Author Signing

Beloved cartoonist and friend of the store, Nicole Hollander, will discuss her new gift book (Women Who Still Love Cats Too Much) and offer a sneak peek of her forthcoming graphic memoir, In the Old Nieghborhood.

**Please note: this is a ticketed event that will be held at the Swedish American Museum, 5211 N. Clark.

Thank you for your interest in attending our event with Gloria Steinem and Roxane Gay.

You probably spend more time with them than with your family.

Angst-laden former Chicago homicide detective Dave Cubiak uncovers long-buried secrets in this sequel to 2014’s Death Stalks Door County.

We are delighted to have Roxane Gay back at Women & Children First. This time, she'll be joined by the incredible Bonnie Jo Campbell and April Lindala.

The universal quest to discover what happens when life
ends is one that acclaimed author and grief therapist Claire Bidwell
Smith encounters every day in her private practice. Having lost both her
parents by age 25, it is also one that hits home. In AFTER THIS, an
exploration of the afterlife that is part personal, part prescriptive –
Smith invites us on her journey into the unknown.

Chronicling our steps along the path that bridges this world and the next, Smith undergoes past-life regressions and sessions with mediums and psychics and immerses herself in the ceremonies of organized religion and the rigor of scientific experiments to try and find answers to life’s most unanswerable questions.

Drawing on her personal losses, chronicled in her memoir The Rules of Inheritance, as well as her background working in hospice as a bereavement counselor, Smith attempts to show how exploring the afterlife can have a positive impact on the grief process.

Brave, profound, and ultimately inspiring, AFTER THIS is unique in the power of the personal journey that underlies the book’s message: What we believe about what happens next affects everything about how we live – and love – right now.

Claire Bidwell Smith is the author of The Rules of Inheritance and
After This. The Rules of Inheritance has been published in seventeen countries and is currently being adapted for film. Claire has a master’s degree in clinical psychology and is a therapist specializing in grief. She regularly teaches writing workshops and gives talks on both writing and grief. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The Huffington Post, Slate, Salon.com, Chicago Public Radio and BlackBook. She lives in Los Angeles with her two daughters.

As a major hurricane threatens the northeast, math professor Gandalf Cohen is abducted by federal agents and flown to a secret interrogation center off the coast of Maine. Austin Coombs, a young local resident, is a newly hired civilian guard assigned to the detention center. Henry Ames, a man of personal secrets, is the FBI special agent in charge of Gandalf's case and doubts the professor's terrorist involvement; Tobias, his second-in-command, disagrees, preferring violent interrogation. As the hurricane slams the shore, conflict detonates and each character must choose a side if they're to survive the storm.

Told over the five days approaching the anniversary of 9/11, by varying voices on both extremes of the political divide, On Hurricane Island is both a fast-paced political thriller and a literary examination of the sociopolitical storm facing our society.

Ellen Meeropol's characters live on the fault lines of political turmoil and human connection. She is the author of one previous novel, House Arrest. Her short fiction and essays have been
published in Bridges, DoveTales, Pedestal, The Rumpus, Portland
Magazine, Beyond the Margins, The Drum, and The Writer's Chronicle. A former pediatric nurse practitioner and part-time bookseller, Ellen holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine. She lives in Western Massachusetts.

When Johnquell, an African American teen, suffers a
serious accident in the home of his white neighbor, Mrs. Czernicki, his
community must find ways to bridge divisions between black and white,
gay and straight, old and young. Set in one of the nation’s most highly
segregated cities—Milwaukee, Wisconsin—Meet Me Halfway tells stories of
connections in a community with a tumultuous and divided past. In nine
stories told from diverse perspectives, Jennifer Morales captures a Rust
Belt city’s struggle to establish a common ground and a collective
vision of the future.

As an activist mother in the thick of
Milwaukee politics, Morales developed a keen ear and a tender heart for
the kids who have inherited the city’s
troubled racial legacy. With a critical eye on promises unfulfilled,
Meet Me Halfway raises questions about the notion of a “postracial”
society and, with humor and compassion, lifts up the day-to-day work
needed to get there.

Jennifer Morales lived for more than
twenty years in Milwaukee, where she raised children and served on the
Milwaukee Board of School Directors—the first Latino/a elected to it.
She earned her MFA from Antioch University–Los Angeles. She now lives in
Viroqua, Wisconsin, and is a board member of the Council for Wisconsin
Writers and the Driftless Writing Center.

In 2010, Ann Imig
organized a staged reading in Madison, Wisconsin, to bring together
mothers and non-mothers alike to speak honestly and openly about
motherhood, family, childhood, and parenting. This one event quickly
grew into an annual national performance, with nearly 40 events
scheduled for May of 2015. Now, in Listen To Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We're Saying Now,
Imig brings 56 of these essays from stage to page. For this event, six
of the Chicago-area contributors to this anthology will share their
stories, ranging from the hilarious to heartbreaking. This collection
celebrates and validates what it means to be a mother today, with
refreshing candor and humor. The stories address everything from
adoption to step-mothering; from first-time motherhood to empty-nesting,
and touch on topics of infertility, single-parenting, LGBTQ parenting,
and more. What better way to honor Mother's Day than by attending this
thoughtful and heartwarming event!

Lori Horvitz grew up ashamed of her Eastern European Jewish roots,
confused about her sexuality, and idolizing the "shiksa in her living
room," a blonde all-American girl whose photo came in a double frame and
was displayed next to a family photo from a bar mitzvah. Unable to join
the "happy blonde families," she becomes a "hippie chick" who travels
the world in search of … something. The Girls of Usually
chronicles each trip, each romance, each experiment in reinventing
herself that draws her closer to discovering the secret door through
which she can escape from deep-rooted patterns and accept her own
cultural, ethnic, and sexual identity.