Jam with Duo: Build Your Own Instrument

Hang out in the Secret Lab at the Ann Arbor District Library, have a snack, and build a Single-Chip Space Invader Synth with author David Erik Nelson!

The synth relies on many of the same sound-generation techniques used in old-school console and arcade games, for authentic lo-fi chiptune grooves. You'll be able to use the notes it generates for funky sound effects, and to play your own tunes at home. The Single-Chip Space Invader Synth is one of many DIY instruments in David's latest book, Junkyard Jam Band.

A full kit will be provided and the author will guide you along the way.

You can make good noise out of bits of wood and wire, plastic and steel. When you build your own instruments, creating your own sound comes naturally." - Junkyard Jam Band book by David Erik Nelson

Agenda
Eat and network @ 6 - 6:30 p.m.
Build with David Nelson @ 6:30 - 8 p.m.
Take your music home and jam @ 8 p.m.

Space is limited, and registration is required for this event. Register at the following address:

http://www.eventbrite.com/e/jam-with-duo-build-your-own-instrument-tickets-25582279286

This event is co-sponsored by Duo Security of Ann Arbor.

Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival (A2CAF) 2016

AADL hosts the 8th annual comics festival (formerly known as Kids Read Comics! The Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival (A2CAF) will feature over 40 of your favorite authors, including Cece Bell (El Deafo), Tom Angleberger (Origami Yoda), Kazu Kibuishi (Amulet), Rafael Rosado (Dragons Beware!), Nathan Hale (Hazardous Tales), Ben Hatke (Zita the Space Girl), Ruth McNally Barshaw (Ellie McDoodle), and more!

The Festival will continue on Sunday, June 19 from 12:30 pm to 5:30 pm.

Kids, teens, and adults can participate in over 25 awesome cartooning workshops and creative games. Kids can also vote in the fourth annual Kids’ Comics Awards, the only comics awards chosen by kids. The winners will be announced during a ceremony at AADL featuring puppets, super villains, and more!

Sticky Situations: Surviving Conflict, Change, and Challenging People

Sarah Brabbs, M.A. spends her time training, coaching, and inspiring people to proactively improve their communication skills, experience immediate impactful change, and enjoy deeper, more meaningful and productive relationships both at work and at home.

Join us as Sarah, in her tell-it-like-it-is fashion, shares life-changing information related to difficult people, conflict, and change.

You'll learn what communicative behaviors lead us into troubled deep waters and how to navigate those waters instead, how to handle difficult people around you, and how to smartly navigate change.

The event includes a booksigning, and copies of Sarah’s book "So (People Say) You're an Asshole: A Book for You, People Who Love You, & People Who Work with You" will be on sale at the event.

New York Times Bestselling Author Steve Hamilton Discusses His New Thriller “The Second Life of Nick Mason"

Steve Hamilton is one of the most acclaimed mystery writers in the world, and one of only two authors (along with Ross Thomas) to win Edgars for both Best First Novel and Best Novel.

Join us for a special evening as he discusses his new thriller The Second Life of Nick Mason, (which has just been acquired by Lionsgate for a movie version). This event is cosponsored by Aunt Agatha’s and will include a book signing. Books will be for sale.

Steve Hamilton is the New York Times-bestselling author of twelve novels, most recently Die a Stranger and Let It Burn. He’s either won or received multiple nominations for virtually every other crime fiction award in the business, from the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award to the Anthony to the Barry to the Gumshoe. His debut, A Cold Day in Paradise, won both an Edgar and a Shamus Award for Best First Novel.

But it was his standalone The Lock Artist that made publishing history, his first book to win an Edgar for Best Novel, a CWA Steel Dagger for Best Thriller in the UK, and an Alex Award – which is given out by the American Library Association to those books that successfully cross over from the adult market and appeal to young adult readers. "The Lock Artist" has been translated into seventeen different languages, and was an especially strong seller in Japan, where it was voted the number one translated crime novel of 2012 by both the annual Kono Mystery Ga Sugoi guide and by Weekly Bunshun magazine.

"The Second Life of Nick Mason" presents an unforgettable new hero, a man who will walk out of prison and into a harrowing double life that is anything but free. Nick Mason has already spent five years inside a maximum security prison when an offer comes that will grant his release twenty years early. He accepts -- but the deal comes with a terrible price.

Do not miss this evening with Steve Hamilton and be the first to read his new book!

Author and New Yorker Copy Editor Mary Norris Discusses Her Book "Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen"

Mary Norris began her professional career as a foot checker—dutifully checking patrons’ toes for athlete’s foot as they entered a Cleveland city pool—before working at a costume company and driving a milk truck.

These were humble beginnings for a woman who would come to spend more than three decades as a copy editor (or “prose goddess”) at The New Yorker, where she’s worked with such celebrated writers as Philip Roth, Pauline Kael, and George Saunders.

Norris’s love of language, and her wish to help “all of you who want to feel better about your grammar,” led her to write Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen a hilarious, down-to-earth manual for untangling the most vexing spelling, punctuation, and usage quandaries in English.

Drawing on wide-ranging and hilariously rendered examples (from Henry James, Emily Dickinson, and James Salter to The Girl from Ipanema, Moby-Dick, and The Simpsons), Norris expertly guides readers through the most common and confusing grammatical issues. Although she is irreverent and blunt, Norris is never snarky or snooty in her grammatical advice. Throughout "Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen," Norris acknowledges the subjectivity of her work and advises readers to take a similar hands-on, case-by-case approach to language: “The dictionary is a wonderful thing, but you can’t let it push you around.”

Join us for a truly delightful afternoon event as Mary Norris discusses her critically-acclaimed book and her life as a ‘comma queen.’ Books will be for sale at this event, courtesy of Literati Bookstore, and the event will include a book signing.

