Tuesday, May 9
Doors at 7 p.m.
Show Starts at 7:30
Sappho's Salon
Thursday, May 11
at 7:30 p.m.
Kate Moore
in conversation with Veronica Arreola
Reading and Conversation
Friday, May 12
at 7:30 p.m.
Morgan Parker with special guests Nate Marshall, Jamila Woods, and Jose Olivarez
Poetry Reading
Monday, May 15
at 7 p.m.
Melissa Febos
in conversation with
Zoe Zolbrod
Wednesday, May 17
at 7:30
Rachel Hall
with special guest
Anna Leahy
Reading and Signing
Thursday, May 18
at 7:30
Mary Gordon
Reading and Signing
Friday, May 19
at 7:30
Emil Ferris
Presentation & Signing
Tuesday, May 23
at 7 p.m.
Feminist Craft Circle
Wednesday, May 24
at 7:30 p.m.
The Conversation: Class & The Environment
featuring Jennifer Haigh, author of
Heat & Light
Thursday, May 25
at 7:30 p.m.
Sarah Ladipo Manyika
in conversation
wtih Chris Abani
Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun
Reading and Conversation
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at 4 p.m.
Better Nate Than Ever
by Tim Federle
Sunday, April 9
at 5 p.m.
The Nest
by Kenneth Oppel
Sunday, April 9 at 6:30 p.m.
We Were Feminists Once
by Roz Chast
by Andi Zeisler
Book Group
Sunday, April 16
at 4 p.m.
The Association of Small Bombs
by Karan Mahajan
Tuesday, April 18 at 7 p.m.
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
Sunday, April 23
at 2 p.m.
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Discussion & Potluck
Sunday, April 30
11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Suggested Reading:
Becoming Wise by Krista Tippett
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Dear Friends of Women & Children First,
What a March it's been! We were once again reminded of the strength of our community this month when we were showered with love--both in real life and on
social media--in response to
Amazon opening a brick-and-mortar bookstore here in Chicago earlier this month. Please continue to show your support for all of Chicago's fantastic, locally owned independent bookstores on
Independent Bookstore Day, Saturday, April 29th. We'll have exclusive merch, live music, and refreshments all day, and then a special reading co-hosted by
The Conversation at 4 p.m. More announcements coming soon!
Don't miss your chance to meet
Anne Lam
ott! Women & Children is proud to be hosting Anne's only Chicago event for her forthcoming book,
Hallelujah Anyway. Tickets are almost sold out! Get them while they last by clicking
HERE.
As always, thank you to everyone who attended our author and community events both in-store and off-site this month! Our robust, often politically engaged programming is one of the million things that distinguishes us from Amazon. As local author Rebecca Makkai said recently, "The revolution will not be delivered by Prime."
Many thanks,
W&CF
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Thursday, March 30 at 7:30 p.m. Conversation and Signing
Like a lot of women her age, Meredith Maran has a hard time believing she's a woman of her age. For readers of Anne Lamott, Abigail Thomas, and Ayelet Waldman, comes a lusty, kickass, post-divorce memoir, one woman's story of starting over at 60 in Hollywood. After the death of her best friend, the loss of her life's savings, and the collapse of her once-happy marriage, Meredith Maran leaves her San Francisco freelance writer's life for a 9-to-5 job in Los Angeles. Determined to rebuild not only her savings but herself,
The New Old Me follows Maran as she learns to celebrate becoming an elder along with the difficulties of loss and change.
Meredith Maran is the author of fourteen nonfiction books and the acclaimed 2012 novel,
A Theory of Small Earthquakes. Meredith is a book critic, essayist, and feature writer for
People, the
Los Angeles Times, the
Boston Globe, the
Chicago Tribune, and many other publications. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, Meredith lives in Silverlake, Los Angeles, and on Twitter at @meredithmaran.
Gina Frangello is a cofounder of Other Voices Books and the editor of the fiction section at
The Nervous Breakdown. She is also the author of one previous novel and a collection of short stories. She lives in Chicago.
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Tuesday, April 4 at 7 p.m.
This event is BYOB & BYO Crafting Materials
- All levels of crafters welcome!
