Sunday, March 30th - Peggy Shinner
4:30 pm
You Feel So Mortal
A Read Local Author Reading
In You Feel So Mortal, a collection of twelve provocative essays, Peggy Shinner examines her own body, those of her parents, and the collective body, with all its historical, social, and political implications. In trying to discern what this whole mess of bones, muscles, and organs means, Shinner ponders body image, gender, ethnic history, and familial legacy. A lifelong Chicagoan, Peggy Shinner teaches in the MFA creative writing program at Northwestern University and has been awarded two Illinois Arts Council Fellowships. Her work has been published in Fourth Genre,The Gettysburg Review, and The Southern Review, as well as other journals and anthologies.
Thursday, April 3rd - Anne Balay
Thursday, April 3 at 7:30 p.m.
Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers
A Read Local Event
In Steel Closets, Anne Balay draws on interviews with forty gay, lesbian, and transgender steelworkers, mostly living in northwestern Indiana, to give voice to this previously silent and invisible population. These powerful stories are by turns alarming, heroic, funny, and devastating. Nearly all of Balay's narrators remain closeted at work, and many have experienced harassment, violence, or rape. Anne Balay has taught English and gender studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Indiana University Northwest.
Friday, April 4th - SoMove
Listening Party
7:30 p.m.
This event works to connect people through gay and independent bookstore history. Last winter, SoMove visited Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia, the nation's longest continuously running queer bookstore, to record the voices of the community who organized for social justice after the Stonewall riot, survived the HIV/ AIDS epidemic, and helped to create a queer culture that many of us take for granted today. Come listen to selected clips, discuss, and enjoy snacks and beverages!
Sunday, April 6th - Cari Lynn
4:30 p.m.
Madam: A Novel of New Orleans
Storyville, New Orleans' raucous and extravagant red-light district, could turn dirt-poor women into celebrity madams. This novel is based on the real life story of one of them—the scrappy Mary Deubler, who used her looks and gumption to recreate herself as one of the most successful and feared women of her time, Madam Josie Arlington. Cari Lynn is the author of four books of nonfiction and has written for numerous publications, including O, Health, the Chicago Tribune, and Deadline Hollywood. She has taught at Loyola University and received a master's in writing from the Johns Hopkins University. Originally from Chicago, she currently lives in Los Angeles. This is her first novel, which she co-wrote with actress Kellie Martin ( Life Goes On, ER ).
Wednesday, April 9th - Kari Lydersen
7:30 p.m.
Mayor 1%
A Read Local Event
How did a city long dominated by a notorious Democratic Machine become a national battleground in the right-wing war against the public sector? In Mayor 1%, veteran journalist Kari Lydersen takes a close look at Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and his true agenda. Kari Lydersen is a Chicago-based journalist who has worked in the Midwest bureau of the Washington Post and is the author of four books. She has been a journalism instructor at several Chicago colleges and currently serves as community fellowship director of the Social Justice News Nexus at Northwestern University.
Thursday, April 10th - Nomy Lamm
7:30 p.m.
515 Clues
515 Clues is a fairy tale for grown-ups, an experimental novel that links stories across centuries and continents. It is a work in progress, currently available in chapbook form. Nomy Lamm is a writer, performer, musician, and voice teacher based in San Francisco, who for a number of years lived in Chicago. Her work on disability, fatness, queerness, feminism, gender transgression, and Jewish identity has ahas been published widely, including in Listen Up, Body Outlaws, Word Warriors, and Fist of the Spider Woman. She currently writes an advice column for Make/Shift magazine. She holds an MFA in fiction from San Francisco State University.
Saturday, April 12th - Virginia Zaharieva, Daniela Olszewska, Albena Stambolova
7 p.m.
Virginia Zaharieva, Nine Rabbits
Daniela Olszewska, Citizen J
Albena Stambolova, Everything Happens As It Does
Location: Hopleaf Bar, 5148 N. Clark St.
Three exciting Eastern European writers grace the stage at Hopleaf this evening. VIRGINIA ZAHARIEVA was born in Sofia in 1959. She is a writer, psychotherapist, feminist, and mother. Her novel Nine Rabbits is among the most celebrated Bulgarian books to appear over the past two decades and the first of Zaharieva's work made available in North America. She is the granddaughter of a gardener.
DANIELA OLSZEWSKA is the author of three collections of poetry: cloudfang : : cakedirt, True Confessions of an Escapee From The Capra Facility for Wayward Girls, and Citizen J. She teaches writing in prisons and community colleges throughout the Chicago area.
Albena Stambolova is the author of three novels, a collection of short stories, and a psychoanalytical study of Marguerite Duras. She currently lives in Bulgaria, where she works as a psychological and organizational consultant and is working on a book about fairy tales.
Sunday, April 13th - Deborah Tuerkeimer
4:30 p.m.
Flawed Convictions: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" and the Inertia of Injustice
Flawed Convictions surveys the scientific, cultural, and legal history of shaken baby syndrome ( SBS ) and exposes extraordinary failings in the criminal justice system's treatment of these cases. Deborah Tuerkheimer is a professor of law at DePaul University. Tuerkheimer earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard College and her law degree from Yale. Tuerkheimer served for five years as an assistant district attorney in the New York County District Attorney's Office, where she specialized in domestic violence and child abuse prosecution.
Wednesday, April 16th - Rachel Louise Snyder
7:30 p.m.
What We've Lost Is Nothing
One calamitous day in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, a teenager is home alone, when her house—and every house on her street—is robbed. What We've Lost Is Nothing vividly brings to life a much-needed conversation about race, idealism, and integration. Rachel Louise Snyder is a writer, professor, and public radio commentator. She is the author of the book Fugitive Denim; other work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Slate, and Salon, among others, and her stories have aired on Marketplace and All Things Considered. She is an assistant professor in both the MFA creative writing program and the journalism program at American University in Washington, DC.
