Tuesday, July 11
at 7:30 p.m.
Sappho's Salon
Thursday, July 13
at 7:30 p.m.
Quraysh Ali Lansana, Sandra Jackson-Opoku, and Tara Betts
Reading and
Book-signing
Friday, July 14
at 7:30 p.m.
Erika L. Sanchez
Book Launch Party
Wednesday, July 19
at 7 p.m.
Activism:
Women Employed
Friday, July 21
at 7:30 p.m.
Tim Taranto
Reading, Q&A, and Book-signing
Tuesday, July 25
at 7 p.m.
Feminist Craft Circle
Saturday, July 29 - Sunday, July 30
Annual Used Book Sale benefiting the
Women's Voices Fund
Tuesday, August 1
at 7 p.m.
Megan Stielstra
Book Launch Party
Please note: this ticketed event will be held at Uptown Underground. Tickets on sale through Uptown Underground beginning June 1st.
Wednesday, August 2
at 7:30 p.m.
Augustus Rose
Book Launch Party
Thursday, August 3
at 7:30 p.m.
Jac Jemc
Book Launch Party
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Sunday, June 11
at 4 p.m.
The Tiger Rising
by Kate DiCamillo
Sunday, June 11
at 5 p.m.
The Hobbit
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Sunday, May 14
at 6:30 p.m.
We Were Feminists Once
by Andi Zeisler
Sunday, June 18
at 4 p.m.
Selection Meeting Potluck
Tuesday, June 20
at 7:30 p.m.
The South Side
by Natalie Y. Moore
Sunday, June 18
at 2 p.m.
Dirty River
by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Smarasinha
Discussion & Potluck
Sunday, June 4
11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Suggested Reading: the second half of
Becoming Wise
by Krista Tippett
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Dear Friends of Women & Children First,
June is a month of beloved traditions at your favorite feminist bookstore! We have Midsommarfest on June 10th & 11th, our Pride Open Mic hosted by Sappho's Salon on June 13th, and our LGBTQIA Storytelling Show hosted by You're Being Ridiculous on June 17th!
This is also the month when we begin accepting donations for our
Annual Used Book Sale (held July 29th & 30th), benefiting our non-profit arm, the Women's Voices Fund
. Beginning June 12th and extending through July 24th, we'll be accepting gently used books. Donation drop-off hours are Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
To learn more about our used book sale criteria, click
HERE
.
Also, save the date for
Terry Tempest Williams,
who will visit the store as part of the paperback tour for her new book, The Hour of Land, on July 5th!
Happy Pride!
With love,
W&CF
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Wednesday, May 31 at 7 p.m.
For each meeting of our Activism Series, we
showcase specific local social justice organizations. Representatives from the organizations give a
presentation detailing their mission, followed by a Q&A and an action plan of how attendees can get involved. This
month's featured organizations are The Courage Campaign: CTA and Rape Victim Advocates.
The Courage Campaign: CTA is a grassroots, volunteer-based organization dedicated to fighting street harassment on Chicago public transit and throughout the Chicagoland area. Come hear about the history of this group's work, strategies for responding to street harassment, tips on
being a good ally, resources for reporting harassment, and the group's efforts to expand its network. This session will be followed by a Q&A with
Rape Victim Advocates
. RVA is an independent, not-for-profit organization dedicated to the healing and empowerment of sexual assault survivors through non-judgmental crisis intervention counseling, individual and group counseling, and medical and legal advocacy in the greater Chicago metropolitan area.
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Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the American literary icons of the twentieth century. Brooks's poetry served as witness to the stark realities of urban life: the evils of lynching, the murders of Emmett Till and Malcolm X, and the revolutionary effects of the civil rights movement. She earned many accolades for her work, and in 1950, she became the first African American ever to receive a Pulitzer Prize.
A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun
delves deep into the rich fabric of Brooks's work and world over nearly six decades. It is a commemoration of an artist who negotiated black womanhood and incomparable artistry with a changing, restless world-an artistic maverick way ahead of her time.
Angela Jackson is
an award-winning poet, playwright, and novelist. She is the author of numerous collections of poetry, inclu
ding the National Book Award-nominated
And All These Roads Be Luminous: Poems Selected and New
. Her novel
Where I Must Go
won the American Book Award in 2009. Jackson lives in Chicago.
