4:30 p.m.

Imperfect Spirituality

 

In Imperfect Spirituality, Polly Campbell shows you how to integrate the aha! moments in your everyday life with traditional spiritual techniques to increase your personal growth and well-being. Imperfect Spirituality is filled with practical tips and examples that will encourage you to amp up your optimism, let go of worry, and embrace your authentic self to offer your true gifts to the world. Polly Campbell is a writer and speaker who specializes in personal development and spiritual topics. She is a blogger at ImperfectSpirituality.com and PsychologyToday.com, and also teaches on the Daily Om. For more than two decades, Polly has studied and applied the techniques she writes and speaks about to her own life. She lives with her family in Beaverton, Oregon.

 

7:30 p.m.

Love and Salt

 

This new memoir in letters tells the story of a spiritual friendship between two women. When Amy and Jess first began exchanging letters eight years ago, they had no idea where this antiquated practice might lead or what they would write. They only knew they were both seeking God, they both struggled with persistent doubt, and it would be better to seek and struggle together. They never would have guessed the story they entered. When they faced tragedy, they did it together--their correspondence was their tether in the darkness. Raw and intimate, humorous and poetic, their letters are a memoir in real time and reveal deeply personal and profound accounts of conversion, motherhood, friendship, and grief. Amy Andrews is a recipient of the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction and teaches mathematics at Northwestern University. She lives in Evanston with her husband and children but lived in Andersonville when the letters in this book were being written. Refreshments will be served.

 

7:30 p.m.

Sounding Like a No-No: 

Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era

 

Sounding Like a No-No traces a rebellious spirit in post-civil rights black music by focusing on a range of offbeat, eccentric, queer, or slippery performances by leading musicians-such as Michael Jackson, Grace Jones, Stevie Wonder, Eartha Kitt, and Meshell Ndegeocello-who demonstrate how embodied sound and performance became a means for creativity, transgression, and social critique. In addition, these artists sought to engender new sexualities and desires and escape the sometimes-constrictive codes of respectability and uplift from within the black community. Francesca T. Royster is Professor of English at DePaul University, where she teaches a variety of courses, including performance studies, critical race theory, and gender and queer theory. She is the author of Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon as well as numerous book chapters and scholarly essays in Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Studies, Performance Research International, and Women in Performance, among others.

   

7:30 p.m.

An Evening of Poetry 

Survivors' Picnic  

To find a new beauty  

 

Debra Bruce's latest book of poetry, Survivors' Picnic, was published in 2012 by Word Press. She is the author of three previous collections, Pure Daughter, Sudden Hunger, and What Wind Will Do, and her work has been published widely in journals, including The Atlantic, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. She has been the recipient of many prizes and awards, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry magazine, and the Chicago Public Library's Carl Sandburg Award. Debra is a professor emeritus at Northeastern Illinois University. Andrea Witzke Slot is author of To find a new beauty, and her work can be found in such journals as Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and Southern Women's Review. She is currently working on a novel, a second poetry collection, and an academic manuscript that explores multi-voiced poetry as a source of social justice and democratic understanding. Andrea teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is the book review editor at Fifth Wednesday Journal as well as an associate editor at Rhino Poetry. Both poets will be reading a mix of published work and poems-in-progress. 

 

7:30 p.m.

Sappho's Salon Presents Lesbian Movie Night Featuring Bound

 $7 to $10 suggested donation for food and wine

 

At the latest installment of our popular salon night for lesbians and their friends, Sappho's Salon presents our first-ever lesbian movie night. Join us for popcorn and other theater snacks and lots of campy good fun as we enjoy a screening of the lesbian noir classic Bound. The first film directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski (Cloud Atlas), Bound is a sexy crime thriller starring Meg Tilly as the moll and Gina Gershon as the ex-con handy-woman who cleans her pipes. Proceeds benefit the Women's Voices Fund. 

 

Doors open at 6:00 p.m., show at 6:30 p.m.

Pay-What-You-Can (suggested donation $15)

 

Writer, storyteller, gender-jammer, and raconteur S. Bear Bergman is coming to town, bringing his usual mouthful of tender, dirty, complicated, challenging joyful words. But this is not just a reading-a Speakeasy is a whole show. Expect jokes, stories, smut, and rough drafts, plus Improv Storytime, where the audience provides the story topic and Bear tells a fresh, unrehearsed story. Come enjoy the snap and crackle of a live show--something that cannot be repeated, paused, or saved. S. Bear Bergman is the author or editor of five books (most recently the anthology Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, with Kate Bornstein), four award-winning solo performances, and numerous contributions to anthologies on all manner of topics from the sacred to the extremely profane. A long-time activist, Bear continues to work at the points of intersection between and among gender, sexuality, and culture and spends a lot of time discouraging people from installing traffic signals there.

