Thursday, Oct. 4 at 7 p.m.
Beth Kander
Original Syn
Friday, Oct. 5 at 7 p.m.
Britteney Black Rose Kapri
Queer Black Hoe
Jose Olivarez
Citizen Illegal
Sunday, Oct. 7 at 4 p.m.
Sarah Schulman
Maggie Terry
Wednesday, Oct. 10
at 7 p.m.
Laura van den Berg
The Third Hotel
Catherine Lacey
Certain American States
Thursday, Oct. 11
at 7 p.m.
Jean Thompson
in conversation with
Beth Finke
A Cloud in the Shape
of a Girl
Reading, conversation, and signing
Friday, Oct. 12 at 7 p.m.
Susan Hahn in conversation with
Donna Seaman
Losing Beck
Tuesday, Oct. 16
at 6 p.m.
Lacey Johnson
The Reckoning
Reading, Q&A,
and book-signing
Wednesday, Oct. 17
at 7 p.m.
Rosellen Brown in conversation with
Janet Burroway
The Lake on Fire
Thursday, Oct. 18
at 7 p.m.
Jill Soloway
She Wants It
Reading, Q&A, and
book-signing
Please note: this ticketed event will be held at the Swedish American Museum.
(5211 N. Clark St.)
Tickets will go on sale soon!
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Dear Friends of Women & Children First,
Beloved author and the 2018 National Ambassad
 or for Young People's Literature Jacqueline Woodson has an excellent motto: "Reading = HOPE x CHANGE." This equation rings true for us. As we head into an exciting season of fall reading and events, we are discovering so many books that give us hope for the future and spur us toward action--creatively and politically, in our own backyard and beyond. What's your reading equation?
We are kicking off our fall events calendar with big launch parties for
Frances de Pontes Peebles, Abby Geni, and
Jessica Hopper
!We are thrilled to be traveling to the Logan Arts Center this month to host BYP100's
Charlene Carruthers for the launch of her powerful new book,
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer,
and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. Get your tickets
HERE.
And stay connected to us for more exciting save-the-dates . . . coming soon!
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Frances de Pontes Peebles
Thursday, August 30 at 7 p.m.
Born to wildly different worlds, Dores and Graça quickly bond over shared mischief, and then, on a deeper level, over music. One has a voice like a songbird; the other feels melodies in her soul and composes lyrics to match. But only one of them is destined to be a star.
The Air You Breathe
unfurls a moving portrait of a lifelong friendship.
READ MORE
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And Whose Life Are You Living Anyway?
Friday, August 31 at 7 p.m.
Reading, Q&A, and Book-signing
And Whose Life Are You Living Anyway? invites readers to invoke inner wisdom as a guide to more purposeful living. Kenyatta's work is anchored in ancient spiritual teachings and offers a compassionate and compelling exploration of the personal and the political in relation to identity, spirituality, and power. READ MORE
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Abby Geni in conversation with
Frances des Pontes Peebles
Tuesday, September 4 at 7 p.m.
The Wildlands
is another remarkable literary thriller from critically acclaimed writer Abby Geni, one that examines what happens when one family becomes trapped in the tenuous space between the human and animal worlds.
READ MORE
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R. O. Kwon in conversation with Rebecca Makkai
Wednesday, September 5 at 7 p.m.
Author Conversation & Book-signing
The Incendiaries
is a fractured love story and a brilliant examination of the minds of extremists and of what can happen to people who lose what they love most.
READ MORE
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Where the Millennials Will Take Us
Thursday, September 6 at 7 p.m.
In her new book, Barbara Risman takes readers inside the minds of today's young adults, showing the great diversity of their strategies for negotiating the gender revolution. Using her theory of gender as a social structure, Risman analyzes life history interviews with Chicagoland Millennials. These interviews show many things, including how dramatically gender still constrains life in America.
READ MORE
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Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl from Somewhere Else
Friday, September 7 at 7 p.m.
Reading, Q&A, and book-signing
Self-aware and laugh-out-loud funny, this collection creates a revealing portrait of a woman who aims for the stars but hits the ceiling, while asking questions such as
is clapping too loudly at a gig a good enough reason to break up with somebody? And is it ever really possible to leave home?
READ MORE
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Lou Sullivan: Daring To Be a Man Among Men
Saturday, September 8 at 6 p.m.
Reading, Q&A, and book-signing
Good Midwestern girls did not grow up to be gay men and die from AIDS. Unless they were transgender pioneer Lou Sullivan (1951-1991). In this heart-wrenchingly inspirational biography,
Brice D. Smith
reclaims one of the most overlooked people in LGBT history.
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Monday, September 10 at 7 p.m.
Reading, Q&A, and book-signing
Sappho's Salon is a quarterly performance salon at Chicago's only feminist bookstore, featuring expressions of queerness, gender, and feminism.
With three features (Laura Scruggs, Ames Hawkins, and Yasmin Nair), it's gonna be a hell of a show, and you can be part of it with the open mic too, if you ID as a woman, trans, or nonbinary. Admission is Pay What You Can, but remember it supports the artists and the bookstore's Women's Voices Fund.
