Author Reading

Special Storytime Appearance by Stepping Stones
Hand Songs: Read and Rhyme with Me

Karen Finley
The Reality Shows
The Reality Shows takes us through the past ten years, with renowned performance artist Karen Finley as our guide. By embodying and reimagining larger-than-life public figures in her performances, Finley helps us make sense of the political trauma and cultural chaos we’ve witnessed during the first decade of the new century. Liza Minelli becomes every New Yorker in the wake of 9/11, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has a Freudian revelation, and Jackie O works through her post-traumatic stress as the Obamas become America’s First Family. Don’t miss an electrifying night of performance by one of America’s most provocative artists.

Marya Hornbacher and Northwestern University Student Reading Night
After a semester of hard work and intense development as crafters of creative non-fiction, the graduate students from Northwestern University’s Creative Writing Program invite you to join them for a night of celebration. Author Marya Hornbacher, bestselling author of five books, hosts a night of collected readings with her students. This all-women group of writers explores terrains of body, history, memory, culture, dreams, and more. Join us for a reading of exciting new voices now breaking into the literary world.

Belva Davis
Never in My Wildest Dreams: A Black Woman’s Life in Journalism             

As the first black female journalist in the western United States, Belva Davis helped change the face and focus of television news. Born to a fifteen-year old Louisiana laundress during the Great Depression, and raised in the overcrowded projects of Oakland, Davis suffered abuse, battled rejection, and persevered to achieve a career beyond her imagination. During her five decades as a journalist, Davis has seen the world change in ways she never envisioned, from being verbally and physically attacked while reporting on the 1964 Republican National Convention, to witnessing the historic election of Barack Obama.

Deb Olin Unferth
Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War

Terri Kapsalis
The Brothers

For Deb Olin Unferth, (Minor Robberies, Vacation), 1987 went like this: “My boyfriend and I went to join the revolution. We couldn’t find the first revolution. The second revolution hired us on and then let us go. We went to the other revolutions in the area – there were several – but every one we came to let us hang around for a few weeks and then made us leave. We ran out of money and at last we came home. I was eighteen. That’s the whole story.” But luckily that’s not the whole story, and in her brilliant new memoir, Unferth tells a story of love and youthful idealism set amidst a tumultuous time in Latin America. Terry Kapsalis is the author of The Hysterical Alphabet (WhiteWalls) and Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum (Duke). She will be reading from her new, unpublished novel, tentatively titled The Brothers.

Inga Muscio
Rose: Love in Violent Times
 
“Radical feminist Muscio wrote a previous call-to-arms, Cunt, which was described as upsetting, empowering and jarring – but never boring. This highly anticipated follow-up, written in her trademark stream-of-consciousness style, challenges society’s pervasive violence, from sexual assault to cultural trauma to war.” –Ms. Magazine
 
Picking up where her underground classic, Cunt, left off, Inga Muscio explores the impacts of passive violence, sexual abuse, war, and cultural trauma on our most intimate lives, in order to uncover a path towards a more compassionate way of living. Chilling, eye-opening, and thoroughly enjoyable, Rose offers a unique and exhilarating perspective on achieving authentic love and self-awareness in a violent world.

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States

In their groundbreaking book, Chicago-based civil rights attorney Joey L. Mogul;
New York–based police misconduct attorney; and Montana-based organizer, activist, and
writer Kay Whitlock confront and challenge the many ways in which queer lives are
criminalized, policed, and punished. Shifting focus away from the current conversations
about marriage equality, bullying, and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the writers squarely address
the long history of unlawful policing of sex and gender nonconformity. Reevaluating
America’s justice, criminal, and legal systems through the lens of the queer experience,
Queer (In)Justice gives voice to LGBT people, particularly those who are black or
Latino, and likely from poor or working-class families, on the fringes of their
communities.

