November 2016  
Save the Date! 
 
Monday, December 5
at 7 p.m.
Brooke Allen
Let's Eat Mary
Play Reading

Wednesday, December 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Ronna Wineberg
Donna Baier Stein
Reading, Conversation, and Signing

Thursday, December 8
at 7:30 p.m.
Lucy Bledsoe in conversation with
Carol Anshaw
Reading and Signing

Saturday, December 10
at 11:15 a.m.
Story Time with Drag Queens featuring Coco Sho-Nell, Ashlaey Morgan, and Muffy Fishbasket
Kids' Holiday Story Time

Wednesday, December 14 at 7:30 p.m.
Tikva Wolf
Reading, Q&A, and Signing

Thursday, December 15 from 7 to 9 p.m.
Holiday Coloring Book Night Extravaganza!
BYOB & BYOCB

Friday, December 16
from 6 to 10 p.m.
Late-er Night Andersonville
25% off 2016 calendars and Boxed Holiday Cards from 6 to 10 p.m.
   
 
 
Tuesday, November 1 
at 7:15 p.m.
Jubilee
by Margaret Walker
 
Family of Women Book Group 
Sunday, November 6 
at 2 p.m.
The Door
by Magda Szabo

Sunday, November 13 
at 5 p.m.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
by J. K. Rowling

Sunday, November 13 
at 6:30 p.m. 
Potluck & 
Selection Meeting
 
Tuesday, November 15 
at 7:30 p.m.
Mothers, Tell Your Daughters
by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Discussion & Potluck
Sunday, November 20
Noon to 2 p.m.
Suggested Reading: Chapters 6-12 of 
The Gift of Years
by Joan Chittister 
 
Sunday, November 20
at 2 p.m.
Blue Is the Warmest Color
by Julie March

Sunday, November 20 
at 4 p.m.
March (Book 1)
by John Lewis


Dear Friends of Women & Children First,
 
November at Women & Children First means 2017 calendars are here along with boxed holiday cards and plenty of community events to get  you in the spirit! We hope you can join us for all of the neighborhood festivities on Small Business Saturday, which will also mark the launch of our holiday book drive in collaboration with SitStayRead

Please note, we won't be hosting Sappho's Salon this month, because we want to make sure that there is absolutely nothing distracting you from voting on Tuesday, November 8th!

As always, you can keep up to date with everything happening at W&CF on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Thank you for your continued support of your local feminist bookstore!

With love,

W & CF 
Lori Ostlund,  Anne Raeff, and 
Christine Sneed 
on
the Short Story vs. the Novel 
Thursday, November 3 at 7:30 p.m.
Reading, Conversation, and Book-signing

Three fiction writers who have published both short stories and novels candidly discuss each form's strengths and shortcomings. Lori Ostlund's novel After the Parade was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the 2016 Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction. Her first book, a story collection entitled The Bigness of the World, won the 2008 Flannery O'Connor Award, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and the 2009 California Book Award for First Fiction. Her work has appeared in the Best American Shor t Stories and the PEN/
O. Henry Prize Stories
. She is a teacher and lives in San Francisco with Anne Raeff and their two cats. Anne Raeff is the author of The Jungle Around Us, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her essays have appeared in the New England Review, ZYZZYVA, and Guernica, among others. She is also the author of the novel Clara Mondschein's Melancholia. Anne is currently a high school English and history teacher at East Palo Alto Academy. Christine Sneed is the author of two story co llections, The Virginity of Famous Men and Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry , and two novels Paris, He Said and Little Known Facts . She received the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, Ploughshares' Zacharis First Book Award, and the Chicago Writers Association's Book of the Year Award. She lives in Chicago and teaches at Northwestern  University. 
Friday, November 4 at 7:30 p.m.
Reading and Signing

Weaving together personal stories, histo ry, and analysis, Same Family, Differ ent Colors explor es t he myr iad ways skin-col or politics affect fam ily dynamics in the United States. Colorism and color bias, the preference fo r or presumed superiority of people based o n the color of their skin, is a perva sive and damaging b ut rarely discu ssed phenomenon.

