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

This year, AADL celebrated National Library Week evening with Michigan Notable Book Author Mardi Jo Link.

Mardi discussed 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 was an Indie Next pick, won the 2013 Booksellers Choice Award from the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association, was an Elle Magazine Reader's Prize winner, 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. She 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.

The History of the Michigan Daily

At a time when daily print newspapers across the country are failing, the Michigan Daily continues to thrive.

Completely operated by students of the University of Michigan, the paper was founded in 1890 and covers national and international news topics ranging from politics to sports to entertainment. The Daily has been a vital part of the college experience for countless UM students, none more so than those who staffed the paper as editors, writers, and photographers over the years. Many of these Daily alumni are now award-winning journalists who work for the premier news outlets in the world.

Join us for a fascinating look at this groundbreaking newspaper with Stephanie Steinberg, editor of the new book In the Name of Editorial Freedom: 125 Years at the Michigan Daily, a compilation of original essays by some of the best-known Daily alumni about their time on staff. This inside look at the U-M newspaper is, according the former U-M President Mary Sue Coleman, “a unique window into the lives of students at the University of Michigan. Their stories are powerful and remind us of the magic of this place where students both are challenged and challenge others daily to change the world for the better.”

Stephanie was joined by Laura Berman, former Detroit News columnist; Chris Dzombak, senior software engineer for The New York Times; and Roger Rapoport, producer of the feature films "Pilot Error" and "Waterwalk" and author of the Michael Moore biography "Citizen Moore."

Local radio personality Martin Bandyke hosted this event, which included a book signing.

Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin interviews Peter Guralnick, author of Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll

Peter Guralnick

Peter Guralnick.

Peter Guralnick, author of the critically acclaimed Elvis Presley biography Last Train to Memphis, brings us the life of Sam Phillips, the visionary genius who singlehandedly steered the revolutionary path of Sun Records.

The music that Sam Phillips shaped in his tiny Memphis studio with artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Ike Turner, Howlin, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, introduced a sound that had never been heard before. He brought forth a singular mix of black and white voices passionately proclaiming the vitality of the American vernacular tradition while at the same time declaring, once and for all, a new, integrated musical day. With extensive interviews and firsthand personal observations extending over a 25-year period with Phillips, along with wide-ranging interviews with nearly all the legendary Sun Records artists, Guralnick gives us an ardent, unrestrained portrait of an American original as compelling in his own right as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, or Thomas Edison.

The interview with Peter Guralnick was originally recorded on December 10, 2015.

The Alternative Press: Then & Now

AADL hosts a fun and wide-ranging conversation with several local alternative press leaders about their experiences running an alternative press. Discover what motivated them to start and how their missions may have changed over the course of their runs; the technological and financial challenges; how the Internet and social media have altered the landscape; and their views on the role of the alternative press in our communities then versus now.

Panelists include:

Harvey Ovshinsky (Moderator): Harvey started The Fifth Estate when he was 17 years old. It has become the longest running alternative newspaper in the country, and is about to celebrate its 50th birthday.

Ted Sylvester and Laurie Wechter: Ted and Laurie founded Agenda in the 1980s and ran it through the 1990s. Agenda was an independent, non-aligned newspaper that served Ann Arbor and nearby towns as a forum for the area’s many liberal/leftist activist groups and nonprofit human service organizations.

Barbara Barefield: Barbara worked on alternative newspaper The Ann Arbor Sun in the 1970s. The newspaper was the mouthpiece for the White Panther Party and the succeeding Rainbow People’s Party before being an independent publication devoted to local issues, left-wing politics, music, and arts.

Dave Askins: Dave, with Mary Morgan, ran The Ann Arbor Chronicle from 2008-2014. The Ann Arbor Chronicle was an online newspaper focusing on civic affairs and local government coverage.

If you want more information about these publications, The Ann Arbor District Library hosts the online archives of Agenda, The Ann Arbor Sun, and The Ann Arbor Chronicle and you can view past issues of Agenda and The Ann Arbor Sun at Old News and past articles from the Ann Arbor Chronicle at the Ann Arbor Chronicle Archive.

Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin interviews Chris Morris, author of Los Lobos: Dream in Blue.