Join the Feminist Craft Circle as we use our hooks and needles to create a colorful installation for this summer's Midsommarfest-- Andersonville's annual street festival! Learn the how's and why's of yarnbombing--street art made with knitting and crochet--and help us make a yarnbomb creation to be installed in and around the bookstore in June. Simple patterns will be provided, or you can let your creativity run wild! Please bring your own knitting needles or crochet hooks. Some yarn will be provided but any yarn contributions (especially acrylic yarns) are welcome.
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Wednesday, April 5 at 7:30 p.m. Reading, Conversation, and Signing
Individuals tend to resist changing their minds and public opinion tends to be stable over time, but between 2006 and 2016 support for same-sex marriage increased from 35% to 61%. Puzzled by the rapid rate of attitudinal change, and hoping to help advance support for LGBT rights, Brian Harrison and Melissa Michelson conducted a series of experiments between 2011 and 2014 to test how to change people's attitudes. Their findings offer a necessary resource for how to better communicate with one another in these challenging times.
Brian F. Harrison
(PhD, Northwestern University) is a political scientist, writer, and award-winning teacher. He has taught at Northwestern University, Wesleyan University, Loyola University Chicago, and DePaul University. Brian is a specialist in political communication, political behavior and attitude change, and public opinion. He has been published in many academic journals, such as
Political Behavior, Legislative Studies Quarterly,
and
Social Science Quarterly
, among others.
Melissa R. Michelson
(PhD, Yale University) is professor of political science at Menlo College. She is co-author of
Mobilizing Inclusion: Redefining Citizenship through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns
and
Living the Dream: New Immigration Policies and the Lives of Undocumented Latino Youth
. She has published dozens of articles, and her current research projects explore voter registration and mobilization in minority communities and persuasive communication on LGBT rights.
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Friday, April 7 at 7:30 p.m
In the first-ever Seven Seas history of the world's female buccaneers, Laura Sook Duncombe
tells the story of women, both real and legendary, who sailed alongside--and sometimes in command of--their male counterparts. History has largely ignored these female swashbucklers, until now. Here are their stories, from ancient Norse princess Alfhild to Cheng I Sao, who commanded a fleet of four hundred ships off China in the early nineteenth century.
Author Laura Sook Duncombe also looks beyond the stories to the storytellers and investigates why and how these stories are told and passed down, and how history changes depending on who is recording it.
Laura Sook Duncombe
is an author and feminist who loves all things science fiction, Broadway, and Sherlock Holmes. She lives with her husband and son in Virginia.
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Monday, April 10 at 7 p.m. Reading, Q&A, and Signing This event will be held at The People's Church, 941 W. Lawrence
In
Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, Lamott ventures to explore where to find meaning in life. We should begin, she suggests, by "facing a great big mess, especially the great big mess of ourselves." It's up to each of us to recognize the presence and importance of mercy and to use it to both forge a deeper understanding of ourselves and more honest connections with one another. While that can be difficult to do, Lamott argues that it's crucial. Full of Lamott's trademark honesty, humor and forthrightness,
Hallelujah Anyway is profound and caring, funny and wise--a hopeful book of hands-on spirituality.
Anne Lamott is the New York Times-bestselling author of
Help,
Thanks, Wow;
Traveling Mercies;
Bird by Bird; and
Operating Instructions as well as several novels, including
Imperfect Birds and
Rosie. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California.
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Wednesday, April 12 at 7 p.m.
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Thursday, April 13 at 7 p.m. Author Conversation and Signing
Join us for wine and cheese from Andersonville's Pastoral and a book talk featuring Greer Macallister and Renee Rosen! The authors will be discussing their new works of female-driven historical fiction--both set in Chicago. Macallister's
Girl in Disguise
is inspired by the true story of Kate Warne, the first female Pinkerton detective. Renee Rosen's
Windy City Blues
unfolds a rich love story born out of the Chicago's blues scene during the height of the Civil Rights movement.
Raised in the Midwest,
Greer Macallister
(
The Magician's Lie)
is a poet, short story writer, playwright and novelist whose work has appeared in publications such as the
North American Review,
the
Missouri Review,
and the
Messenger
. Her plays have been performed at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. She lives with her family on the East Coast.
Renée Rosen
is the bestselling author of
White Collar Girl, What the Lady Wants, Dollface
, and the young adult novel,
Every Crooked Pot.
She lives in Chicago. Visit her online at ReneeRosen.com, Facebook.com/ReneeRosenAuthor, and @ReneeRosen1.
