Lights up on Washington Heights!

Before Hamilton became a global phenomenon, before Lin-Manuel Miranda became a household name, a little show called In the Heights shook up Broadway with its hip-hop and salsa soundtrack and big, bilingual heart.

In the new book In the Heights: Finding Home, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Jeremy McCarter tell the story of the show’s humble beginnings, from rehearsals in a bookstore basement to the Broadway smash (and soon-to-be feature film!) that created an unbreakable community and a new kind of family for everyone involved.

Join Miranda, Hudes, and McCarter for a very special In the Heights Virtual Book Launch on Tuesday, June 15 from 7:00 to 8:00 pm CT on Zoom.

Sure to be an unforgettable conversation on creativity, community, and finding home, this is your chance to hear directly from the creative team behind the timeless story of how one neighborhood—Washington Heights—can speak to the world.

Your ticket includes admission to this exclusive event, a hardcover copy of In the Heights: Finding Home ($40 retail price), as well as sales tax, shipping, and handling (if applicable). Please click here to purchase your ticket! Ticket sales will close at 11:00 AM CT on June 15. We can't wait to see you there!

Award-winning author Michael Leannah writes fiction and nonfiction for children and adults.  His stories and articles have been published in magazines in the United States and Australia. He is the creator of We Think with Ink, a series of instructional books for writing teachers.

With more than thirty years’ experience in the public schools of Milwaukee and Sheboygan, Michael enjoys working with students of all ages at writing classes and workshops. He lives in Sheboygan.

Most Days is a book about mindfulness. Its a book about relishing the magic of the here and now. Its about enjoying the extraordinary unfoldings of an ordinary day. Moving from morning to night, the narrator becomes, by turns, boy or girl, of ever-changing ethnicity and ability, inhabiting city, country, or suburb. They are all children everywhere, opening themselves to the gift of time.

Extraordinary things fill the ordinary minutes. Have you noticed? Most Days shows how to be mindful of the little things we all love so much. For children of all ages. 

“Most days are ordinary days.” Or are they? In a feast of simple sensory experiences over the course of a day, the experiences of racially diverse, multigenerational communities suggest otherwise.

           –Kirkus (starred review)
 

 

Write to him at contactleannah@gmail.com. Please visit his website: www.michaelleannah.com.

HURON, ONTARIO, MICHIGAN, ERIE, SUPERIOR: HOMES. MOHEB SOLIMAN TRACES THE COASTS OF THE GREAT LAKES WITH POSTMODERN POEMS, EXPLORING THE NATURAL WORLD, THE EXPERIENCE OF BELONGING, AND THE FORMATION OF IDENTITY ALONG BORDERS.

Please join us on the City Deck Landing Patio for a special reading with poet Moheb Soliman, and UWGB faculty members Chris Williams and Chuck Rybak.

Moheb Soliman’s HOMES maps the shoreline of the Great Lakes from the rocky North Shore of Minnesota to the Thousand Islands of eastern Ontario. This poetic travelogue offers an intimate perspective on an immigrant experience as Soliman drives his Corolla past exquisite vistas and abandoned mines, through tourist towns and midwestern suburbs, seeking to inhabit an entire region as home. Against the backdrop of environmental destruction and a history of colonial oppression, the vitality of Soliman’s language brings a bold ecopoetic lens to bear on the relationship between transience and belonging in the world’s largest, most porous borderland.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Moheb Soliman is an interdisciplinary poet from Egypt and the Midwest. He has presented writing, performance, installation, and video work at diverse literary, art, and public spaces in the US and Canada with support from the Banff Centre, Pillsbury House, the Joyce Foundation, and Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Moheb has degrees from The New School and the University of Toronto and lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he was the program director for the Arab American literary journal and arts organization Mizna.

PRAISE FOR HOMES

“In a time of environmental catastrophe and colonial destruction, Soliman's sly and shifting poems suggest that moving between various homes makes more sense than trying to construct a static place of complete belongingness.” —Elizabeth Hoover, Star Tribune