Los Lobos leaped into the national spotlight in 1987, when their cover of “La Bamba” became a No. 1 hit. But what looked like an overnight sensation to the band’s new fans was actually a way station in a long musical journey that began in East Los Angeles in 1973 and is still going strong. Across four decades, Los Lobos (Cesar Rosas, Conrad Lozano, David Hidalgo, Louie Pérez, and Steve Berlin) has explored virtually the entire breadth of American vernacular music, from rockabilly to primal punk rock, R&B to country and folk, Mexican son jarocho to Tex-Mex conjunto and Latin American cumbia. Their sui generis sound has sold millions of albums and won acclaim from fans and critics alike, including three Grammy Awards.

Los Lobos, the first book on this unique band, traces the entire arc of the band’s career. Music journalist Chris Morris draws on new interviews with Los Lobos members and their principal collaborators, as well as his own reporting since the early 1980s, to recount the evolution of Los Lobos’s music.

The interview with Chris Morris was originally recorded on November 18, 2015.

Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin interviews Stephanie Steinberg, editor of In the Name of Editorial Freedom: 125 Years at The Michigan Daily.

At a time when daily print newspapers across the country are failing, The Michigan Daily continues to thrive. Completely operated by students of the University of Michigan, the paper was founded in 1890 and covers national and international news topics ranging from politics to sports to entertainment. The Daily has been a vital part of the college experience for countless UM students, none more so than those who staffed the paper as editors, writers, and photographers over the years. Many of these Daily alumni are now award-winning journalists who work for the premier news outlets in the world, including Sara Krulwich, Michael Rosenberg, Laura Berman, and Rebecca “Becky” Blumenstein.

In the Name of Editorial Freedom, edited by Stephanie Steinberg, compiles original essays by some of the best-known Daily alumni about their time on staff. Stephanie Steinberg was a Michigan Daily reporter and news editor from 2008 to 2010 and editor-in-chief in 2011. She is currently an editor at U.S. News & World Report.

The interview with Stephanie Steinberg was originally recorded on November 3, 2015.

Words The Podcast - Episode 9: Glyphs the Podcast

Ally Wright is a fiction writer whose short story, As a Widow Throws a Lasso, is a meditation on grief and the grieving process. Ally grew up in a house full of books, and always loved words. Now she’s just been accepted to the Creative Writing sub-concentration at the University of Michigan. In this segment, we talked about making the familiar unfamiliar, an ancient jackal god of death called Wepwawet, Animorphs, and finding inspiration in everyday places, like Snapple caps.

Drew Maron is a writer of short fiction, but we never really got to that part. We talked about “making literature accessible” as a mark of a good professor, free will, and what 50 Shades of Grey and Paradise Lost have in common as fan-fiction.

Words The Podcast - Episode 8: It's Vegas, Baby

Juliana Roth is a writer from New York and a senior in the creative writing program. She’s finishing up an Honors Thesis that will be in the form of a collection of short stories. We discuss her story “Appraisal” in terms of topics like the 1.5 year mark in a relationship, Macguffins, and a world of fine china, PF Chang's, and rivers that wind through the desert.

Liz Swaynie is screenwriter and writer of short fiction. She finished up her major in creative last year and is currently working on getting into the world of network TV comedy and drama. We discuss her spec script for Bob’s Burgers, as well as what a spec script actually is, teleplays as a medium, and an idea for a second season of Words the Podcast, set in Las Vegas.

Words The Podcast - Episode 7: Working Title

Chris Aldridge is a poet and journalist. He’s a reporter with the Huron Daily Tribune by day, and a inquisitive poet by night. He reads seven of his poems. We discuss his creative process, the ephemerality of the moment, and how to properly conduct an ambush in a Nerf gun fight.

Abrar “Raad” Haider is a senior and pre-med student at U-M. He brings in a current project that draws heavily from what he studies. His short story places Dr. Akiesha Palta in the middle of a dire conflict: her pharmaceutical company is the most successful vaccine company in the world, but it’s also producing many of the world’s most potent viruses.

Words The Podcast - Episode 6: Changing Times

Lucy Zhao reads three poems and discusses salt, liminal spaces, and how to use poetry to land a job.

Andrew Dooley studied poetry, worked as journalist, and then ran the statewide social media accounts for MLive. He brings three articles to the table for discussion: “To all the young journalists asking for advice…,” by Felix Salmon; “Career Advice for Young Journalists: Don’t Take Older Journalists’ Advice,” by Will Oremus; and “Inside Ashton Kutcher’s celebrity-powered viral media empire, which no one knows exists,” by Rob Price.