Photo Credit: Josef Astor

Professor Jeffrey Rosen Discusses His Book “Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet”

As America confronts a new, intensely contested Supreme Court vacancy, there is no justice who can teach us more about our current constitutional debates than Louis D. Brandeis. Brandeis waited 125 days between his nomination and his confirmation a hundred years ago on June 1, 1916, and his confirmation battle was the most contentious in Supreme Court history.

Once he joined the Court, Brandeis wrote some of the most influential opinions on issues we are still grappling with today, including privacy, free speech, and excesses of corporate and federal power. He was also the first Jewish justice, the leader of the American Zionist Movement, a powerful advocate for the role of education in democracy, and a jurist whose emphasis on facts transformed the way the Court does business.

Join us as Professor Jeffrey Rosen discusses his powerful book Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet. This event, part of the Jewish Book & Arts Festival 2016, will include a book signing and books will be for sale.

Professor Jeffrey Rosen is President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Constitution Center, a professor at The George Washington University Law School, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a contributing editor for The Atlantic. He is a highly regarded journalist whose essays and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic, on National Public Radio, and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer.

The Chicago Tribune named him one of the 10 best magazine journalists in America and a reviewer for the Los Angeles Times called him “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.”

He received the 2012 Golden Pen Award from the Legal Writing Institute for his “extraordinary contribution to the cause of better legal writing.”

This event is sponsored by the U-M Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, the Ann Arbor District Library, the Jewish Federation Cardozo Society, and the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor.

National Library Week Event: Award-Winning Author Mardi Jo Link

Join us for a special National Library Week evening with Michigan Notable Book Author Mardi Jo Link.

Mardi will discuss her memoirs, Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm and The Drummond Girls, as well as some of her new projects and the craft of writing.

Mardi's memoir, "Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass On a Northern Michigan Farm" was an Indie Next pick, was given the 2013 Booksellers Choice Award from the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association, an Elle magazine's Reader's Prize, the Housatonic Book Award for Nonfiction, and was named a Michigan Notable Book. Film rights have been sold to Academy Award-winning actress, Rachel Weisz.

She has also written the true crime books, When Evil Came to Good Hart, Isadore's Secret: Sin, Murder, and Confession in a Northern Michigan Town, and Wicked Takes the Witness Stand: A Tale of Murder and Twisted Deceit in Northern Michigan, which were each Heartland bestsellers. Her essays have appeared in Bellingham Review, Bear River Review, Creative Nonfiction, the Detroit Free Press, Publishers Weekly, Terrain, and Traverse Magazine, among other places.

Mardi Jo Link was born in Detroit and grew up in Bay City and studied journalism and agriculture at Michigan State University. She was a founder of the magazine, ForeWord Reviews, in Traverse City, Michigan, and earned her master's degree in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte, in North Carolina.

She is the mother of three grown sons and lives in Traverse City, Michigan, with her husband, Pete, and their dog, Gretchen.

50 Ways for Fall Essentials

Bring your favorite scarves, wear your favorite denim looks, and join Lauren Friedman, author of the breakout hit 50 Ways to Wear a Scarf and her newest title, 50 Ways to Wear Denim, as she demonstrates her favorite ways to utilize your wardrobe MVPs when getting dressed for fall!

Following the program, there will be a book signing and books will be for sale.

Lauren Friedman is an illustrator, artist, and stylist. In addition to her books, she is the creator of the blog My Closet in Sketches. Originally from Ann Arbor, MI, she currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Historic Ann Arbor Architecture

Discover fascinating Ann Arbor facts when authors Susan Wineberg and Patrick McCauley discuss their book Historic Ann Arbor: An Architectural Guide. The book describes over 350 buildings in Ann Arbor, including 40 University of Michigan buildings. Style sections describe those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including Mid-Century Modern. Superb examples of this style can be found in many parts of Ann Arbor.

Susan Wineberg has served as President of the Washtenaw County Historical Society (1994-1999), on the Historic District Commission (HDC) three times, as Chair of the Awards Committee of the HDC for 20 years, on numerous committees including the Downtown, Landmark, Individual Historic Properties, Lower Town, Old Fourth Ward, and Germantown Historic District Study Committees. She has written extensively on Ann Arbor and published Lost Ann Arbor in 2004, in addition to the second edition of Historic Buildings, Ann Arbor in 1992.

Patrick McCauley has volunteered at both the Kempf House Museum and Cobblestone Farm Museum, and served as Chair of the Fourth and Fifth Ave. Historic District Study Committee. He currently serves on the Ann Arbor Historic District Commission, having held the positions of Chair and Vice Chair, and also on the board of the Ann Arbor Historical Foundation. He has also bought and restored three neglected historic homes in Ann Arbor since 2001, winning a Rehabilitation Award from the Ann Arbor Historic District Commission (HDC) in 2009 for his efforts.

This event includes a booksigning and books will be for sale.

Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival (A2CAF) 2016

Join us for day 2 as AADL hosts the 8th annual comics festival (formerly known as Kids Read Comics) – The Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival (A2CAF) will feature over 40 of your favorite authors, including Cece Bell (El Deafo), Tom Angleberger (Origami Yoda), Kazu Kibuishi (Amulet), Rafael Rosado (Dragons Beware!), Nathan Hale (Hazardous Tales), Ben Hatke (Zita the Space Girl), Ruth McNally Barshaw (Ellie McDoodle), and more!

Kids, teens, and adults can participate in over 25 awesome cartooning workshops and creative games. Kids can also vote in the fourth annual Kids’ Comics Awards, the only comics awards chosen by kids. The winners will be announced during a ceremony at AADL featuring puppets, super villains, and more!