Join us for an in-person event celebrating Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought by Bettina Judd.

Feeling is not feelin. As the poet, artist, and scholar Bettina Judd argues, feelin, in African American Vernacular English, is how Black women artists approach and produce knowledge as sensation: internal and complex, entangled with pleasure, pain, anger, and joy, and manifesting artistic production itself as the meaning of the work. Through interviews, close readings, and archival research, Judd draws on the fields of affect studies and Black studies to analyze the creative processes and contributions of Black women—from poet Lucille Clifton and musician Avery*Sunshine to visual artists Betye Saar, Joyce J. Scott, and Deana Lawson.

In partnership with the American Indian Center of Chicago, we are excited to welcome New York Times bestselling author, Stephen Graham Jones for a reading, conversation, and book-signing in honor of Don't Fear the Reaper, the riveting sequel to My Heart Is a Chainsaw.

Four years after her tumultuous senior year, Jade Daniels is released from prison right before Christmas when her conviction is overturned. But life beyond bars takes a dangerous turn as soon as she returns to Proofrock. Convicted Serial Killer, Dark Mill South, seeking revenge for thirty-eight Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer due to a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock, Idaho.

Join us for an in-person event celebrating Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance by Francesca Royster. For this event, Royster will be in conversation with Michele Morano.

As a multiracial household in Chicago’s North Side community of Rogers Park, race is at the core of Francesca T. Royster and her family's world, influencing everyday acts of parenting and the conception of what family truly means. Like Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, this lyrical and affecting memoir focuses on a unit of three: the author; her wife Annie, who's white; and Cecilia, the Black daughter they adopt as a couple in their forties and fifties. Choosing Family chronicles this journey to motherhood while examining the messiness and complexity of adoption and parenthood from a Black, queer, and feminist perspective. Royster also explores her memories of the matriarchs of her childhood and the homes these women created in Chicago’s South Side—itself a dynamic character in the memoir—where “family” was fluid, inclusive, and not necessarily defined by marriage or other socially recognized contracts.

Join us for an in-person event celebrating When You Wish Upon a Lantern by Gloria Chao. For this event, Chao will be in conversation with Samira Ahmed. There will also be delicious mooncakes available for purchase from Maa Maa Dei!

Then Liya discovers her family's wishing lantern store is struggling, and she decides to resume a tradition she had with her beloved late grandmother: secretly fulfilling the wishes people write on the lanterns they send into the sky. It may boost sales and save the store, but she can't do it alone . . . and Kai is the only one who cares enough to help.

Please join us for a special Valentine's Day event to celebrate the release of Big Swiss by Jen Beagin! This event is co-hosting with Early to Bed and will include a raffle for attendees. 

Join us for an in-person event celebrating Fieldwork: A Forager's Memoir by Iliana Regan. For this event, Regan will be in conversation with Megan Stielstra.

From National Book Award-nominee Iliana Regan, a new memoir of her life and heritage as a forager, spanning her ancestry in Eastern Europe, her childhood in rural Indiana, and her new life set in the remote forests of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Fieldwork explores how Regan's complex gender identity informs her acclaimed work as a chef and her profound experience of the natural world.