In this unprecedented book, Lori Thar
ps explores the issue in African American, Latino, Asian American, and mixed-race families and communities. Tharps, the mother of three mixed-race children with three distinct skin colors, uses her own family as a starting point to investigate how skin-color difference is dealt with across the country and throughout American history. Groundbreaking and urgent, Same Family, Different Colors is a solution- seeking journey to the heart of identity politics, so that this more subtle cousin to racism, in the author's words, will be exposed and confronted.
 
Lori Tharps is an associate professor of journalism at Temple University and the coauthor of
Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America and Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Essence. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.
William Hazelgrove
Sunday, November 6 at 4 p.m.
Reading and Signing
A READ LOCAL EVENT

Just in time for Tuesday's election, join us for a rea ding and book-signing with local author William Hazelgrove for his new book exploring the life of Edith Wilson. After President Woodrow Wilson suffered a paralyzing stroke in the fall of 1919, his wife, First Lady Edith Wilson, began to handle the day-to-day responsibilities of the executive office. Mrs. Wilson had had little formal education and had only been married to President Wilson for four years; yet, in the tenuous peace following the end of World War I, Mrs. Wilson assumed the authority of the office of the president for seventeen long months. Though her Oval Office presence has been largely forgotten, one senator at the time called her "the Presidentress who had fulfilled the dream of suffragettes by changing her title from First Lady to Acting First Man."

William Elliott Hazelgrove, a Chicago resident, is the author of ten books. His books have received starred reviews in
Publishers Weekly and Booklist and received the Booklist Editors' Choice Award. He has been the subject of interviews in NPR's All Things Considered along with features in the New York Times, LA Times, the Chicago Tribune , and WGN. Madam President: The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson has been optioned by Storyline Entertainment.
Randa Jarrar
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali

Wednesday, November 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Reading and Signing
 
Award-winning novelist Randa Jarrar's new story collection moves seamlessly between realism and fable, history and the present , captu ri ng the lives of Muslim women and men across myriad geogra phies and circumstances. With acerbic w it, deep  tend erness, an d boundless imagination, Jarrar brings to  life a memora ble cast of characters, many of them "accidental transients" (a term for migratory bir ds that have gone astray seeking their circuitous routes back home). Fierc e an d feeling, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali is a testament to survival in the face of love, loss, and displacement.   

Randa Jarrar is the author of the novel A Map of Home, which received an Arab-American Book Award and was named one of the best novels of 2008 by the Barnes & Noble Review. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt and moved to the United States after the first Gulf War. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Utne Reader, and others. She blogs for Salon and lives in California.
Jessica Luther
Unsportsmanlike Conduct:
College Football and the Politics of Rape

Thursday, November 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Reading and Signing 
 
This book examines rape culture in college football by taking a deep dive into how various institutions--the NCAA, athletic departments, universities, the media, the police, and fans--use the same strategies over and over again when a college football player is accused of sexual assault to ensure that scrutiny dies down quickly, no institution ever has to change how it operates, and the evaporation of these cases looks natural. In short, nothing ever changes. Unsportsmanlike Conduct unpacks this societal playbook piece by piece and not only advocates that we destroy the old plays, but also suggests we replace them with ones that will force us to finally do something about this issue.

Jessica Luther is an independent writer and investigative journalist living in Austin, Texas. Her work on sports and culture has appeared in the Austin Chronicle and Sports Illustrated. This event is co-sponsored by the Domestic Violence Legal Clinic of Chicago.
Caits Meissner with special guests
C. Russell Price and Marty McConnell
Let It Die Hungry
Friday, November 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Poetry Reading 

For this reading, Caits will be joined by local poets 
C. Russell Price ( Tonight, We F*** the Trailer Park Out of Each Other ) and Marty McConnell ( Wine for a Shotgun ). Recklessly sensual, provocative, and profoundly curious, Meissner's coming-of-age poems seek to anchor 
their place in a messy world, blurring the edges of hard borders and disparate identities. Finding joy, connection, and determination in desperate spaces, as well as the slippery terrain of a changing self, Meissner's voice is at once a reckoning, a proclamation, and an open question. Sprinkled with the author's illustrations, the book's multidisciplinary approach also includes lesson plans, originally utilized in a women's prison, that invite the reader to write their own way out of polarizing dichotomies--and into the vast grey space of what it means to be alive. 

