This month's book is West with the Night by Beryl Markham

In honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Rape Victim Advocates presents a workshop geared toward survivors of sexual assault as well as anyone who works with or loves a survivor. Covering the basic facts and myths of sexual assault, RVA’s workshop will explore the sexual repercussion of victim blaming, handling triggers, and positively reintegrating sex into your life. Adult audiences only. Recommended books: Healing Sex and Yes Means Yes.

Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington DC
Featuring Gregg Shapiro, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Rebecca Villarreal, David Trinidad and Deborah Darr

Co-sponsored by Poets & Writers Magazine

Join us for a reading by contributors to the new anthology, Full Moon on K Street. Featuring more than 100 contemporary poems, this collection captures DC’s unique sense of place, from the monuments and parks,  to the bus stations, from go-go music to chili half-smokes, and the city’s many moods, from celebratory to angry to fiercely political; the result comprises a love letter – with all the complexity that love implies – to our nation’s capitol city.

Sappho’s Salon: A Provocative Night of Lesbian Diversions

Featuring Alix Dobkin and DJ SpinNikki

$7-10 sliding scale includes food and wine

            Before she was a lesbian music legend, before she was a ground breaking lesbian activist and cultural worker, Alix Dobkin was a teenaged, guitar-totin’, card-carrying comrade in the folk music communities of Philadelphia and Greenwich Village circa the 1950s. In her new memoir, My Red Blood, the woman who pioneered lesbian music with her 1972 release, “Lavender Jane Loves Women” recounts her coming-of-age amidst the lefty politicos and beatniks in the East Coast underground. At tonight’s very special Sappho’s Salon, Dobkin will share excerpts of her life story while regaling us with song. DJ SpinNikki will play us in and out of tonight’s performance. All proceeds benefit the artists and the Women’s Voices Fund.

This month's book is Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun

This month's book is Ka-Ching! by Denise Duhamel

Happy Now?

            Chicago writer Shonk’s new novel looks at love, grief and recovery through the eyes of Claire Kessler, a modern young woman living in Evanston who endures a stream of Internet and speed-dating debacles, until she meets Jay, almost perfect and truly kind. And then on Valentine’s Day he kills himself. At times both heart breaking and darkly comic, Shonk’s deftly told tale avoids melodrama. As Rachel Roseblitt wrote in Elle magazine, “Anyone who has passed up a popcorn car-chase flick in favor of a good indie knows how powerful a simple, skillfully told, character-driven story can be. Katherine Shonk does, and Happy Now?, her first novel, is proof…” Shonk’s first book is the critically acclaimed story collection, The Red Passports.

A Thousand Sisters: My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman 
When an episode of Oprah awoke businesswoman Lisa Shannon to the suffering of women in the Congo, she knew she had to do something. A Thousand Sisters is the moving chronicle of raising money to make a difference for Congolese women, only to discover that it is she who is profoundly changed by them. Tracing her life from an average American to an unexpected activist and founder of the organization Run for Congo Women, Shannon’s story is one of adventure, danger, hope and healing.

Fiesta Mexicana

Join us for a special pared-down, unplugged performance by two-time Grammy-nominated Chicago musical group Sones de Mexico Ensemble, celebrating their new release, Fiesta Mexicana. Fiesta Mexicana offers something new to a generation of kids growing up in a globalized world: a bilingual double-album for the 21st century, featuring special guests Ella Jenkins and Dan Zanes. All ages welcome.

April's Feminist Buffy Discussion Group Topic: The Role of Mothering in Buffy

Episodes to Watch:
The Witch Season 1 Episode 3
Prophecy Girl Season 1 Episode 12
Band Candy Season 3 Episode 6
Listening to Fear Season 5 Episode 9
Lies My Parents Told Me Season 7 Episode 17

Essays to Read:
Williams, J. P. “Choosing Your Own Mother:
Mother-Daughter Conflicts in Buffy.” Fighting the Forces: What’s at
Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Eds. Rhonda V. Wilcox and ...David
Lavery. Lanham, MD: Rowman Littlefield, 2002. 61-72.

Karras Irene "The Third Wave's Final Girl: Buffy the Vampire Slayer" at http://www.thirdspace.ca/articles/karras.htm

Contributors B. E. Pinkham, Susan T. Layug, Maggie Kast and Carolyn Walker
Gravity Pulls You In: Perspectives on Parenting Children on the Autism Spectrum
Join us for a reading by local and regional contributors to the anthology Gravity Pulls You In. View, through their eyes, the universe of autism – its marvels, chaos, and life-changing impact. In this collection, parents raising children on the autism spectrum explore their lives in the context of autism’s own special gravity, discovering what’s important and what they find centering, in slice-of-life depictions that are a refreshing departure from the usual diagnosis/grief/acceptance arc of many autism accounts.

Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents
In her 2010 Lambda Literary Award finalist-groundbreaking debut, San Francisco-based queer writer and activist Minal Hajratwala mixes history, memoir and reportage, tracing her family’s history from the beginning of the twentieth century and across five continents. Delving into the relationships between the personal choices and historical forces (colonialism, apartheid, Gandhi’s Salt March, American immigration policy) that shaped her family’s experiences, bringing to light the epic story of the Indian diaspora.

Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost & Found
 

After the death of her mother in a freak tragedy, then four-year-old Allegra Huston was directed into a hotel room with the words “this is your father,” and hence met, for the first time, the acclaimed movie director John Huston. She recounts a childhood shuttled between relatives (including older sister Anjelica who was already an accomplished actress) and across continents. At the age of twelve, Huston weathered another blow when her stepmother revealed that her biological father was not, in fact, Huston, but British historian John Julius Norwich who, like Allegra’s mother, was married at the time of their affair. In her beautifully written, forensically honest story of a tumultuous childhood, Allegra Huston weaves the romantic struggle of her mother’s short life into her own story, a parallel, though different, search for love.

This month's book is Miriam's Kitchen.

Sister Spit: The Next Generation, hosted by Michelle Tea

$10 cover charge

Join us as we welcome the legendary, raucous, and rowdy queer traveling variety show! This season's vanload of queertastic brilliance includes literary luminary Michelle Tea, legendary trans film director Silas Howard (Tribe 8, By Hook or By Crook), graphic novelist and anti-racist activist Elisha Lim, slam poet and performance artist Lenelle Moise, trans psychic memoirist Len Plass, 'zinester/portraitist/graphic novelist Nicole J Georges, and Power Point–loving shapeshifter Annie Danger. Cover charge benefits the artists.

Aunt Mary's Guide to Raising Children the Old Fashioned Way

In her new memoir, Second City alum Amy Peele reflects on her hardscrabble 1960s childhood in Indiana and the laughter and love that kept her large and boisterous Irish-Catholic family together in the wake of her father's abandonment. Bring your mother along, and join Peele and her own mother for this special event celebrating the bonds of family.

This month's book is Possession by A.S. Byatt

The Husbands & Wives Club

For more than a year, journalist Laurie Abraham sat in with five troubled couples as they underwent the searing process of group marriage therapy. Published as the New York Times Magazine's cover story, the resulting article, "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" generated intense reader response and received the Award for Excellence in Journalism from the American Psychoanalytic Association. Though the article allowed Abraham to focus on only one couple, her new book, which grew out of the article and the reaction it inspired, tells the moving, fascinating story of all five couples.