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Tai Chi & Qigong Classes
Beginning Friday, June 2 at 8:45 a.m.
We'll be starting an 8-week session of Tai Chi classes on Friday, June 2nd with a cost of only $88 per person. The class will meet from 8:45 to 9:45 a.m. every Friday.
The next 8-week session of qigong will begin on Sunday, June 4th. This class will meet from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. We will likely be starting to learn a new form. Contact Francesca
(312-823-9045) or Lynn (
wcfly [email protected]) if you want to sign up for the next session, or just come on June 4th to sign up.
Please note: on Sunday, May 28th, Francesca will teach a drop-in qigong class at the usual price of $11.
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A Book Party
Please note: this free event will be held at the Swedish American Museum, 5211 N. Clark St.
No registration required.
A
READ LOCAL Event
Join us for a celebration of local poet Elise Paschen.
 In addition to a reading and book-signing, this event will include refreshments and live music. In her third poetry book,
The Nightlife, Paschen once again taps into dream states, creating a narrative balanced between the lived and the imagined life. At the heart of the book is a dream triptych that retells the same encounter from different perspectives, the drama between the narrative described and the sexual tension created there.
The Nightlife
demonstrates Paschen's versatility and formal mastery and lyricism.
Elise Paschen
is the author of
Bestiary, Infidelities
 (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize) and
Houses: Coasts
. As an undergraduate at Harvard, she received the Garrison Medal for poetry. She holds MPhil and DPhil degrees from Oxford University. Her poems have been published in the
New Yorker
and
Poetry
, among other magazines, and in numerous anthologies. She is the editor of
Poetry Speaks to Children
and co-editor of
Poetry Speaks
, among other anthologies. Former executive director of the Poetry Society of America, she is a co-founder of Poetry in Motion, a nationwide program that places poetry posters in subway cars and buses. Paschen teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and lives in Chicago with her family.
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Feminist Craft Circle
Wednesday, June 7 at 7 p.m.
Yarnbombing, Part 3
Come help us sew, button, and velcro all our crafted pieces together in preparation for our Midsommarfest-inspired installation! Contact Lynn at
[email protected]
with questions.
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Wendy Pearlman
A READ LOCAL Event
In 2011 hundreds of thousands of Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom, democracy, and human rights. The government's ferocious response, and the refusal of the demonstrators to back down, sparked a brutal civil war that over the past five years has escalated into the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our times. Yet despite all the reporting, the video, and the wrenching photography, the stories of ordinary Syrians remain unheard. Based on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians conducted over four years across the Middle East and Europe,
We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled
is a breathtaking mosaic of first-hand testimonials from the front lines. From several pages of short-story-like narratives to a few sentences of poetry, these testimonials chronicle those who face darkness with hope, courage, and moral conviction.
Wendy Pearlman
has studied or conducted research in Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey,
Germany, Spain, Israel, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She has written two books and more than a dozen articles or book chapters about the Palestinian national movement, focusing on internal politics and the causes and consequences of political violence. She teaches at Northwestern University and lives in Chicago.
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Thursday, June 8 at 7 p.m.
Book Launch Party
Please note: this ticketed event will be held at the Wilson Abbey (935 W. Wilson) Tickets available only through Brown Paper Tickets. Buy Tickets HERE.
Each ticket includes a copy of
We Are Never Meeting In Real Life: Essays,
which attendees will pick up at the event.
Women & Children First is proud to present Samantha Irby for the launch celebration of one of the most anticipated books of the year. For this event, Samantha will be interviewed by her (not real) dad Mel, whom fans already know and love. After the interview, there will be an audience Q&A followed by a book signing.
Sometimes you just have to laugh, even when life is a dumpster fire. With her new collection, bitches gotta eat blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making adult budgets, a disastrous pilgrimage/romantic vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father's ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburb
an moms, Irby is as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.
Samantha Irby
is the author of the essay
collection
Meaty
and the founder of the popular blog bitches gotta eat.
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Midsommarfest is the annual street festival along Clark Street between Foster and Catalpa for two days and three nights of music, dancing, kids' entertainment, and delicious food. Vendors from around the region sell their wares to passersby, local shops and restaurants welcome the warm season with specials and sales, and dance troupes, DJs, and cutting-edge plus longtime favorite bands keep the party going. A $10 donation is requested at the gate (kids under 12 and seniors are free), which supports all of the innovative programming, events, and services that keep our community vibrant.
