William C. Whitbeck will be joining numerous fellow Michigan Notable Award Winners at the 9th Annual Kerrytown BookFest September 11 at the Ann Arbors Farmers Market in downtown Ann Arbor.
Two Michigan Notable Book Award winners Doug Stanton, who is the founder of the National Writers Series in Traverse City, and National Book Award Winner will be featured in a main tent presentation with Stanton interviewing Gordon.
Whitbeck said that he is especially pleased to return to Kerrytown since last year the even was his first book-related event as an author.
“Kerrytown is my good luck piece,” he said.
One panel discussion, “Michigan Voices”, is made up exclusively of Michigan Notable Book Award Winners. The panel of four writers, moderated by historical fiction writer and Notable winner D.E. Johnson of Kalamazoo Michigan author of the “Detroit Electric Scheme”, will discuss how Michigan and its unique locales, peoples and places contribute to the richness of their novels.
Other panelists will discuss how their work is dramatically influenced by Michigan. University of Michigan author and poet Laura Kasishcke brings both the voice of prose and poetry to her award winning historical novella “Eden Springs” centered in Benton Harbor; Bonnie Jo Campbell, National Book Award Finalist for “American Salvage” and author of the blockbuster “Once Upon a River”, set on Michigan waterways, will explain what attracts her to Michigan-centric settings and; Michael Federspeil will talk about how Hemingway was profoundly influenced by the summers he spent in Michigan. Federspiel won a 2011 Michigan Notable Book Award for “Picturing Hemingway’s Michigan”.
Finally, William C. Whitbeck and D.E. Johnson will add to the mix with their extensive knowledge of Michigan history which is showcased in their books. Whitbeck’s “To Account for Murder” is set in postwar Michigan and is a legal thriller based on the actual assassination of a Michigan Senator by the infamous Purple Gang. Johnson sets his novels in Detroit during the heyday of the early automotive history weaving real characters into an atmospheric murder mystery.
Other Michigan Notable Book Award Winners at Kerrytown this year are the National Book Award Winner Jaimy Gordon (“Lord of Misrule”) of Western Michigan University; M.L. Liebler (“Working Words”); Doug Stanton author of “Horse Soldiers” (about a unique group of soldiers who rode horses to victory in Afghanistan following 9-11) and “In Harm’s Way”; John Gallagher, a Detroit Free Press writer who wrote “Reimaging Detroit” which looks at what it will take to create a smaller, but more vibrant city.
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The gangland slaying of Michigan Senator Warren G. Hooper was such shocking news in 1945 that it swept war headlines from the front pages of newspapers across the Midwest. Decades later, his brutal death is still something of a mystery.
William C. Whitbeck, who also happens to be on the Michigan Court of Appeals fictionalizes a notorious assassination of a state senator in To Account For Murder. He continues a Michigan tradition started by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John Voelker (better known as Robert Traver), the author of Anatomy of a Murder. Traver created a thinly fictionalized account of a true murder case which became one of the most phenomenally successful books of its type and time.