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MUSEUM OF ART. FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Unless otherwise noted, all events take place at: 3:00 PM: Roundtable Q&A 5:30 PM: Reading & Book Signing (Hopwood Room, Angell Hall) (UMMA Helmut Stern Auditorium)

JANUARY 9 MARCH 19 Shane McCrae Jenny Zhang Zell Visiting Writer in Poetry Zell Visiting Writer in Fiction McCrae’s book of poems, The Zhang’s story collection, Sour Gilded Auction Block, puts the Heart, centers on immigrants news in poems and fits the who have traded their news into history and futurity. endangered lives as artists His poems speak of both the in China and Taiwan for the ridiculousness and the unnerving constant struggle of life at the familiarity of today. poverty line in 1990s New York City. It examines the many ways that family and history can weigh JANUARY 23 us down and also lift us up. Rion Amilcar Scott MARCH 26 Zell Visiting Writer in Fiction Kathleen Graber Scott’s story collection, The World Zell Visiting Writer in Poetry Doesn’t Require You, shatters Graber’s poetry collection, rigid genre lines to explore larger The River Twice, is an elegiac themes of religion, violence, and meditation on impermanence love—all told with sly humor and a dash of magical and change. She presents a realism. fluid world in which so much― including space and time, the FEBRUARY 6 subterranean realm of dreams, and language Ilya Kaminsky itself―seems protean. Janey Lack Visiting Writer in Poetry Kaminsky’s parable in poems, APRIL 7 & 9 Deaf Republic, reads like a two- act political drama in which lyric Lauren Groff Janey Lack Distinguished Writer in poems trace the experiences of Residence citizens living under martial law. A New Yorker review called it a Groff’s latest book, Florida, work of “profound imagination.” explores loneliness, rage, family, and the passage of time. With shocking accuracy and effect, FEBRUARY 20 she pinpoints the moments, Catherine Lacey decisions and connections behind human Zell Visiting Writer in Fiction pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and fury—the moments that make us alive. Lacey’s short story collection, Certain American States, April 7: 5:30 PM: Reading & Book Signing (UMMA portrays Americans tortured by The Apse) the mundanity of their lives. The April 9: 3:00 PM: Roundtable Q&A Chicago Tribune calls it “exactly (Hopwood Room) what you would expect from 5:30 PM: In Conversaton with Akil Lacey: perfect sentences, penetrating insights, Kumarasamy (UMMA Helmut Stern devastating epiphanies.” Auditorium)