Welcome

Welcome to the 29th annual Café Shapiro, featuring poems and short stories authored by University of Michigan students. We invite you to engage with these inspiring and thoughtful works. They will draw you into the creative process and connect you with students through their individual expressions. You will find a unique window into the Michigan learning experience.  

When Café Shapiro first launched over twenty years ago, it was a bold experiment, a student coffee break designed as part of the University’s Year of the Humanities and Arts (YoHA). Café Shapiro is an example of how past innovations become a part of current campus traditions.  YoHA set out to explore the role of the arts and humanities in civic and community life through a variety of programs. Café Shapiro continues to celebrate the arts and humanities, with this tradition of featuring undergraduate student writers nominated by their professors to perform their works.

The act of reading one's work out loud is a new experience for many of our students. Throughout several evenings, students will virtually share their works. They will be joined by friends, faculty, coaches, and family, as they demonstrate the power of speaking and performing. They will participate in an authentic act of creation, speaking possibility, expressing beliefs, and imagining the future.

Café Shapiro has become an annual celebration of undergraduate student writers as they think creatively and critically, reason, ask questions, and develop the skills that help them understand and participate in our world. We also publish this anthology of their work, making it available in print and through  U-M Deep Blue Repository , the University’s institutional repository. Through this process, students have the opportunity to learn about copyright and related steps to publishing their scholarship.  

Events such as Café Shapiro make visible the Library’s commitment to learning.  We provide an engaged space for students to practice, learn and grow their scholarship and advance their learning journey. We are enthusiastic partners with faculty and students, looking to enable the exploration of new ideas while capturing passions and self-expressions.  

We hope you enjoy reading the work of these talented undergraduate writers.

Laurie Alexander

Associate University Librarian for Learning and Teaching

U-M Library