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Sara Paretsky in conversation with Women & Children First Co-founder Ann Christophersen
Tuesday, April 18 at 7 p.m. Please note: This event will be held at the Swedish American Museum (5211 N. Clark St.)
A
READ LOCAL Event
To her parents, she's Victoria Iphigenia. To her friends, she's Vic. But to clients seeking her talents as a detective, she's V.I., and her new case will lead her from her native Chicago to Kansas, on the trail of a vanished film student and a faded Hollywood star. V.I. tracks her quarry through a university town, across fields where missile silos once flourished--and into a past riven by long-simmering racial tensions, a past that holds the key to the crimes of the present. But as the mysteries stack up, so does the body count. And in this, her toughest case, not even V.I. is safe.
Sara Paretsky is the
New York Times-bestselling author of nineteen previous novels, many part of the renowned V. I. Warshawski series. She is one of only four living writers to receive both the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers' Association in Great Britain. She lives in Chicago.
For this event, Sara will be in conversation with her longtime friend and co-founder of Women & Children First,
Ann Christophersen.
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Renee Engeln
Beauty Sick
Wednesday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m.
Reading, Q&A, and Signing
A
READ LOCAL Event
Join us for the launch celebration of Renee Engeln's new book,
Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women. Today's young
women face a bewildering set of contradictions when it comes to beauty. They're angry about the media's treatment of women but hungrily consume the very outlets that belittle and oppress them. These same young women are fierce fighters for the issues they care about and are striving to create a different world for themselves. In
Beauty Sick
, Dr. Renee Engeln, whose TEDx talk on beauty sickness has received more than 250,000 views, reveals the shocking consequences of our obsession with girls' appearance on their emotional and physical health as well as their wallets and ambitions. Combining scientific studies with the voices of real women of all ages, she provides inspiration and workable solutions to help girls and women overcome negative attitudes and embrace their whole selves, transform their lives, and claim the futures they deserve.
Renee Engeln
is an award-winning Northwestern University psychology professor based in Chicago.
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Book Launch Party
A READ LOCAL Event
At twenty-two, Chicagoan Nadine Kenney is thrilled to meet her future husband, Jamie, while vacationing in Florida. After a whirlwind, long-distance romance, Nadine leaves her friends, family, and city to join Jamie in suburban Massachusetts. Once married, they begin trying for a baby without knowing how hard that road will become. Nadine soon faces the little-known horrors of IVF when a procedure causes severe internal bleeding, and she wakes up from emergency surgery with a six-inch incision. In the difficult year that follows, anxiety and additional failed fertility treatments threaten her new marriage and her mental state. By some saving grace, she eventually becomes pregnant naturally, but the horrors are not over: her son is diagnosed with potentially terminal kidney complications. Ultimately, Nadine learns that in an unpredictable life, the only thing she can be sure of is the healing power of hope.
Nadine Kenney Johnstone teaches English at Loyola University Chicago and received her MFA from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been featured in Chicago magazine, the Moth, PANK, and various anthologies, including The Magic of Memoir. Nadine is a writing coach who presents at conferences internationally. She lives near Chicago with her family.
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Join us for an evening of poetry with Kay Ulanday Barrett for their gorgeous debut collection,
When the Chant Comes, which Sharon Bridgeforth calls "Fire medicine for the soul."
Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, performer, and educator, navigating life as a disabled pilipinx amerikan transgender queer in the U.S. with struggle, resistance, and laughter. K. has featured on colleges and stages globally, including Lincoln Center and the White House. They are a fellow of the Home School, Drunken Boat, and the Lambda Literary Review. Their contributi
ons are found in PBS News Hour, Asian American Writers' Workshop's The Margins, Lambda Literary Review, Trans Bodies/Trans Selves, Make/Shift, Third Woman Press, The Advocate, and Bitch Magazine. When the Chant Comes is their first collection.
For this event, Kay will be joined by several local poets. Stay tuned to our Facebook event to find out who!
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Sunday, April 23 at 4 p.m.
A READ LOCAL Event
Join authors Brittany Cavallaro, Jilly Gagnon, and Stephanie Strohm for a panel discussion o
n complicated relationships in young adult literature. Moderated by Chicago author Gloria Chao, the evening will include readings from the authors and Q&A.
Brittany Cavallaro
is the
New York Times-
bestselling author of the Charlotte Holmes series, including
A Study in Charlotte
and
The Last of August
. Currently, she's a PhD candidate in English literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She lives in California with her husband, cat, and collection of deerstalker caps.