 

7:00 p.m.

Little Known Facts

 

Christine Sneed's first novel, Little Known Facts, is the story of Renn Ivins, a film actor of Harrison Ford-like stature, and the people whose lives are connected to his--girlfriends, children, ex-wives, and those on the periphery who long to experience the glow of his fame. In particular, Renn's grown children, Anna and Will, who live in their father's shadow and find it difficult to achieve personal and professional successes of their own, are both drawn to and repelled by him. Most of us can imagine the perks of celebrity, but Little Known Facts offers a clear-eyed story of its effects-especially on family members and others who can neither fully embrace nor ignore the superstar in their midst. Christine Sneed tells a story of influence and affluence; of forging identity, happiness, and a moral compass. She teaches creative writing at DePaul University, Northwestern University, and Pacific University. Her short story collection Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry won AWP's 2009 Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction and Ploughshares' 2011 first-book prize, the John C. Zacharis Award. Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, Ploughshares, and a number of other journals. Refreshments will be served.

 

9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Northwestern Law School, Thorne Auditorium, Chicago
We are very pleased to be the official onsite bookseller for TEDx Windy City!

TED is an annual event where some of the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design--three broad subject areas that are, collectively, shaping our future. And in fact, the event is broader still, showcasing ideas that matter in any discipline. And it's an all-Chicago speaker line-up!

Speakers and performers include: noted feminist and Northwestern University professor Deborah Siegel (Sisterhood, Interrupted); Fawzia Mirza, actor and creator of the one-woman show Me, My Mom & Sharmila Tagore; photographer Dennis Manarchy (The Vanishing Cultures: An American Portrait); Christopher Knowlton and his Dance Team; and Elise Zelechowski, founder and executive director of Rebuilding Exchange. And many other speakers and performers!

For more information, go to tedxwindycity.com.

7:30 p.m.

After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story

 

At the age of thirty-six, newspaperman Bob Hainey was found dead, alone near his car, on Chicago's North Side. As an adult, his son Michael (who was just 6 years old when his father died and grew up to be a journalist as well) goes in search of the truth about his father's life and death, because the stories he'd been told about his father had never quite added up. In his quest, Hainey beautifully conjures a Chicago of a bygone era-when the city had five thriving papers, each with its own designated bar where the staffers drank and told stories.Yet at its heart, After Visiting Friends is a moving account of one man's attempt to uncover his family's long-buried secrets. Combining his journalist's investigative skills and his poet's ear for language, Michael Hainey vividly renders his search, both factually and existentially, for the truth about his father. Join us for a special conversation, as Michael's mother, Barbara, will be joining him on our stage to share her unique perspective on the story. Michael Hainey is the deputy editor of GQ and has been with the magazine for 10 years. His poetry has appeared in Tin House, amongst other places. Hainey attended Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and currently lives in New York City.

 

Women & Children First is now selling Kobo Arc tablet, the newest member of the Kobo e-reader family.

  

The Kobo Arc, available in white, comes in three memory sizes: 16 GB ($199); 32 GB ($249); and 64 GB ($299).

 

The Arc tablet has multiple capabilities and can be used for eBooks, music, movies, apps, games, and web browsing. The Kobo Arc, designed for comfortable reading, is the only tablet that learns what users like and helps them discover eBooks and other content connected to their interests. To learn more about the Kobo Arc, visit kobo.com/koboarc.

 

 

Tuesday, March 12

Lesléa Newman will be reading from October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard.

 

Wednesday, March 13

Terry Tempest Williams will be reading from When Women Were Birds, which will be released in paperback in February.

 

Thursday, April 11

Lucy Knisley will be reading from her new book, Relish.

 

Wednesday, April 17

World Book Night book givers party

 

Thursday, April 18

Meg Wolitzer will be reading from her new novel, The Interestings.

 

Thursday, April 23

World Book Night

 

Sunday, February 3 at 2:00 p.m.

Family of Women Book Group - Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout

 

Tuesday, February 5 at 7:15 p.m.

Classics Book Group - Selections from The Portable Dorothy Parker (See store website for list of pieces we'll be discussing.)

 

Sunday, February 10 at 5:00 p.m.

Kids First Book Group - The Conch Bearer by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

 

Tuesday, February 19 at 7:30 p.m.

Women's Book Group - Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (7:00 p.m. selection meeting, 7:45 p.m. discussion)

 

Tuesday, March 5 at 7:15 p.m.

Classics Book Group - Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill