Earth's Daughters magazine presents Michael Hopkins and Martha Deed as part of the Earth's Daughters Gray Hair Reading Series.

Poet, educator, jazz critic, and social commentator for over 30 years, Michael F. Hopkins is the author of A Kind Of Twilight (Smiling Cat Publications) and the ongoing critical forum A Deeper Groove. He has written for such periodicals as The Black Scholar, Contact II, and the international jazz magazine Coda. Through UB's Dept. of African-American Studies, Hopkins instituted the first courses ever taught on the pan-ethnic fantasy ElfQuest, the Pulitzer prize-winning comic strip Doonesbury, and pioneering science fiction author Octavia E. Butler. View his literary works at www.humblevoice.com/towncry.

Photo: Michael F. Hopkins

Just Buffalo/Spotlight On Youth present Spotlight On Youth Open Mic. The Spotlight On Youth (SOY) open mic series was started in 2004 to provide a place for youth to share their talents and interests with their peers. The events are open to all young people (ages 12-21) in WNY. While most participants share their poetry, the SOY open mics welcome: vocal or instrumental music, dance, rap, photography, drawing, painting, and/or lip synching.

Do you have a favorite poet or author? We encourage you to read his/her work and perhaps share what it is about this artist that attracts you. If you bring drawings, paintings or photographs, you can take them to the mic and, if you want to, share the background or anecdotal info about the piece(s). Or, if you'd rather, we can display your work in the room during the open mic.

Photo: Liandra

Just Buffalo/UB English Department present a reading by Croatian author-in-translation Dubravka Ugresic. She has earned an exceptional reputation, having won numerous international literary awards, the most recent of which include: 2007: Shortlisted for Angelus Central European Literary Award. Poland; 2006: Shortlisted for Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. UK; 2006: PEN Writers in Translation Award. UK; 2004: Premio Feronia – Citta di Fiano. Italy; 2000: Heinrich Mann Preis, Akademie Der Kunste Berlin. Germany. Her high profile in Europe means her United States audiences are due to be delighted by her works, and Buffalonians familiar with the BABEL series are sure to enjoy an additional internationally-acclaimed author coming to Western New York.

Dubravka Ugresic was born in 1949 in (what used to be) Yugoslavia, in its republic Croatia. She earned her degrees in Comparative Literature and Russian Language and Literature at the University of Zagreb, and worked for twenty years at the Institute for Theory of Literature at Zagreb University, successfully pursuing parallel careers as a writer and a literary scholar.