Caits Meissner's poetry has been awarded first place prizes from the Pan-African Literary Forum, the Ja-Nai Foundation and City College's Jerome Lowell DeJur Prize in Creative Writing. She has been widely published in journals and anthologies including Drunken Boat, the Offing, and the Feminist Wire. She is currently writer in residence at Bronx Academy of Letters, a creative writing instructor in a women's prison, and a part-time lecturer at the New School University.
Ruth Spiro  
Saturday, November 12 at 3 p.m.
Kids' Interactive Story Time 
followed by Q&A for adults about writing and publishing books for kids!
A READ LOCAL EVENT 

Accurate enough to satisfy an expert, yet simple enough for baby, Spiro's board books explore the basics of aerospace engineering and quarks by t y in g the concepts to a baby's world. Both books offer visually stimulating illustrations and use age-approp riate langua ge to encourage baby's  sens e o f wonder. Parents a nd caregivers may l earn a thing or two as well!

Ruth Spiro's debut picture book, Lester Fizz, was a Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year. She lives in Chicago, Illinois. This event will begin with an     i
nteractive story time followed by a Q&A for aspiring authors of kids' books.
Claudia Casper in conversation with Christine Rice
The Mercy Journals  
Wednesday, November 16 at 7:30 p.m.  
Reading, Conversation, and Signing
A READ LOCAL EVENT 

This unsettling novel is set thirty years in the future, in the wake of a third world war. Runaway effects of climate change have triggered the collapse of nation-states and wiped out more than one-third of t he global populati
on. One of the survivors, a former soldier nicknamed Mercy, suffers from PTSD and is haunted by guilt. His pain is eased when he meets a dancer named Ruby, a performer who breathes new life into his carefully constructed existence. But when his long-lost brother Leo arrives with news that Mercy's children have been spotted, the two brothers travel into the wilderness--a journey that will test their moral code.   

Claudia Casper is the author of two previous novels, The Reconstruction and The Continuation of Love By Other Means. She is writing a screenplay adaptation of The Reconstruction for a 3D feature film co-production. She teaches writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

For this event, Claudia will be in conversat
io n wit h local author Christine Rice. Rice's story collection Swarm Theory was named as a finalist in the Chicago Writer s Association's 2016 Book of the Year Awards. Her wr iting has appeared in the Big Smoke, the Chicago Tribune, Metro Parent, the Good Men Project, and her radio essays have been produced by WBEZ Chicago. Christine is the managing editor of Hypertext Ma gazine (hypertextmag.com) and the director of Hypertext Studio Writing Center. She has taught at Columbia College Chicago since 1992. Chris was recently awarded the 2015 the Ragdale Rubin Fellowship. You can find out more at christinemaulrice.com.
Melissa Range
Scriptorium    
Thursday, November 17 at 7:30 p.m.
Poetry Reading 
 
A National Poetry Series winner, selected by and with a  foreword by Tracy K. Smith, Scriptorium is concerned with questions of religious authority. The medieval scriptorium, the central image of the collection, stands for that authority but also for its subversion. In addition to exploring the ways language is used, or abused, to claim religi ous authority, Scriptorium also addresses the authority of the vernacular in various time periods and places, particularly in the Appalachian slang of the author's East Tennessee upbringing. Throughout Scriptorium, the historical mingles with the personal: poems about medieval art, theology, and verse share space with poems that chronicle personal struggles with faith and doubt.

