Thursday, November 3 at 7:30 p.m.
Lori Ostlund, Anne Raeff, and Christine Sneed on the Short Story vs. the Novel
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 Short 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 teacher English and history at East Palo Alto Academy. Christine Sneed is the author of two story collections, 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.
Lori Tharps
Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America's Diverse Families
Reading and Signing
Weaving together personal stories, history, and analysis, Same Family, Different Colors explores the myriad ways skin-color politics affect family dynamics in the United States. Colorism and color bias, the preference for or presumed superiority of people based on the color of their skin, is a pervasive and damaging but rarely discussed phenomenon. In this unprecedented book, Lori Tharps 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.
Sunday, November 6 at 4 p.m.
William Hazelgrove
Madam President: The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson
Reading and Signing
A READ LOCAL EVENT
Just in time for Tuesday's election, join us for a reading 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.
Wednesday, November 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Randa Jarrar
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali
Reading and Signing
Award-winning novelist Randa Jarrar's new story collection moves seamlessly between realism and fable, history and the present, capturing the lives of Muslim women and men across myriad geographies and circumstances. With acerbic wit, deep tenderness, and boundless imagination, Jarrar brings to life a memorable cast of characters, many of them "accidental transients" ( a term for migratory birds that have gone astray seeking their circuitous routes back home ). Fierce and 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, Ploughshares, and others. She blogs for Salon and lives in California.
Thursday, November 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Jessica Luther
Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape
Reading and Signing
This book examines rape culture in college football by taking a deep dive into how various institutionsthe NCAA, athletic departments, universities, the media, the police, and fansuse 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.
Friday November 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Caits Meissner with special guests C. Russell Price and Marty McConnell
Let It Die Hungry
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.
Saturday, November 12 at 3 p.m.
Ruth Spiro
Baby Loves Aerospace Engineering and Baby Loves Quarks
A READ LOCAL EVENT
Kids' Interactive Story Time followed by Q&A for adults about writing and publishing books for kids!
Accurate enough to satisfy an expert, yet simple enough for baby, Spiro's board books explore the basics of aerospace engineering and quarks by tying the concepts to a baby's world. Both books offer visually stimulating illustrations and use age-appropriate language to encourage baby's sense of wonder. Parents and caregivers may learn 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 interactive story time followed by a Q&A for aspiring authors of kids' books.
Wednesday, November 16 at 7:30 p.m.
Claudia Casper in conversation with Christine Rice
The Mercy Journals
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 the global population. 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 wildernessa 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 conversation with local author Christine Rice. Rice's story collection Swarm Theory was named as a finalist in the Chicago Writers Association's 2016 Book of the Year Awards. Her writing 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 Magazine ( www.hypertextmag.com ) and the director of Hypertext Studio Writing Center ( www.hypertextstudio.org ). 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 .
Thursday, November 17 at 7:30 p.m.
Melissa Range
Scriptorium
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 religious 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.
Friday, November 18 at 7:30 p.m.
Tara Betts with Special Guests Erika Sanchez and Eve Ewing
Break the Habit
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 great jazz singer does by touching the very core of what it means to be human." Break the Habit is a personal, lyrical work that speaks to the varied ways one experiences lossdivorce, death, and abandonmentbut it is also about the choices one makes in the aftermath of loss. 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. For this event, Tara will be joined by Erika Sanchez and Eve Ewing. Erika's book of poetry, Lessons on Expulsion, and her novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter are both forthcoming. Essayist and poet, Eve Ewing's collection of poetry, essays and visual art, Electric Arches, will be published by Haymarket this fall.
Saturday, November 19 at 3 p.m.
Storycise with Dot Kane
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 playful 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.
Saturday, November 26 - ALL DAY
Small Business Saturday / Indies First: 20 Books in 20 Minutes: Kids' Edition
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. This year's spokesperson is Lena Dunham. 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.
Thursday, December 1 at 7:30 p.m.
KOKUMO
Reaquainted with Life
Poetry Reading
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 spoken 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.
Friday, December 2, from 6 to 10 p.m.
Late Night Andersonville
Andersonville makes it easy to support local businesses while shopping for friends and family ( or yourself! ) at the 14th annual. For four hours only, more than 40 beloved Andersonville stores and restaurants will be open late, offering great savings on gifts and meals, plus free refreshments and entertainment. From 6 to 10 p.m., our 2016 calendars and all holiday merchandise, including boxed cards will be 25% off!
Friday, December 2 at 7:30 p.m.
Michelle Falkoff in conversation with Nami Mun
Pushing Perfect
Book Launch Party
A READ LOCAL EVENT
A girl's quest for perfection results in dangerous 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 not. Michelle Falkoff's fiction and reviews have been published in ZYZZYVA, DoubleTake, and the Harvard Review, among others. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently serves as director of communication and legal reasoning at Northwestern University School of Law. Nami Mun's first book, Miles from Nowhere, 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 stories 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.
Friday, December 2 from 7 to 9 p.m.
Laura Jane Grace
Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout
A READ LOCAL EVENT
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.
Billboard just named Tranny by Laura Jane Grace one of the 100 Greatest Music Books of All Time!
Tickets available through Brown Paper Tickets. Buy tickets HERE: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2704760
In this memoir, the provocative transgender advocate and lead singer of the punk rock band Against Me provides a searing account of her search for identity and her true self. Since its inception in 1997, Against Me has been 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 Gabela 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. Not 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
Saturday December 3 at 3 p.m.
J. B. Blankenship and SitStayRead
The Christmas Truck and Cozy Fan Tooty
Story Time with Sit Stay Read ( Yes, there will be doggies! )
The Christmas Truck, Sit Stay Read, and Women & Children First will be once again hosting a very special wishing tree, beginning the week of November 28th through the end of December, to put diverse books in the hands of area elementary school kids. Everyone is welcome to donate a book to a child in need whose name is decorating a star on the tree. This is a kid-friendly event with story time and coloring! There will be dog teams for kids to visit with, a public reading of both The Christmas Truck and Chicago adventure book Cozy Fan Tooty, written for middle-grade readers written by author ( and SitStayRead board member ) J. B. Blankenship.
Save the Date
Monday, December 5 at 7 p.m.
Brooke Allen
Let's Eat Mary ( Pride and Prejudice meets Lord of the Flies )
Staged Play Reading
Wednesday, December 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Ronna Wineberg
Nine Facts That Can Change Your Life: A Novel
Donna Baier Stein
The Silver Baron's Wife
Reading, Conversation, and Signing
Thursday, December 8 at 7:30 p.m.
Lucy Bledsoe in conversation with Carol Anshaw
A Thin Bright Line
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
Ask Me About Polyamory: The Best of Kimchi Cuddles
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.
Book Groups
Classics of Women's Literature
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
Kids First Book Group
Sunday, November 13 at 5 p.m.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ( book 1 ) by J. K. Rowling
Feminist Book Group
Sunday, November 13 at 6:30 p.m.
Potluck & selection meeting
Women's Book Group
Tuesday, November 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Mothers Tell Your Daughters
by Bonnie Jo Campbell
New! Women Aging with Wisdom and Grace - Discussion Group and Potluck
Sunday, November 20, noon to 2 p.m.
Suggested reading: chapters 6 through 12 of The Gift of Years by Joan Chittister
Queer Readers Book Group
Sunday, November 20 at 2 p.m.
Blue Is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh
New! Social Justice Book Group
Sunday, November 20 at 4 p.m.
March, book 1 by John Lewis