Event alert: Michael Kula, Stephen Anderson, Mare Chapman, Aja Monet, Natalie Moore

Tuesday, May 23, 7:00 pm at Boswell:
Michael Kula, author of The Good Doctor.

Michael Kula is a tenured Associate Professor in the Writing Studies program at the University of Washington, Tacoma who is best known to Milwaukeeans from his time at Carole University. His work has appeared in work has previously appeared in numerous journals including The Drum, Vehicle, and The Copperfield Review.

In The Good Doctor, Kula offers a passionate story about the summer of 1917 in Waukesha. Based on a true story, Kula draws on a rich variety of sources as he takes readers on a journey through the American heartland at a time of great change for both the country and the tragic lives of the characters who inhabit its pages.

Liam Callanan offers this recommendation: “Though the subjects of this meticulously researched historical novel are long dead, not a page of this evocative novel is anything less than fully alive.”

Wednesday, May 24, 7:00 pm at Boswell:
Stephen Anderson, author of In the Garden of Angels and Demons.

The work of Shorewood-based poet Stephen Anderson has appeared in Southwest Review, Verse Wisconsin, and Free Verse. His new collection, In the Garden of Angels and Demons reflects the author's global vision. The reader is guided through spaces in, around and outside the third planet from the sun, places that are memorable and universal in the weight of their being.

Anderson is not classifiable as a regional poet per se, although some of his poems relate to Milwaukee and the Midwest. His poetry reflects his perspective of not belonging to any one village, town, city or nation. His poetry spans his travels and residence abroad as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Chile, a university lecturer at Queen Mary and Westfield College (University of London), and numerous trips to Europe and the Caribbean. Through the eyes of this poet, the reader is transported to London, Rome, Amsterdam, Jerusalem, Norway, and Milwaukee - even to the rings of Saturn and beyond.

Anderson is also the author of Montezuma Resurrected and Other Poems and The Silent Tango of Dreams. His most recent chapbook is 2015’s Navigating in the Sun. Many of Anderson’s poems have been featured on Milwaukee Public Radio’s Lake Effect, and several of his poems are included in the collection Portals and Piers.

Thursday, May 25, 7:00 pm at Boswell:
Mare Chapman, author of Unshakeable Confidence: the Freedom to Be Our Authentic Selves.

Madison's Mare Chapman is a psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher in private practice since 1983. Mare finds mindfulness to be the most transformative tool for handling the gamut of life's challenges with greater ease and stability. Also trained in interactive guided imagery, Mare brings a holistic approach to her work. In 1976 she founded and directed the Yahara House, the first non-profit in Wisconsin to offer day treatment services to adults with chronic mental illness.

"I don't trust myself and I'm always worrying about what others think of me"... Does this sound familiar? With astounding clarity, Chapman's new book, Unshakeable Confidence, identifies the gender conditioning women receive from the moment of birth. Offering a feminist perspective on how women are culturally conditioned to disconnect from their authenticity and power, the book guides the reader through an intimate journey in applying mindfulness to cultivate connection with authentic self and gain the freedom to live with unshakeable confidence.

Unshakeable Confidence explores the ways women lose themselves in relationships and shows how they can regain connection with their true selves through mindfulness. Using her popular nine-week meditation class that trains the mind, heart, and body as a framework, Chapman builds on "Ownwork" practices the reader can use in formal meditation sits or informally, in daily moments like sitting in the car or waiting in line.

Saturday, May 27, 7:00 pm at Boswell:
Aja Monet, author of My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter.

Aja Monet is a poet, performer, and educator from Brooklyn. She has been awarded the Andrea Klein Willison Prize for Poetry, and the Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title.  In My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter, Monet offers an ode to mothers, daughters, and sisters - the tiny gods who fought to change the world. Textured with the sights and sounds of growing up in East New York in the nineties, of school on the South Side of Chicago, and of the olive groves of Palestine, these stunning poems tackle racism, sexism, genocide, displacement, heartbreak, and grief, but also love, motherhood, spirituality, and Black joy.

Angela Y Davis says, “Aja Monet’s poetry off­ers us textures of feeling and radical shifts of meaning that expand our capacity to envision and fight for new worlds. From Brooklyn, USA to Hebron, Occupied Palestine, we take a feminist journey through rage and serenity, through violence and love, through ancient times and imagined futures. This stunning volume reminds us that conflict and contradiction can produce hope, and that poetry can orient us toward a future we may not yet realize we want."

Money is also the author of ­The Black Unicorn Sings and the co-editor, with Saul Williams, of Chorus: A Literary Mixtape. She lives in Little Haiti, Miami, where she is a co-founder of Smoke Signals Studio and dedicates her time merging arts and culture into community organizing with the Dream Defenders and the Community Justice Project.

Sunday, May 28, 3:00 pm at Boswell:
Natalie Y. Moore, author of The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation.

Natalie Y. Moore is the South Side bureau reporter for WBEZ, the NPR-member station in Chicago. In The South Side, Chicago native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation in the city’s South Side, showcasing the lives of these communities through the stories of her family and the people who reside there. The South Side highlights the impact of Chicago’s historic segregation—and the ongoing policies that keep the system intact.

Mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel have touted Chicago as a “world-class city.” The skyscrapers kissing the clouds, the billion-dollar Millennium Park, and the Michelin-rated restaurants, tell one story. Yet swept under the rug is another story: the stench of segregation that permeates and compromises Chicago. Though other cities, including Cleveland, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and, of course, Milwaukee, can fight over that mantle, it’s clear that segregation defines Chicago. And unlike many other major U.S. cities, no particular race dominates; Chicago is divided equally into black, white and Latino, each group clustered in various turfs.

Before joining WBEZ, Moore covered Detroit City Council for Detroit News. She worked as an education reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and a reporter for the Associated Press in Jerusalem. Her work has been published in Essence, Black Enterprise, the Chicago Tribune. She was awarded the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library and Foundation in 2017.