An Evening With Marya Hornbacher

The Half Life of Sgt. Jen Hunter

In the early 1990s, before Don’ t Ask, Don’ t Tell, tens of thousands of gays and
lesbians proudly served their country, while living the double life of the closet. Tracy
Baim’ s new novel—first seen as a play by the same name—explores this period through
the experiences of a lesbian military sergeant who serves during the Gulf War. Now that
DADT has been repealed, this story is perfectly timed to shed light on the not-so-distant
past and the real-life repercussions of laws that demand we compromise who we are.
Joining Baim at this event will be Bev Spangler and Kelli Strickland, actors from the
original stage production (who both were most recently seen in the film Hannah Free). A
staged reading of the play Half Life will be accompanied by a reading from the book.

Sappho’s Salon: A Provocative Night of Lesbian Diversions
Presenting the Lesbians Got Talent talent show, featuring guest judges Ripley Caine, C.
C. Carter, and Searah Deysach
$7-$10 sliding scale, includes food and wine
Tonight’s installment of our popular monthly salon night for lesbians and their
friends invites all lesbian-identified women to come and show us what you’ve got.
Whether your special talent is silly or sensational, funny or fierce, tonight you are invited
to strut your stuff at the Lesbians Got Talent show! A panel of super hot lesbian judges
will (playfully) rate your performances and, with the audiences help, choose the recipient
of a $50 cash prize (and bragging rights for life). Musicians, magicians, spoken word
artists, comics, performance artists, burlesque performers, balloon-animal experts, cherry-
stem tongue-tiers, contortionists, and more: prepare 5 minutes (max) of material
demonstrating your unique talent, and reserve your spot in advance by e-mailing Kathie at
pressgirl@ameritech.net, subject line: “talent.” Participation is limited, so sign up now. A
few walk-up spots will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

And Baby Makes More: Known Donors, Queer Parents, and Our Unexpected Families

What happens when would-be dyke moms or gay dads ask a friend to donate
sperm or act as a surrogate? When a “single dyke” is vehemently not a “single mom” and
a “sperm donor” not a “donor dad?” When a trans mom-to-be donates sperm to her
friends? This quirky, funny, and occasionally heartbreaking collection of essays offers an
intimate and unprecedented look at the relative risks and unexpected rewards of queer do-
it-yourself baby making and the ways in which families are remade in the process.

Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories

Edith Perlman’s fiction has won three O’Henry prizes and has appeared in Best
American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize collection, and New Stories from the South.
Spanning four decades and three prize-winning collections, her new collection takes us
from Jerusalem to Central America, from Czarist Russia to London during the blitz, and
from central Europe to a suburb of Boston. These charged locales, and the endlessly
varied characters who live in them, are evoked with tenderness and incisiveness.

Caring Lessons: A Nursing Professor’s Journey of Faith and Self

Julia Borcherts
Gina Frangello
Christine Sneed
Fiction Reading

Join us tonight for fiction readings by three very talented local writers. Julia
Borcherts is a fiction-writing instructor at Columbia College Chicago; a frequent
contributor to Time Out Chicago, Red Eye, and Metromix, and a co-founder of Reading
Under the Influence. Gina Frangello is the author of the novel My Sister's Continent and
the short-story collection, Slut Lullabies. She is executive editor for Other Voices Books
and fiction editor for the popular online literary collective The Nervous Breakdown.
Christine Sneed’s new story collection, Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry, is
winner of the Grace Paley Prize in short fiction. Her writing has appeared in Best
American Short Stories 2008, New England Review, Massachusetts Review, and many

Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl
Culture

Trying to raise a girl in our “post-feminist” age, journalist Peggy Orenstein was
more than a little perplexed. As a new mother, she was blindsided by the persistent ultra-
feminine messages being sent to a new generation of little girls—from “princess-mania”
to endless permutations of pink. How many times can you say no, when your daughter
begs for a pint-sized wedding dress? In her probing, personal, and often hilarious new
book, the author of Schoolgirls and Waiting for Daisy ventures to the lands of Disney and
American Girl; braves a Miley Cyrus concert; and talks with historians, marketers,
psychologists, neuroscientists, parents, and children. In the process, she faces her own
confusion that rearing a girl raises about her own femininity.