READ MORE
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For this year's Arts Week, you may recognize the work of our featured artist, Isabella Rotman, a
Ignatz-nominated cartoonist and illustrator from Maine living and drawing in Chicago. Her art is usually about the ocean, mermaids, crushing loneliness, people in the woods, or sex.
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Eleanor Roosevelt (vols. 1 - 3)
Friday, September 14 at 7 p.m.
Reading, Q&A, and book-signing
Celebrated by feminists, historians, politicians, and reviewers everywhere, Blanche Wiesen Cook's trilogy documenting the life of Eleanor Roosevelt is an unprecedented portrait of a brave, fierce, and passionate political leader.
READ MORE
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Jessica Hopper in conversation with Megan Stielstra
Night Moves
Thursday, September 20 at 7 p.m.
In a career spanning more than twenty years, Jessica Hopper has earned acclaim as a provocative, fearless writer on topics ranging from the male myopia of emo music to R. Kelly's sordid past. A book birthed in the amber glow of Chicago street lamps,
Night Moves
is about a unique sliver of time in cultural history--and how a raw, rebellious writer found her voice.
READ MORE
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Shannon Gibney
Dream Country
Friday, September 21 at 7 p.m.
Young Adult Reading, Q&A, and book-signing
Dream Country
begins in suburban Minneapolis at the moment when 17-year-old Kollie Flomo begins to crack under the strain of his life as a Liberian refugee. Shannon Gibney spins a riveting tale of the nightmarish spiral of death and exile connecting America and Africa, and of how one determined young dreamer (Kollie's sister) tries to break free and gain control of her destiny.
READ MORE
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Annual Chicago Lit Crawl
Dream Country
Saturday, September 22
Events on Clark Street will begin as early as 4 p.m.
6 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. -
Story time with Drag Queens - The Queens return to Women & Children First to read classic bedtime stories to kids of all ages! After story time, there will be time for photos with the queens.
READ MORE
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Charlene Carruthers
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements
Book Launch Party with special guests
Barbara Ransby and Janae Bonsu
Please note:
this event will be held at the Logan Arts Center
(915 E 60th St.). Click HERE to purchase tickets.
Tickets available ONLY through Brown Paper Tickets!
Please note: all tickets include entry into the event and the official after-party! (The location of the after-party will be announced soon.)
Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Unapologetic challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist.
READ MORE
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Amy Strauss Friedman with
special guests Jessica Walsh
and Donna Vorreyer
Wednesday, September 26 at 7 p.m.
Join us to celebrate the debut full-length poetry collection from Amy Strauss Friedman, author of
Gathered Bones Are Known to Wander
. Amy will be reading along with guest readers and fellow poets Jessica L. Walsh and Donna Vorreyer.
READ MORE
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Curtis Sittenfeld, Nami Mun, Shauna Seliy & Rebecca Makkai
Samuel's friends present
The Caregiver
by Samuel Park
Thursday, September 27 at 7 p.m.
In early 2017, beloved author Samuel Park died after a long batter with stomach cancer. His final book,
The Caregiver,
follows Mara Alencar, a young girl who lives with her mother Ana, a struggling voice-over actress. As Mara uncovers her mother's secrets, she begins to grapple with her turbulent past while discovering truths about herself, her family, and what it means to truly take care of someone.
This event includes a discussion featuring some of Samuel's best literary friends:
Curtis Sittenfeld, Nami Mun, Shauna Seliy, and Rebecca Makkai
.
READ MORE
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Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers
Friday, September 28 at 7 p.m.
Gritty, inspiring, and often devastating oral histories of gay, transsexual, and minority truck drivers allow award-winning author Anne Balay to shed new light on the often harsh realities of long-haul truckers. Semi Queer reveals the stark differences between the trucking industry's crushing labor practices and the perseverance of its most at-risk workers.
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Saturday, September 29 at 6 p.m.
Winner of the prestigious Honickman First Book Award from the American Poetry Review, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Gregory Pardlo, Throwing the Crown describes a boyhood on the edge. Full of accelerative sound--tight rhymes and short, percussive lines--these poems follow a fast-paced trajectory from danger to survival, pausing to acknowledge the beauty and humor in the details along the way.
READ MORE
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Jess T. Dugan, Vanessa Fabbre, Gloria Allen, Mickey Mahoney, and Alexis Martinez
To Survive on this Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults
Sunday, September 30 at 4 p.m.
Representations of older transgender people are nearly absent from our culture, and those that do exist are often one-dimensional. For more than five years, photographer Jess T. Dugan and social worker Vanessa Fabbre traveled throughout the United States creating
To Survive on this Shore
by seeking subjects whose lived experiences exist within the complex intersections of gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomic class, and geographic location.
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Joshua Chambers-Letson &
A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life
A Social History of Trans Identity
Wednesday, October 3 at 7 p.m.
C. Riley Snorton and Joshua Chambers-Letson will present selections from their recently published books, meditating on the power of queer of color and black trans grief.
READ MORE
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