The Chicago Equality Rally will be held at Midsommarfest's Pride stage at Clark and Balmoral on Sunday, June 11 at 11AM in solidarity with the National Equality March on Washington, D.C.
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Tuesday, June 13 - Doors Open and Open Mic
sign-up at 7 p.m. Show Starts at 7:30 p.m.
 Sappho's Salon will once again be the official host of our annual Pride Open Mic. With three amazing featured performers and the return of our open mic, this is bound to be a wildly proud show. With this open mic, we're celebrating pride in all forms, so our stage is open to everyone. That's right, everyone! We're looking at you cis-men! The list will be available at the front door starting at 7, first come, first served. Spots are 5 minutes apiece so we can accommodate everyone. Open mic participants will receive a coupon to the bookstore! Admission is pay what you can, with all proceeds going to the featured performers and the bookstore's Women's Voices Fund. BYOB and the usual Mediterranean spread will be provided.
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Ellen Meeropol in conversation with Bernardine Dohrn
Wednesday, June 14 at 7:30 p.m.
Author Conversation & Book-signing
 Join us as we welcome author
Ellen Meeropol back to Women & Children First! For this event Ellen will be in conversation with author and activist,
Bernardine Dohrn. Jeremy has had an intimate relationship with the plant world since childhood. Now a college botany major, Jeremy is desperately looking for a way to stave off the extinction of the plants he loves. He soon becomes involved in a group of climate-justice activists. As the group readies itself to make a big Earth Day splash, Jeremy must weigh completing his mission to save the plants against protecting the people he loves.
Ellen Meeropol is the author of two previous novels,
House Arrest and
On Hurricane Island.
Bernard
ine D
ohrn--activist, academic, and children's and women's rights advocate--is a retired associate clinical professor at Northwestern University School of Law, where she was the director of the Children and Family Justice Center for 23 years. Dohrn was national leader of SDS and the Weather Underground. Dohrn is an author and co-editor of several books, including
Race Course: Against White Supremacy;
A Century of Juvenile Justice; and
Resisting Zero Tolerance: A  Handbook for Parents,
Teachers and Students. Dohrn has been a visiting professor at Leiden University faculty of law in the Netherlands for more than ten years and is a lecturer at the University of Chicago.
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Marla Neufeld and Jeffrey Kasky
Thursday, June 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Presentation and Q&A
Interested in learning more about surrogacy, egg/sperm/embryo donation, IVF, or other forms of assisted reproductive technology (ART)? Join co-authors and lawyers, Marla Neufeld and Jeffrey Kasky, as they speak about their book Assisted Reproductive Technology Issues and Pathways to Success. They will be joined by Meg Ledebuhr, attorney for Chicago egg and surrogacy donation agency, ConceiveAbilities, which agency
contrib
uted to the book. The
y'll discuss
avai
lable ART options; the process for choosing the appropriate team to assist with your ART journey, such as medical providers, psycholog
ical implications, and legal repre
sentatives; and
other unique issues t
hat may arise pre- and post-birth when using A
RT
.
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Friday, June 16 at 7:30 p.m.
Book Launch Party
A
READ LO
CAL Event
Cele
brate the launch of a new novel by
Sharon Solwitz
with a conversation between Sharon and local author
S. L. Wisen
berg
. In the turbul
ent summer of 1968, four high school friends make
a pact that will change their lives forever. For the next two weeks, they will live for each other and for each day. Then, at the end of the two weeks, they will sacrifice themselves on the altar of their friendship. In the two-week span in which the nov
el takes place, during the summer before their senior year of high school, the lives of Kay, CJ, Saint, and Vera will change beyond their expectations.
Once, in Lourdes
is a gripping, haunting novel about the power of teenage bonds.
Sharon Solwitz is the author of a novel
Bloody Mary
and a collection of short stories,
Blood and Milk
, which won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award from the Friends of the
Chicago Public Library and the prize for adult fiction from the Society of Midland Authors and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Several of her stories have been featured in Pushcart Prize anthologies and Best American Short Stories. Other ho
nors for her individual stories, which have appeared in such magazines as TriQuarterly, Mademoiselle, and Ploughshares, include the Katherine Anne Porter Prize, the Nelson Algren Literary Award, and grants and fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council. Solwitz teaches fiction writing at Purdue University and lives in Chicago with her husband, the poet Barry Silesky.
