Women & Children First Bookstore hosts Chelsea Clinton, Jill Soloway, Sarah Schulman - 1216 - Gay Lesbian Bi Trans News

Tickets are selling fast for our in-store book signing with Chelsea Clinton! Ticket-holders receive one signing-line ticket with the purchase of START NOW! One ticket admits up to four family members. Get more info and your ticket at chelseaclintonchicago.brownpapertickets.com/ .

March to the Polls 2018 is set for October 13 at 9 a.m. This upcoming rally and march will honor first-time voters and inspire voter turnout! The march date coincides with the beginning of early voting in downtown Chicago. So, we will be joining Chicago and Cook County voters as we literally "March to the Polls" and cast our ballots.

Amy Strauss Friedman with special guests Jessica Walsh and Donna Vorreyer

The Eggshell Skull Rule

Wednesday, September 26 at 7 p.m.

Book Launch Party

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.

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.

Anne Balay

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.

Jacob Saenz

Throwing the Crown

Saturday, September 29 at 6 p.m.

Book Launch Party

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.

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.

Book Launch Party

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.

Joshua Chambers-Letson and

C. Riley Snorton

After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life and

Black on Both Sides: A Social History of Trans Identity

Wednesday, October 3 at 7 p.m.

Joint Author Reading

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.

Beth Kander and Lora Hyler

Original Syn

Thursday, October 4 at 7 p.m.

Reading & Panel Discussion

All kids deserve to see themselves reflected within the pages of a book. They also need the opportunity to learn about worlds unlike their own to fire their imaginations and develop a strong sense of self worth. #Ownvoices is working to make this a reality. Join in a conversation with debut middle grade author Lora Hyler and debut young adult author Beth Kander as they talk about using fiction to dig into real issues, represent real people, and have fun!

Britteney Black Rose Kapri

and Jose Olivarez

Black Queer Hoe

and Citizen Illegal

Poetry Reading

Friday, October 5 at 7 p.m.

In Black Queer Hoe, Britteney Black Rose Kapri lends her unmistakable voice to fraught questions of identity, sexuality, reclamation, and power in a world that refuses Black Queer women permission to define their own lives and boundaries. In his stunning debut Citizen Illegal, poet JoseOlivarez explores the stories, contradictions, joys, and sorrows that embody life in the spaces between Mexico and America. He paints vivid portraits of good kids, bad kids, families clinging to hope, life after the steel mills, gentrifying barrios, and everything in between.

Sarah Schulman, Maggie Terry

Reading, Q&A, and Signing

Sunday, October 7 at 5 p.m.

Maggie Terry's first day on the job as a private investigator lands her in the middle of a sensational new case: actress strangled. If Maggie is going to solve this mystery, she'll have to shake the ghosts—dead NYPD partner, vindictive ex, steadfast drug habit—that have long ruled her life.

Laura van den Berg and Catherine Lacey

The Third Hotel and Certain American States

Wednesday, October 10 at 7 p.m.

Joint Author Reading

Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He's wearing a white linen suit she's never seen before, and he's supposed to be dead. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way. READ MORE

Jean Thompson in coversation

with Beth Finke

A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl

Thursday, October 11 at 7 p.m.

Reading, conversation, and signing

Spanning from World War II to the present, A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl is the story of three women regressing, stalling, and yes, evolving, over decades. One of the burning questionsJean Thompson asks is: by serving her family, is a woman destined to repeat the mistakes of previous generations, or can she transcend the expectations of a place and a time? Can she truly be free?

Susan Hahn in conversation with Donna Seaman

Losing Beck

Friday, October 12 at 7 p.m.

Book Launch Party

Losing Beck is the story of Jennie Silver, who is trying to get over a man who was greatly influenced by the renowned Hungarian emigre novelist Avigdor Element. Spanning a hundred years of history, Jennie keeps a diary and writes a play and a novella in her attempt to control her desperate, high-pitched emotions focused on a man she is uncontrollably drawn to and at the same time finds repugnant.

Lacy Johnson

The Reckonings

Tuesday, October 16 at 6 p.m.

Reading, Q&A, and book-signing

In 2014, Lacy Johnson was giving a reading from The Other Side, her memoir of kidnapping and rape, when a woman asked her what she would like to happen to her rapist. This collection, a meditative extension of that answer, draws from philosophy, art, literature, mythology, anthropology, film, and other fields, as well as Johnson's personal experience, to consider how our ideas about justice might be expanded beyond vengeance and retribution to include acts of compassion, patience, mercy, and grace.

Rosellen Brown in conversation with Janet Burroway

The Lake on Fire

Wednesday, October 17 at 7 p.m.

Book Launch Party

The Lake on Fire begins among 19th-century Jewish immigrants on a failing Wisconsin farm. Dazzled by lore of the American dream, Chaya and her strange, brilliant, young brother Asher stow away to Chicago; what they discover there, however, is a Gilded Age as empty a facade as the beautiful Columbian Exposition luring thousands to Lake Michigan's shore. The pair scrapes together a meager living—Chaya in a cigar factory; Asher, roaming the city and stealing books and jewelry to share with the poor, until they find different paths of escape.

Jill Soloway

She Wants It

Thursday, October 18 at 7 p.m.