Melissa Range is the author of the poetry collection Horse and Rider and the recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Antiquarian Society, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation. Originally from East Tennessee, Range currently lives in Wisconsin and teaches at Lawrence University.
Tara Betts with Special Guests
Erika Sanchez and Eve Ewing

Break the Habit
Friday, November 18 at 7:30 p.m.
Book Launch Party
A READ LOCAL EVENT 
 
Of Tara Betts's new poetry collection, Break the Habit, author Maria Gillan says, "these are poems that make the reader weep in the same way a g reat jazz singer does by touching the very core of what it means to be human." Break the Habit is a personal, lyrica l work  that speaks to the varied ways one experiences loss--divorce, death, and abandonment--but it is also about the choices one makes in the aftermath of loss. For this event, Tara will be joined by Chicago poet, essayist, and educator Eve Ewing and Erika Sanchez, a poet, essayist, and fiction writer whose YA novel is forthcoming in fall 2017.

Tara Betts is the author of Arc & Hue, and the chapbooks Never Been Lois Lane, 7 x 7: kwansabas, and THE GREATEST!: An Homage to Muhammad Ali. Tara holds a MFA from New England College and a PhD from Binghamton University. Her poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in several magazines and anthologies, including Essence, Poetry magazine, Nylon, Cicada, Octavia's Brood, the Break Beat Poets, and both Spoken Word Revolution anthologies. Tara currently teaches at University of Illinois at Chicago.
Storycise with Dot Kane
Saturday, November 19 at 3 p.m.
Kids' Activity for ages 3 to 7 
 
Storyteller Dot Kane will be visiting the bookstore to offer another fun session of "Storycise," a combination of storytelling, dance, yoga, comedy, and exercise for children. This playf ul work-out encourages children to use their bodies, voices, and imagination to dance through stories, developing cardiovascular stamina, strength, balance, original stories, literacy, and a lifelong love of movement.

With a background in dance, theater, and early childhood education, Dot Kane has been delivering her unique style of storytelling since 1992 and is a favorite presenter and keynote speaker at teacher workshops all over the Midwest. Since 1997, Dot has performed a weekly in-house interactive television show on Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago's television station, Skylight TV. 
Small Business Saturday/Indies First: 
20 Books in 20 Minutes: Kids' Edition 
Saturday, November 26 - ALL DAY
Neighborhood Event  

Recover from Black Friday by shopping local on Small Business Saturday/Indies First. Indies First is a national campaign of activities and events in support of independent bookstores that was started by Sherman Alexie in 2013. We'll have coffee provided by The Coffee Studio all morning. The first shoppers of the day will get a free bookish tote bag when they spend $25 or more!

Then, at Noon, we'll be hosting 20 BOOKS IN 20 MINUTES: KIDS' EDITION. Jamie and Linda will have ten minutes each to pitch their favorite 10 picture books of the season! But, that's not all! We're also participating in the Small Business Saturday (SBS) Passport program along with more than a dozen Andersonville shops and restaurants. Get your passport stamped at all participating businesses and you'll be entered into a raffle to win gift certificates and other prizes donated by those businesses.  
KOKUMO
Reacquainted with Life

Thursday, December 1 at 7:30 p.m.
Poetry Reading
READ LOCAL  EVENT 

KOKUMO is a musician, performance artist, poet, trans activist, and organizer. Her work can be found all over the Internet, and her words have been spo ken even further. Her first play, The Faggot Who Could Fly, headlined the Gwendolyn Brooks Conference when she was only 23. Her first book of poems, Reacquainted With Life, is a testament to the resilience that she represents.
KOKUMO is currently based in Chicago.  
Late Night Andersonville 
Friday, December 2 from 6 to 10 p.m.
 