Jilly Gagnon
, currently based in Chicago, has written humor, news, essays, and op-ed pieces for
Vanity Fair,
the
Onion,
and
the
Toast,
among others. She is the author of young adult novel
#FAMOUS
, and co-writes the darkly comic Choose Your Own Misery series with Mike MacDonald.
Stephanie Kate Strohm
is the author of
It's Not Me, It's You; The Taming of the Drew; Pilgrims Don't Wear Pink; Confederates Don't Wear Couture
; and the upcoming books
The Date to Save
and
Prince in Disguise
. She graduated from Middlebury College with a dual degree in theater and history and has acted her way around the United States, performing in more than twenty-five states. She currently lives in Chicago with her husband and a dog named Lorelei Lee.
Gloria Chao
is a Chicago-based MIT grad turned dentist turned writer. Her forthcoming debut novel,
American Panda
, is inspired by her experiences as a second-generation Taiwanese-American. It follows a 17-year- old college student whose parents, of course, want her to become a doctor and marry a Taiwanese Ivy Leaguer.
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Jen Sincero
You Are a Badass at Making Money
Wednesday, April 26 at 7:30 p.m.
Reading, Q&A, and Signing
From the #1
New York Times
-bestselling author of
You Are a Badass
, Jen Sincero recounts her own
transformation--over just a few years--from a musician
living in a converted garage with tum
bleweeds blowing through her bank account to a business-savvy jetsetter.
Jen channels the inimitable sass and practicality of
You Are a Badass
with these hilarious personal essays that offer accessible concepts to help readers learn to relate to money in a new (and lucrative) way.
Jen Sincero
is a world-renowned author, success coach, and motivational speaker who's spent more than a decade helping people transform their lives and their bank accounts. Sincero lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Thursday, April 27 at 7:30 p.m.
Reading, Conversation, and Signing
For this free event, bestselling author Stephanie Danler will be discussing her novel,
Sweetbitter
with WBEZ Nerdette podcast's Greta Johnsen. This event will be part of Stephanie's paperback tour. Wine and cheese will be provided by Pastoral!
Newly arrived in New York City, 22-year-old Tess lands a job working front of house at a celebrated downtown restaurant. What follows is her education: in champagne and cocaine, love and lust, dive bars and fine dining rooms. In
Sweetbitter,
Stephanie Danler deftly conjures the high-adrenaline world of the food industry and evokes the infinite possibilities, the unbearable beauty, and the fragility and brutality of being young and adrift.
Stephanie Danler
's work has appeared in the
Sewanee Review, Vogue, Travel and Leisure,
and
Bon Appetit,
among others. She is at work on a book of nonfiction and is based in Los Angeles.
Greta Johnsen
co-hosts WBEZ's Nerdette Podcast. Prior to joining WBEZ in 2014. Greta hosted
Morning Edition
at WCQS in Asheville, North Carolina, and at KUAC in Fairbanks, Alaska. Greta has a BA in English from Saint Olaf College and a MS in journalism from Northwestern University.
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Books, Bread & Roses in collaboration with The Conversation
Saturday, April 29 - ALL DAY
Free food, special merch, live music, readings, and more!
For our annual, nation-wide celebration of in
dependent bookstores, we'll be focusing on books and literature as tools of resistance. Our theme this year is "books, bread & roses" inspired by feminist labor organizer Rose Schneiderman's famous speech--"The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too"--a rallying cry for the dignity of workers drawn from the title of a 1911 poem by James Oppenheim. This theme will also be on display during the Andersonville Flower Show, which starts on April 22.
Paying homage to how this political slogan has been immortalized in song by countless folk singers including, Joan Baez, we'll have live music by Eiren Caffall in the store along with readings by local authors
Zoe Zolbrod,
Anne Elizabeth Moore, and others beginning
at 4 p.m. This reading is in collaboration with our new literary series, The Conversation.
Refreshments will include fresh baked bread (and, of course, butter!) along with coffee from The Coffee Studio in the morning and wine from Pastoral in the evening. We will also have exclusive Indie Bookstore Day merch for sale while supplies last.