Reading, Q&A, and book-signing

Please note: This ticketed event will be held in the auditorium of the Chicago Waldorf School ( 5200 N. Ashland Ave. ) Click HERE to purchase tickets. Special guests will be announced very soon!

In this poignant memoir of personal transformation, Jill Soloway takes us on a patriarchy-toppling emotional and professional journey. Exploring identity, love, sexuality, and the blurring of boundaries through the dynamics of a complicated and profoundly resonant American family, Transparent gave birth to a new cultural consciousness. While working on the show and exploding mainstream ideas about gender, Jill began to erase the lines on their own map, finding their voice as a director, show creator, and activist. This intense and revelatory metamorphosis challenges the status quo and reflects the shifting power dynamics that continue to shape our collective worldview.

Daniel Kay Hertz in conversation with Maya Dukmasova

The Battle of Lincoln Park

Friday, October 19 at 7 p.m.

Reading, Conversation, Book-signing

In the years after World War II, a movement began to bring the middle class back from the Chicago suburbs to the Lincoln Park neighborhood on the city's North Side. In place of the old, poorly maintained apartments and dense streetscapes of taverns and butchers, "rehabbers" imagined a new kind of neighborhood—a renovated, modern community that held on to the convenience, diversity, and character of a historic urban quarter. Who is this neighborhood for? And who gets to decide?

Ruth Spiro

Baby Loves Green Energy, Baby Loves Structural Engineering, and Made by Maxine

Saturday, October 20 at 3 p.m.

Kids' Story Time for ages 1 to 7

Join us as we celebrate Ruth Spiro's three new children's books. Ruth will read stories and lead us in songs, activities, and silly science fun for children ages 1 to 7. Ruth's popular Baby Loves Science series encourages a natural sense of wonder, while introducing toddlers and preschoolers to basic concepts and vocabulary.

Chelsea Clinton

START NOW! You Can Make a Difference

Sunday, October 21 at 1 p.m.

Book Signing

Please note: This event consists of a book signing only. Ticket holders receive one copy of START NOW! and admission of up to four family members. Tickets available only through Brown Paper Tickets. Purchase at http://chelseaclintonchicago.brownpapertickets.com/

With information on problems both large and small, Chelsea Clinton breaks down the concepts of health, hunger, climate change, endangered species, and bullying so that readers can understand the world around them and how they can make a difference in their own lives, their communities, and the world at large.

Rita Dragonette in conversation with Mary Ann Childers

The Fourteenth of September

Wednesday, October 24 at 7 p.m.

Book Launch Party

On September 14, 1969, Private First Class Judy Talton celebrates her nineteenth birthday by secretly joining the campus anti-Vietnam War movement. In doing so, she jeopardizes both the army scholarship that will secure her future and her relationship with her military family. The Fourteenth of September portrays a pivotal time at the peak of the Vietnam War through the perspective of a young woman, tracing her path of self-discovery and a coming of conscience.

Emily Jungmin Yoon with

Rachel Mennies, Claire Smith,

and Korey Williams

A Cruelty Special to Our Species

Thursday, October 25 at 7 p.m.

Book Launch Party

In her arresting collection, urgently relevant for our times, poet Emily Jungmin Yoon confronts the histories of sexual violence against women, focusing in particular on Korean "comfort women." Yoon takes possession of a painful and shameful history even while unearthing moments of rare beauty in acts of resistance and resilience and in the instinct to survive and bear witness.

READ MORE

Tammy Letherer

The Buddha at My Table

Sunday, October 28 at 6 p.m.

Book Launch Party

In The Buddha at My Table, Tammy Letherer describes—-in honest, sometimes painful detail—-the dismantling of a marriage that encompasses the ordinary and the surreal, including the night she finds a silent, smiling Thai monk sitting at the her dining room table. It's this unexpected visitation that sticks with her as she listens to her husband reveal hurtful, shocking things—-including that he never loved her. Ultimately, it's when she realizes that she is participating in her life, not at its mercy, that she discovers the path to freedom. READ MORE

Sue Salvi and Megan Kellie

Someday a Bird Will Poop on You

Tuesday, October 30 at 6 p.m.

Book Launch Party

In a world of bad news, fake news, delays, disappointments, trash talk, and tweets, things are bound to get a little poopy. What matters is not how big the mess is but how well you react to it. Already a bestselling picture book at Women & Children First, Someday a Bird Will Poop on You is a modern parable about life hitting us with something unexpected—and the perfect gift for anyone leaving home without an umbrella. READ MORE

Rebecca Sive in conversation with Karen Hawkins

Vote Her In

Thursday, November 1 at 7 p.m.

Book Launch Party

Women across the country have been motivated to speak out louder than ever before. Part one of Vote Her In outlines the case for why we need to mobilize now, and Part two provides a clear strategy for how to get there, with 13 actions that women from all backgrounds can take to help get one another ( or themselves ) into executive political offices and work toward electing our first woman president in 2020. READ MORE

Women & Children First - wcfbooks@gmail.com

www.womenandchildrenfirst.com

Women & Children First, Hours: M-T 11-7, W-TH-F 11-9, Sat 10-7, Sun 11-6,5233 N. Clark St, Chicago, IL 60640