S. L. Wisenberg is the author of
Holocaust Girls, Adventures of
Cancer Bitch
, and
The Sweetheart Is In, a
collection of short stories that was named a book of the year by the Chicago Tribune.
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Saturday, June 17 at 7 p.m.
Hosted by Jeremy Owens
You're Being Ridiculous, the wildly popular and expertly curated storytelling show founded by Jeremy Owens, will once again hold its PRIDE show at Women & Children First! These funny, true stories will represent a diverse range of folks, who stand proudly on different points on the LGBTQIA spectrum. Featured performers include: Brooke Allen, Anna Besmann, Bea Cordelia, Ricardo Gamboa & Sean Parris, Ryan Hamlin, Elliot Hobaugh, Jeremy Owens, C Russell Price, and Rolo Rodriguez. This event is BYOB with a $10 suggested cash donation. Proceeds will benefit the performers and the Women's Voices Fund. More details at yourebeingridiculous.com. Doors open at 7 p.m. Show starts at 7:30 p.m.
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Monday, June 19 at 7 p.m.
Please Note: This event is hosted by the Chicago Humanities Festival and will be held at Francis W. Parker School, Diane and David B. Heller Auditorium, 2233 N. Clark St.
Women & Children First is the official bookseller for this event. Tickets available HERE.
 Roxane Gay has been writing with wit and grace about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. Gay comes to CHF to discuss
Hunger, a brutally honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.
Roxane Gay is an outspoken voice on gender, r
acial issues, and pop culture. A national contributor to the
New York Times
, her writing has appeared in
Best American Mystery Stories 2014
,
Best Sex Writing 2012
,
American Short Fiction
, the
New York Times Book Review
,
Bookforum
,
Time
, the
Los Angeles Times
, the
Nation
, the
Rumpus
,
Salon
, and many others. She is the co-editor of
PANK
. She is also the author of the books
Difficult Women
,
Bad Feminist
, and
An Untamed State
.
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Wednesday, June 21 at 7:00 p.m.
For each meeting of our Activism Series, we showcase specific local social justice organizations. Representatives from the organizations give a presentation d
etailing their mission, followed by a Q&A and an action plan of how attendees can get involved. For our June event, we'll be featuring Project Fierce. Project Fierce Chicago is a grassroots collective of radical social workers, youth advocates, and other community members who are working together to establish community-driven, identity-affirming housing in Chicago. Project Fierce's mission is to reduce LGBTQ youth homelessness in Chicago by providing transitional housing and support services to LGBTQ-identified young adults.
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Thursday, June 22 at 7:30 p.m.
Reading and Signing
Co-sponsored by 826Chi
Join us as we welco
me award-winning authors Amelia Gray and Catherine Lacey.
In her breakout novel,
Amelia Gray
seeks to obliterate the mannered portrait of a dancer and to introduce the reader to Isadora Duncan, a woman who lived and loved without limits, even in the darkest days of her life. Amelia Gray is the author of several books:
AM/P
M
,
Museum of the Weird
,
THREATS
, and
Gutshot
. Her fiction and essays have appeared
in the
New Yorker
, the
New York Tim
es
, the
Wall Street Journal
,
Tin House
, and
VICE
. She has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and is th
e winner of the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. She lives in Los Angeles.
In Cathe
rine Lacey's second novel,
Answers
, we are
in
tro
d
uce
d to Mary, a young and broke New Yorker stru
ggling with chronic pain and finding relief from a New
Agey treatment that is prohibitively expensive. Needing
cash fast, Mary applies for th
e "Girlfriend Experiment," the brainch
ild of an eccentric actor, Kurt Sky. Mary is hired and quickly pulled into Kurt's ego-driven and messy attempt at human connection.
Catherine Lacey is the author of Nobody Is Ever Missing, winner of a 2016 Whiting Award and a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction
Award. Her essays and fiction have been published widely and translated into many languages. Born in Mississippi, she is now based in Chicago. This event is co-sponsored by 826 Chicago, a non-profit writing and tutoring center. Representatives from 826 will be present at the event to discuss their organization and ways you can help.
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Jeremy McCarter
Friday, June 23 at 7:30 p.m.
