join the effort to save Shaman Drum and the GLLAC

Shaman Drum Bookstore

An Open Letter from Julie Ellison

The following message was originally posted here and has been making the rounds as an email. Please refer other book lovers and writers, especially those in the Ann Arbor area, to this announcement and the letter it links to.

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I am writing to let you know about a collective effort to save Shaman Drum Bookshop, now incorporated as the Great Lakes Literary Arts Center (GLLAC). The statement (click here to download the PDF) explains the reasoning behind a new coalition to preserve Shaman Drum. Those of us involved in this don’t just want to keep the store from closing, however. We want to re-imagine the bookstore as a nonprofit humanities commons in Ann Arbor. Shaman Drum has a vital role in this city as a public space for literacy and literature.

This undertaking, to which all of the signers of this statement are fully committed, calls for a thoughtful, strategic partnership. To succeed, we will need to foster an alliance between those of us who work at the University of Michigan and our neighbors who work in other sectors. Therefore we are reaching out to people all over the university, as well as all over town–people in scholarship and business, teaching and media, festivals and philanthropy. We know that these different domains are linked by a network of people who work with words, building communities of reading, writing, learning, debate, and information. We need students eager to tell us about their dilemmas as book buyers and social
entrepreneurs who can frame new business models for a healthy print culture in digitizing times.

Please contact me if you would like to join the list of signers. Your name will be added to the names posted on the Shaman Drum website. We welcome your suggestions and ask you to forward this message to interested individuals and groups. We will add you to our email group and keep you informed about upcoming meetings and plans as they
emerge.

Sincerely,
Julie Ellison
Ann Arbor, MI

Julie Ellison is Professor of American Culture, English, and Art and Design at U-M. Formerly Associate Vice President for Research, she was the founding director of a national consortium of 90 colleges and universities, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life. She works on projects relating to new communities of writing in South Africa, is a contributor to the Humanities Indicators Project of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in New Zealand in 2007.

If you would like to add your name to this letter, please email: newsletter@shamandrum.com

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Shaman Drum
311-315 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
tel: 734-662-7407
www.shamandrum.com
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