Thursday, April 17th - Party for World Book Night Book Givers
7:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Party for World Book Night Book Givers
Join us for pizza and refreshments as we celebrate the commitment and hard work of our volunteer "Book Givers" who will be giving away books on World Book Night, April 23. Joining the party will be local authors reading passages from their favorite books. Tonight is an opportunity for pre-registered "Book Givers" to pick up their books and meet other Givers. Joining us will be local authors, including Jac Jemc ( My Only Wife ), Claire Zulkey ( An Off Year ), S. L. Wisenberg ( The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, Holocaust Girls ), Sarah Terez Rosenblum ( Herself When She's Missing ), and Megan Stielstra. ( We will be holding the launch party for Megan's essay collection Once I Was Cool on Friday, May 2nd at 7:30 p.m. ) For more information about World Book Night, go to www.us.worldbooknight.org .
Friday, April 18th - Angie Chuang
7:30 p.m.
Four Words for Home
Journalist Angie Chuang began to confront issues that were tearing her own immigrant family apart—among them, mental illness, divorce, and deeply rooted cultural taboos—while on assignment to find the "human face" of Afghan-Americans in the weeks following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The similarities she finds between her own family of those of the Afghan-Americans lead her to realize that for all immigrants, the idea of "home" is both fluid and elusive, far more than a single place on the map. Angie Chuang is a writer and is on the journalism faculty of the American University School of Communication in Washington, DC. She was a newspaper reporter for thirteen years, developing one of the first race and ethnicity issues "beats" and winning many national and regional awards. For her work on the Oregonian, she traveled to Afghanistan, Vietnam, and the post-Katrina Gulf Coast for stories. She received her B.A. and M.A. in English literature at Stanford University.
Wednesday, April 23rd - World Book Night
World Book Night is a program designed to spread the joy of reading by putting free books into the hands of people who might not normally have much access to them. Tonight book lovers all across the country will each be giving away 20 free copies of a book they love. It's expected that half a million books will be given out tonight! Women & Children First is one of the more than 2,000 official book pick-up sites in more than 6,000 towns and cities around the country; the books are all donated by publishers, and the participating authors waive their royalties. For more information about World Book Night, go to www.us.worldbooknight.org .
Friday, April 25th - Elizabeth Heineman
7:30 p.m.
Ghostbelly
Ghostbelly is Elizabeth Heineman's personal account of a home birth that goes tragically wrong-ending in a stillbirth—and the harrowing process of grief and questioning that follows. Elizabeth Heineman is a professor of history and of gender, women's, and sexuality studies at the University of Iowa. Her published works include Before Porn was Legal, Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones, and What Difference Does a Husband Make? She lives in Iowa City.
Saturday, April 26th - Ariel Gore
6 pm
The End of Eve
Ariel doesn't really want to take care of her crazy dying mother, but she agrees to anyway, thinking it's the right thing to do. Her decision ultimately forces her to reconsider the meaning of family and everything she's ever been taught to call "love." Ariel Gore is a journalist, novelist, nonfiction author, and teacher. She is the founding editor/publisher of Hip Mama, an Alternative Press Award-winning publication covering the culture and politics of motherhood.
Saturday, April 26th - Sappho's Salon
Saturday, April 26
Door open at 7:30 p.m.
Sappho's Salon
Ariel Gore will be performing a second, different set than her 6 pm appearance listed above. She will be followed by another performer, TBA.
Wednesday, April 30th - A. K. Summers
7:30 p.m.
Pregnant Butch
This funny, insightful graphic memoir is based on A.K. Summers' own pregnancy. It's an intensely personal look at the indignities of pregnancy and discomforts of gender. Part adventure story, part riotous critique, this thoughtfully rendered, occasionally surreal, resolutely heterodox tale turns the traditional "what to expect when you're expecting" narrative on its head.
Save the Dates!
Friday, May 2
Book launch party
Megan Stielstra
Once I Was Cool
Wednesday, May 7
Janice Clark
The Rathbones
Friday, May 9
An Evening of Poetry
Cin Salach, When I am Yes
Jennifer Harris, This Is How I Dream It
Wednesday, May 14
Cynthia Bond
Ruby
Friday, June 13
Susan Jane Gilman
The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street
Wednesday, July 9
Jojo Moyes
One Plus One
Young Authors' Club
Also coming in July:
Young Authors' Club
Kids ages 8 to 12 are invited to explore their creativity, develop writing skills, receive positive feedback, and have fun at this summer writing camp. Young writers will be led through a series of games and creative exercises as they develop their own stories from first idea through final draft, culminating in a reading party and celebration for family and friends. Club leader Kathie Bergquist has an MFA in Creative Writing and teaches writing at Columbia College Chicago. She has two years' experience teaching creative writing workshops for 4th to 6th graders in Chicago public schools. Weekly and bi-weekly workshops run at the bookstore Tuesday through Thursday afternoons, from July 1st to 31st. Participation is limited. For more information and to reserve a spot, email kathiebergquist@gmail.com .
Book Groups
Family of Women Book Group - Sunday, April 6 at 2:00 p.m. - Grace and Grit by
Lilly Ledbetter. Location TBA; please contact moderator at lisazimmermann2009@yahoo.com .
Classics of Women's Literature - Tuesday, April 1 at 7:15 p.m. - A Taste of Honey: A Play by Shelagh Delaney
Women & Children First | wcfbooks@gmail.com | www.womenandchildrenfirst.com . Hours: M-T 11-7, W-TH-F 11-9, Sat 10-7, Sun 11-6, 5233 N. Clark St, Chicago, IL 60640
