Great Michigan Read authors coming to East Lansing next week – City Pulse

Seven prestigious writers, including a National Book Award winner, will gather in East Lansing next week for an author reunion of the Great Michigan Read program, which has annually picked a book for the whole state to read starting with Ernest Hemingway’s “The Nick Adams Stories” in 2007.

I will moderate the Michigan Humanities event at the Wharton Center for Performing Arts’ Pasant Theatre at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 24. It’s free but requires registration. (See box.)

The authors and their books are Bich Minh Nguyen (“Stealing Buddha’s Dinner: A Memoir”); Kevin Boyle (“Arc of Justice,” which won the 2004 National Book Award for nonfiction);  Steve Luxenberg (“Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret”); Mary Doria Russell (“The Women of the Copper Country”); co-author Kekla Magoon (“X: A Novel”); Mona Hanna (“What the Eyes Don’t See”); and Angeline Boulley (“Firekeeper’s Daughter”).

Each of them brings a different orientation to their award-winning books, from a doctor, a journalist, a young adult author, a Vietnam War boat person, a history professor, an indigenous Sault Tribe member and an historical fiction writer.

Six of their books are based on real-life stories. The exception is Boulley’s thriller mystery, which draws from her personal experiences of reservation living as a member of the Sault Tribe of Sault Ste. Marie.

Nguyen tells the intimate story of an immigrant family from Vietnam that escapes the ravages of war and grows up in the Grand Rapids area.

Russell, a noted sci-fi and historical fiction author, writes passionately about “Big Annie” Klobuchar Clemenc, who at 25 led the 1913 copper strike in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

In another memoir, Luxenberg tells the emotional story of another immigrant family, this time in Detroit. His account reveals a deeply held family secret of mental illness and special needs.

In an unusual departure, Magoon, who partnered with Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcom X’s daughter, gives a creative nonfiction interpretation of X’s life as he comes of age in Lansing, Harlem and Boston.

In her startling debut novel, Boulley creates a complex teenage protagonist who gets caught up in a murder that takes place against the backdrop of Indigenous life in the heart of Michigan’s Indian country.

Two writers, Boyle and Hanna, delve into true-life tales that read like fictional thrillers.

Boyle drops back in history to mid-1920s Detroit and retells the dramatic story of Ossian Sweet, a physician who was tried with 10 other African Americans for the murder of a white man who had joined a mob protesting Sweet’s crossing the color line to live in an all-white neighborhood. The story is told against the backdrop of the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration and a family’s desire to join the American dream of home ownership. Boyle’s deft skills are at work here, and the outcome of the trial is never a given as it comes to a dramatic denouement led by defense lawyer Clarence Darrow.

Hanna’s contemporary memoir is a day-by-day retelling of the Flint Water Crisis and the lead poisoning of the children of Flint in 2019. Hannah, a young pediatrician, became a crusader in bringing the nation’s attention to this horrific contemporary disaster, all the while standing up to the medical political establishment.

The next Great Michigan Read book will be announced at the program’s end. Michigan Humanities is a statewide organization headquartered in Okemos that is partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. It is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

 “I have been impressed how timeless these books are and how people relate to the books on a personal level,” Jennifer Rupp, Michigan Humanities’ president and CEO, said. “Since the launch of Great Michigan Read, more than 300,000 people have read or listened to the books on audio.”

For each book, Michigan Humanities prepares a reader’s guide to help lead to “deeper conversations,” Rupp said.

Regional committees propose and review books leading to the selection. The books then become the focal point for book club discussion groups, with author appearances across the state.

“It’s been amazing to see standing room only at author events,” Rupp said.