Reading & Book-signing
A READ LOCAL Event
From the co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller
Hamilton: The Revolution, comes
Young Radicals--the story of five activists, intellectuals, and troublemakers who agitated for freedom and equality. Based on six years of extensive archival research, Jeremy McCarter's dramatic narrative brings to life the exploits of Randolph Bourne, the bold social critic; Max Eastman, the charismatic poet-propagandist of Greenwich Village; Walter Lippmann, a boy wonder of socialism who forged a new path to seize new opportunities; Alice Paul, a suffragist leader who risked everything to win women the right to vote; and John Reed, the swashbuckling journalist who was an eyewitness to--and a key player in--the Russian Revolution.
Each of these figures sensed a moment of unprecedented promise for American life and struggled to bring it about, only to see a cataclysmic war and reactionary fervor sweep it away. A century later, we are still fighting for the ideals these five championed. The story of their struggles brings new light and fresh inspiration to our own.
Jeremy McCarter is the co-author
Hamilton: The Revolution. He has written about culture
and politics for
New York
,
Newsweek
, the
New York Times
, and
Buzzfeed
. He spent five years on the artistic staff of the Public Theater in New York. He studied history at Harvard and lives in Chicago
.
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Reading, Conversation & Book-signing
In this masterful narrative of the 2016 campaign year and the events that led up to it, Susan Bordo unpacks the conservatives' assault on Clinton's reputation, the way the Left provoked suspicion and indifference among the youth vote, the inescapable presence of James Comey, questions about Russian influence, and the media's malpractice in covering the candidate. Urgent, insightful, and engrossing, The Destruction of Hillary Clinton is an essential guide to
understanding the most controversial presidential election in American history.
Susan Bordo is a media critic, cultural historian,
and feminist scholar. Her books include Unbearable Weight, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, The Creation of Anne Boleyn. She is professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Kentucky. For this event, Susan will be in conversation with Kim Brooks. Kim Brooks is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a teaching-writing fellow. Her fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, One Story, the Missouri Review, and other journals, and her essays have appeared in Salon, Buzzfeed and New York magazine. Her memoir Small Animals will be published in 2017. She and lives in Chicago with her family.
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Thursday, June 29 at 7:30 p.m.
A READ LOCAL
Event
Writing in the tradition of Howard Zinn, Kevin Coval's
A People's History of Chicago celebrates the history
of this great American city from the perspective of those on the margins, whose stories often go untold. These seventy-seven poems (for the city's seventy-seven neighborhoods) honor the everyday lives and enduring resistance of the city's workers, poor people, and people of color, whose cultural and political revolutions continue to shape the social landscape.
Kevin Coval is the poet/author/editor of seven books, including
The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop
and the play
This Is Modern
Art
, co-written with Idris Goodwin. Founder of Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival and
the artistic director of Young Chicago Authors, Coval teaches hip-hop aesthetics at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
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Terry Tempest Williams
Wednesday, July 5 at 7:00 p.m.
Reading, Q&A and Book-signing
Join us as we celebrate the paperback tour of Terry Tempest Williams'
The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of the National Parks. Published for the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, Williams' examination of twelve parks is a guide to the history and landscape of these sacred places, but also a personal journey. She offers a much-needed meditation on the purpose and relevance of national parks in the 21st century. Terry Tempest Williams is the award
-winning author of fifteen books, including
Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
,
Finding Beauty in a Broken World
, and
When Women Were Birds
. She lives in Castle Valley, Utah, with her husband, Brooke Williams.
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Laurie Kahn
Thursday, July 6 at 7:30 p.m.
Book Launch Party
A
READ LOCAL Event
For
three decades, Laurie Kahn has treated clients who were abused as children. Their abusers were often people who inhabited their daily lives. Kahn, too, had to learn to navigate a wilderness in order to find the good kind of love after a rocky childhood. In
Baffled by Love
, she includes strands from her own story, along with those of her clients, creating a narrative full of resonance, meaning, and shared humanity.
Laurie Kahn, MA, LCPC, MFA, is a pioneer in the field of trauma treatment. For more than 30 years, Laurie has specialized in the treatment of survivors of childhood abuse. In 1980,
she founded Womencare Counseling and Training Center. Laurie's personal essays have been published in anthologies, and her articles and book reviews in professional journals. In 2010, Laurie completed an MFA in Creative Nonfictio
n at Goucher College.
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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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