The World-Ending Fire by Wendell Berry
Incidental Inventions by Elena Ferrante
Dictionary of the Undoing by John Freeman
That Wild Country by Mark Kenyon
Inland by Tea Obrecht
Weather by Jenny Offill
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener
Walking by Erling Kagge
Waking Up White by Debby Irving
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Walking Art Practice by Ernesto Pujol
Little Weirds by Jenny Slate
The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler
Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq
American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
Make It Scream, Make It Burn by Leslie Jamison
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
A Walking Life by Antonia Malchik
White Flights by Jess Row
Trace by Lauret Savoy
The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson
Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Impossible Views of the World by Lucy Ives
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
The Need by Helen Phillips
The Third Horseman by William Rosen
The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing
Good morning. My name is James Schirmer and I'm currently chair of the English department at the University of Michigan-Flint and, on behalf of my fellow event planners and partners, it is my honor and pleasure to welcome you to the Flint Festival of Writers.
It's great to see everyone this morning. I'd like to think that you're here for many of the same reasons that brought my colleagues/companions/comrades Sarah Carson, Bob Campbell, Katie Curnow, Connor Coyne, Jan Worth Nelson, and I together: the belief, the knowledge that Flint is a place rich with stories, that the writing done in and about Flint is uniquely important and deserving of attention and support. Everything about today's festival is intended to acknowledge the power and value in reading, in writing, in sharing words with others, sharing our perspective, sharing our stories, in sharing your story.
So, we can and do look forward to learning from LaTashia, Jonah, Ben, and Bob in this morning's panel, to working with Jonah and Liz and Kelsey this afternoon, to hearing from Flint's young writers, to networking and perusing at the book fair, and to listening to LaTashia in the early evening. And yes, there is an after-party open mic celebration at Totem tonight, but, given what I think unites us in coming here, my hope is for the entire day to be a celebration.
Here's to a beautiful, inspiring, restorative day in the city of Flint.
Nature's Mutiny by Philipp Blom
Generous Thinking by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
The Hunger by Alma Katsu
Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells
Milkman by Anna Burns
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Time Travel by James Gleick
Witness Tree by Lynda V. Mapes
This Is The Way The World Ends by Jeff Nesbit
The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat
Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett
New Dark Age by James Bridle
What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte
Coal by Barbara Freese
A Bright Future by Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan A. Qvist
Downriver by Heather Hansman
The Fuzzy and the Techie by Scott Hartley
The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Quiet by Susan Cain
Outline by Rachel Cusk
White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
The Inward Empire by Christian Donlan
Florida by Lauren Groff
The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon
Severance by Ling Ma
So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo
The End of Animal Farming by Jacy Reese
Season of Storms by Andrzej Sapkowski
The Pisces by Melissa Broder
What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons
Extreme Cities by Ashley Dawson
Natural Causes by Barbara Ehrenreich
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
The Terror by Dan Simmons
Reader, Come Home by Maryanne Wolf