Author Reading

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Loyalty, loss, and the ties that bind – these are the ingredients of The Recipe Club, a new novel that combines the story of a friendship told via e-mails, childhood letters, third-person narration, photos, illustrations and more than 80

Chicago Area Women’s History Council

Women and Children First: Memories and Archives

Relive the excitement of W&CF’s 30th Anniversary Celebration last October as the Chicago Area Women’s History Council presents a premiere showing of the videotaped interviews conducted at the event. CAWHC members will discuss how you can participate in their larger project “Documenting the Women’s Movement in Chicago, 1960s – 1980s,” while Beth Myers from the Women and Leadership Archive at Loyola will share information about this important repository and the W&CF collection there. If you have memories or documents about W&CF, don’t miss this event.  If you were part of the feminist movement in Chicago, CAWHC needs your help!

Wednesday, March 24

7:30 p.m.

Lisa Lutz

The Spellmans Strike Again

In the fourth and final volume of her New York Times’ bestselling and addictively entertaining comic mystery series, Lisa Lutz unravels another irresistible caper featuring the irrepressible Isabel Spellman and her off-kilter family of private investigators. In this installment, Rae, Izzy’s ingenious of a little sister, gets involved in the Innocence Project and won’t stop until the rest of the family is equally committed. We’ll be raffling off “Free Schmidt” t-shirts provided by Lutz. The third volume, Revenge of the Spellmans, is now available in paperback, and a film version of The Spellman Files is currently in development with Paramount Pictures. Please join us in what is sure to be a very special evening of laughter and intrigue.

Saturday, March 20

7:30 p.m.

Sappho’s Salon: A Provocative Night of Lesbian Diversions

Featuring Jennie Brier and Elana Dykewomon, with special guest host Chelsey Clammer and guest DJ Chandra. Co-sponsored by the Lesbian Leadership Council, Chicago Foundation for Women

$7-$10 sliding fee scale includes food and wine

            The latest monthly installment of our popular salon night for lesbians and their friends features writers Jennie Brier and Elana Dykewomon. In her book Infectuous Ideas: U.S. Political Response to the AIDS Crisis, UIC Professor Jennie Brier charts the complex social and political climate of the 1980s and ‘90s through the lens of the AIDS crisis. Elana Dykewomon, formerly editor of the journal Sinister Wisdom, is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning brilliant lesbian classic, Beyond the Pale. Her new novel, Risk, examines the life of Carol Schwartz, a community activist and idealist who routinely puts it all on the line; but when the stakes become too high, will she gamble more than she can afford to lose? This event is co-sponsored by the Lesbian Leadership Council of the Chicago Foundation for Women. Proceeds benefit the artists and the Women’s Voices Fund.

Saturday, March 13

6:00 p.m.

Cynthia Kraack

Minnesota Cold

            Writer Cynthia Kraack’s book, Minnesota Cold, has been called a lovely, haunting tale, firmly grounded in the ways of the heart. Set in 2035, this is the story of Sallie Dodge, a 70-something woman living within the sociological results of the aggressive merger of government and big business, where it’s considered frugal policy to dictate the lifespan of citizens. When Dodge chooses to defy her turn to “pass,” she embarks, instead, on the journey of a lifetime. Guests are invited to join Kraack for a reception at In Fine Spirits at 5420 N Clark directly following this reading.  

Friday, March 12

7:30 p.m.

Staceyann Chin

The Other Side of Paradise            We are thrilled to once again be hosting the electrifying spoken word artist Staceyann Chin, this time to celebrate the paperback release of her searing and groundbreaking memoir, The Other Side of Paradise. Following a tradition of fierce Caribbean lesbian writers that includes Audre Lorde and Michelle Cliff, Chin’s narrative charts her course from the heartbreak and tragedy of her Jamaican childhood, to her thriving adult like in New York City. Dorothy Allison raves, “[Chin] shows me a culture I knew far too little about – the everyday life of young people in Jamaica and the threat of violence over anyone who might be too independent or queer or outrageous. How wonderful that this outrageous, talented, determined woman has given us her story.”

Sunday, March 7

4:30 p.m.

Neena B. Schwartz

A Lab of My Own

            What was it like to be a woman scientist battling the “old boys’ network” during the 1960s and ‘70s? In her new memoir, Neena Schwartz, a prominent neuroendocrinologist based at Northwestern University, tells all. Mixing details and anecdotes from her personal life as an out lesbian, with the socio-political history of American women in science in the later 20th century, Schwartz makes a case for mentoring young women in science, and why it matters that women both do and teach scientific study.   

Friday, March 5

7:30 p.m.

Nancy Stohlman

Searching for Suzi

            When Suzi, a thirty-something ex-stripper now married with kids, begins to question how she arrived at this point in her life, her search for herself means accepting her sexuality in all its contradictions and claiming herself. Denver-based writer Stohlman, who is founder and co-editor of the annual flash fiction collection, Fast Forward, reveals Suzi’s story in a novel-in-flashes.