Andersonville
makes it easy to support local businesses while shopping for friends and family (or yourself!) at the 14th annual Late Night Andersonville. For four hours only, mo re than 40 beloved Andersonville stores and restaurants will be open late, offering great savings on gifts and meals, plus free refreshments and entertainment. Stay tuned to our website and Facebook page to learn more about the special deals we'll be offering! 
Michelle Falkoff in conversation with
Nami Mun

Pushing Perfect

Friday, December 2 at 7:30 p.m.  
Book Launch Party
A READ LOCAL EVENT 

A girl's quest for perfection results in d angerous consequences in this smart, suspenseful YA novel by the author of Playlist for the Dead. Kara gets perfect grades. She never messes up. But she finally gets so tired of living with all that pressure, she does something she never thought she'd do. Something risky and illegal. And then before she knows it, Kara's life veers wildly off its perfect course, and she's forced to decide if she wants to go back to the quest of perfection or n ot.

Michelle Falkoff's fiction and review
s hav e been published in ZYZZYVA, DoubleTake, and the Harvard Review, among others. She is a grad uate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and c urrently ser ves as director of communication and legal reasoning at Northwestern University School of Law.

Nami Mun's first book, Miles from Nowhe
re, received a Whiting Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Chicago Public Library's 21st Century Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers and the Asian American Literary Award. Her s tories have been published in the New York Times, Granta, Tin House, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology, among many others. She is currently an assistant professor of creative writing in Chicago.
Laura Jane Grace
Friday, December 2 at 7 p.m.
Doors open at 6:15 p.m.
Reading, Q&A, and Book-signing

Please Note: This is a ticketed, off-site event, which will be held at Wilson Abbey (935 W. Wilson). Purchase of a ticket to this event includes one copy of Laura Jane Grace's book. BUY TICKETS HERE.               
Billboard just named Tranny by Laura Jane Grace one of the 100 Greatest Mus ic Books of All Ti me! In this  memoir, the provocative transgende r advo c a te and lead singer of the punk rock band Agai nst Me provides a searing account of her search fo r identity and her true self.

Since its inception in 1997, Against Me has be en one of punk's most influential bands, but also one of its most divisive. With every notch the four- piece climbed in their career, they gained new fans while infuriating their old ones. They suffered legal woes; a revolving door of drummers; and a horde of angry, militant punks who called them "sellouts" and tried to sabotage their shows.

But underneath the public turmoil, something much greater occupied Tom Gabel--a secret
kept for 30 years, only acknowledged in the scrawled-out pages of personal journals and hidden in lyrics. Through a troubled childhood, delinquency, and struggles with drugs, Gabel was on a punishing search for identity. N ot until Rolling Stone's May 2012 profile did fans know that Gabel was transgender, identifying as a woman under the name Laura Jane Grace.

Tranny
is the intimate story of Against Me's enigmatic founder, weaving the narrative of the band's history, as well as Grace's, with dozens of never-before-seen entries from the piles of journals Grace kept. More than a typical music memoir about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, Tranny is an inside look at one of the most remarkable stories in the history of rock.

Since coming out as transgender in 2012, Laura Jane Grace has been an outspoken advocate for transgender awareness. She has a daughter and lives in Chicago 
J. B. Blankenship and SitStayRead  
The Christmas Truck and Cozy Fan Tooty
Saturday December 3 at 3 p.m.  
Story Time with SitStayRead 
(Yes, there will be doggies!) 

The Christmas Truck, SitStayRead, and Women & Children First will be once again hosting a very special wishing tree this year, beginning November 26th through the end of December, to put diverse books in the hands of area elementary school kids. Everyone is welcome to donate a new book to a child in need whose name is decorating a star on the book tree, which will be on display in our front window.

To promote the wishing tree and introduce folks to the literacy program SitStayRead, we'll be hosting this kid-friendly event with a story time and coloring! There will be dog teams for kids to visit with, a reading of both The Christmas Truck and Chicago adventure book Cozy Fan Tooty, written for middle-grade readers by author (and SitStayRead board member) J. B. Blankenship. 
Women & Children First - wcfbooks@gmail.com
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