Midwest Literary Walk

Purple Rose Theatre Company Concert Reading

Saturday, Apr. 18 | 10am | Purple Rose Theatre | 137 Park St. | Registration required

Join us for the 2026 Purple Rose Theatre Company New Works Comedy Fest! Enjoy scenes performed from several plays written by Michigan playwrights including a featured new work by Founder and Artistic Director Jeff Daniels! PRTC artists will perform readings of scenes and acts from various plays and give the audience an opportunity to share feedback with the actors and select playwrights*. Please register through the library’s event calendar to attend in-person at the theatre or enjoy a Zoom webinar. Doors open at 10am, reading begins approximately 30 minutes after doors open. *While one of Jeff Daniels’ plays will be featured in the reading, Mr. Daniels will not be present at the event. 

The plays will include:

LEGS by *Jeff Daniels
GLAMPING by *Carey Crim
I DONE IT by *Paul Stroili
THREE’S COWMPANY by Eric Pfeffinger
REQUIM FOR A DONUT LOVER by *David MacGregor
THE CADDIE by S. Duane
*(indicated Resident Playwright)

Chris La Tray

Saturday, Apr. 18 | 1pm | Main St. Church | 320 N. Main St.

Chris La Tray is a Métis storyteller and enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. In addition to serving as Montana’s Poet Laureate from 2023–2025, he is also the recipient of the Montana Book Award, the High Plains Book Award, and Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of the Year selection. Becoming Little Shell is a memoir combining the story of the Little Shell Chippewa Tribe, the history of the Métis people, and La Tray’s own search to find a place with them. Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass) calls it “a story as strong and beautiful as a Métis sash, a story of identity, kinship and the journey toward justice.”

Carmen Bugan

Saturday, Apr. 18 | 3pm | Chelsea First Congregational Church | 121 E. Middle St.

Born in Romania, Dr. Carmen Bugan is a prize-winning poet and writer based in Chelsea, MI. She won the Bread Loaf Nonfiction Prize, received a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and was named 2018 Helen DeRoy Professor in Honors at the University of Michigan. She is on the faculty of the Oxford Writing Mentors, the Poetry School in London, and the International Women Writing Guild. Her poetry collections such as Time Being and Crossing the Carpathians, and her memoir, Burying the Typewriter draw inspiration from her family’s oppression and rebellion in 1980s Romania.

Nathan Pyle

Saturday, Apr. 18 | 4:30pm | Chelsea First United Methodist Church | 128 Park St.

Nathan Pyle has spent the last decade making art for the internet and his creations have taken the world by storm. He is the author of comic collections Strange Planet, Stranger Planet, NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette, and 99 Stories I Could Tell, as well as children’s books such as Tuck Me! Strange Planet began as a webcomic series, was published as a graphic novel, and was adapted into an Apple TV series in 2023 with Pyle as executive producer. Pyle’s work pokes and prods the social traditions we take for granted and shines a light on how weird they really are, from singing happy birthday to feeling like we need to tidy up our apartment before guests arrive. When asked why he creates his cartoons, Pyle replied “I want to celebrate humanity! I think that so much of what we are doing here is meaningful and absurd simultaneously.” (NPR interview with Liz Metzger).