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Kristen Radtke in conversation with Lucy Knisley
When Kristen Radtke was in college, the sudden death of a beloved uncle and the sight of an abandoned mining town after his funeral marked the beginning moments of a lifelong fascination with ruins and with people and places left behind. Over time, this fascination deepened until it triggered a journey around the world in search of ruined places. Now, in this genre-smashing graphic memoir, she leads us through deserted cities in the American Midwest, an Icelandic town buried in volcanic ash, islands in the Philippines, New York City, and the delicate passageways of the human heart. A narrative that is at once factual, historical, and personal, Radtke's words and
images ask why are we here, and what will we leave behind?
Kristen Radtke is the managing editor of Sarabande Books and the film and video editor of
TriQuarterly magazine. She lives in New York.
Lucy Knisley is the author and illustrator of beloved graphic novels about memory, identity, food, and family. Her Alex Award-winning graphic novel,
Relish: My Life in the Kit
che
n is a
New York Times bestseller, and her travelogues (
French Milk,
An Age of
License, and
Displacement) have been lauded by critics and fans. Her most recent graphic memoir is
Something New: Tales from a Makeshift Bride. She lives and works in Chicago.
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Dr. Willie Parker
Thursday, May 4 at 7:30 p.m.
Reading and Signing This event is co-sponsored by Personal PAC
In
Life's Work
, Dr. Willie Parker, one of the few doctors to provide abortion services to women in Mississippi and Alabama, pulls from his personal and professional life as well as the scientific training he received as a doctor to reveal how he came to believe, unequivocally, that helping women in need, without judgment, is precisely the Christian thing to do.
Dr. Willie Parker grew up in the Deep South, lived in a Christian household, and converted to an even more fundamentalist form of Christianity as a young man. But upon reading an interpretation of the Good Samaritan in a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he realized that in order to be a true Christian, he must show compassion for all women, regardless of their needs. In 2009, he stopped practicing obstetrics to focus entirely on providing safe abortions for the women who need help the most--often women in poverty and women of color--in the South.
In
Life's Work
, Dr. Willie Parker tells a deeply personal and thought-provoking narrative that illuminates the complex societal, political, religious, and personal realities of abortion in the United States from the unique perspective of someone who performs them and defends the right to do so every day. He also looks at how a new wave of anti-abortion activism, aimed at making incremental changes in laws and regulations state by state, is slowly chipping away at the rights of women to control their own lives.
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Julie Scelfo
Friday, May 5 at 7:30 p.m. Presentation and Signing
Read any history of New York City and you will read about men--men who were political leaders and men who were activists and cultural tastemakers.
The Women Who Made New York
reveals the untold stories of the phenomenal women who made New York City. Many were revolutionaries and activists, like Zora Neale Hurston and Audre Lorde. Others were icons and iconoclasts, like Fran Lebowitz and Grace Jones. There were also women who led quieter private lives but were just as influential, such as Emily Warren Roebling, who completed the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge when her engineer husband became too ill to work. Paired with striking, contemporary illustrations by artist Hallie Heald,
The Women Who Made New York
confronts the sexism inherent in how history is made and recorded.
Julie Scelfo
is a frequent contributor to the
New York Times
. Prior to joining the
Times
in 2007, Scelfo was a correspondent at
Newsweek
, where she covered breaking news and wrote about society and human behavior. Scelfo lives with her family in Brooklyn, where she rides a push-scooter to ease travel back and forth between neighborhoods. She is a member of PEN America, a supporter of Narrative 4, and believes radical empathy is where it's at. More information about her work can be found at juliescelfo.com.
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Wednesday, May 10 at 7 p.m.
Reading, Q&A, and signing
We're thrilled to welcome Susan Faludi, acclaimed feminist writer, back to Women & Children First. When Susan Faludi learned that her 76-year-old father - long estranged and living in Hungary - now identified as a woman, she struggled to connect this woman with the the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known throughout her life. Faludi chases that mystery into the recesses of her suburban childhood and her father's many previous incarnations: American dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon outback, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. Faludi's memoir about her father's metamorphosis takes her to Hungary and across borders - historical, political, religious, sexual - to bring her face to face with questions of identity and family allegiances.
Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of
The Terror Dream,
Stiffed, and
Backlash, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. A former reporter for the
Wall Street Journal, she has written for
The New Yorker, the
New York Times,
Harper's, and the
Baffler, among other publications.
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Are you addicted to audiobooks? You can now support Women & Children First by buying your audiobooks from Libro.fm! More details HERE.
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