APRIL 2026

Dear Friends of Women & Children First,

And somehow, it's April! April is a big deal for independent bookstores because the last Saturday of the month is when we celebrate Indie Bookstore Day (IBD). This year's Chicagoland Bookstore Crawl is bigger than ever with 80+ bookstores participating! Start planning your route today.

Beyond IBD, our April events calendar has an event for everyone -- literary fiction, essay, memoir, policy reform, childcare, even speed dating! Come hang out with us, meet new people, hug old friends, discover new books. Fascism feeds on isolation and despair. Gathering and connecting with one another is one way we fight back.

To close out March, we hope to see you at the No Kings March on Saturday, March 28th!

With love & books,
W&CF

Your Local Feminist Bookstore since 1979

Support Our Friends

Eat at Smack Dab and support our partner organizations: Chicago Books to Women in Prison AND Migrant Support Collective!

In honor of National Reading Month, our dear friends at Smack Dab are hosting a Dine-to-Donate this Sunday, March 29 from 8AM-2PM. Guests can stop in to enjoy their beloved breakfast sandwiches, bagels, brunch favorites, handcrafted lattes, and teas, with a portion of proceeds benefiting Migrant Support Collective and Chicago Books to Women in Prison.

Save-the-date: Abortion Fund Bake Sale

is Saturday, April 25

Need a treat as you complete the bookstore crawl? Case managers and other volunteers from the Chicago Abortion Fund will be hosting a bake sale outside the bookstore on Saturday, April 25 from 11 to 3 to raise money for CAF and support abortion rights! Venmo, CashApp, and cash accepted!

April Events

Monday, April 6 at 7 p.m.

Raising Change Agents: Practicing Social Justice in Everyday Parenting

by Nat Nadha Vikitsreth

in conversation with Dorian A. Ortega

Women & Children First

We are excited to host Nat Nadha Vikitsreth for an event to celebrate the release of Raising Change Agents: Practicing Social Justice in Everyday Parenting. For this event, Nat will be joined in conversation by Dorian A. Ortega.

Raising Change Agents gives parents the tools they need to weave social justice actions into their daily routines, raise socially conscious kids, and address their own triggers and trauma, helping them become more than performative, take a proactive approach, and teach their kids and themselves to live in alignment with their values, even when they feel overwhelmed with the demands of work and homelife.

Friday, April 10 at 7 p.m.

Mega Milk: Essays

by Megan Milks

in conversation with Vera Blossom

Women & Children First

Please join us to celebrate the essay collection Mega Milk by Megan Milks, who will be in conversation with Vera Blossom.

For decades, Megan Milks has wondered what it means to share a last name with the classic white American beverage. Now, Milks takes on their namesake subject in all its dimensions, venturing into the worlds of small dairies, bovine genetics, and manure while also turning their eye on their family and themself. The resulting essays connect the dots between human lactation, Big Dairy, being queer and lonely, climate change, transmasculinity, the bull semen industry, the milky roots of white supremacy, and the best practices for giving and receiving a hug. With Mega Milk, Megan Milks confirms their place as one of our most exciting queer thinkers and writers.

Tuesday, April 14 at 7 p.m.

The Violence by Adriana E. Ramírez

in conversation with Daisy Hernández

Women & Children First

Join us to celebrate the release of The Violence: My Family's Colombian War by Adriana E. Ramírez. For this event, Adriana will be joined in conversation by Daisy Hernández.

When presumed president-elect Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, champion of the working class and harbinger of a new era of progressive social change, is assassinated on the eve of Colombia’s 1948 presidential election, the capital is plunged into bloodshed. So begins a singularly brutal period of Colombia’s history known simply as la violencia—a bloody civil war that spawned decades of turmoil and splintered the country into ever-shifting factions.

The Violence is an intimate history of this conflict—told not from the political center of the war but from the mountainous finca that Adriana E. Ramírez’s family tended to for generations, and through the eyes of her formidable grandmother, Esther.

Wednesday, April 15 at 7 p.m.

The Shipikisha Club: A Novel

by Mubanga Kalimamukwento

Women & Children First

We are excited to welcome back Mubanga Kalimamukwento to celebrate the release of The Shipikisha Club!

But her story does not begin with a gun. It begins fourteen years earlier--with her rebellion against the pressure to find a husband, her affair with a wealthy married man called Doc, and her discovery that she's pregnant on the same day of Doc's unexpected death.

To avoid the shame of being an unwed mother, Sali accepts Kasunga's proposal, and finds herself suddenly thrust into the shipikisha club: her society's expectations that it is a wife's duty to endure. Over the years, Sali navigates her husband's infidelities and alcohol-filled nights, their money troubles, and her postpartum depression in silence. Until the day she speaks her mind, and Kasunga puts a gun in her face.

Thursday, April 16 at 7 p.m.

Sober Speed Dating

hosted by Hot Potato Hearts

Women & Children First

Here at Hot Potato Hearts we celebrate relationships of all kinds, this event is for our spuds seeking relationships not centered around alcohol.

Hot Potato Hearts is an inclusive community focused on building meaningful connections in low-pressure, casual safe spaces.

Speed Dating is just like typical speed dating. You go on multiple 5 minute dates, anonymously write down who you like, & get emailed your matches the next day. However, at Hot Potato Hearts, we invite people of all genders and sexualities to date. We do not pair people based on their sexual orientation; who you date is completely random, so you can get a romantic date or make some new friends!

Wednesday, April 22 at 7 p.m.

The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie

by Chanda-Prescod-Weinstein

in conversation with Moya Bailey

Women & Children First

We are thrilled to host Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein for an event celebrating the release of The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie! For this event, Chanda will be joined in conversation by Moya Bailey.

In her highly acclaimed debut, distinguished cosmologist and particle physicist Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shared with her audience an abiding sense of wonder at the cosmos, while imagining a world without the entrenched injustice that plagues her field. Now, in The Edge of Space-Time, she embraces that cosmic wonder, taking readers on a mind-altering journey to the boundaries of the universe, inviting us to spend time at the edge of what we know about space-time and about ourselves.

Thursday, April 23 at 7 p.m.

The Collective Cure: Upstream Solutions for Better Public Health

by Monica L. Wang

Women & Children First

We're looking forward to hosting a reading and conversation in honor of The Collective Cure by Monica L. Wang!

A powerful blend of deeply human stories and rigorous research, The Collective Cure reveals how social and structural factors like income, occupation, race and ethnicity, neighborhood conditions, and social connections, profoundly shape our well-being. Dr. Monica Wang, an award-winning public health researcher, educator, and working mother who came of age as an Asian American bussing student, brings a personal lens to these complex issues and shares a hopeful, action-oriented vision for building healthier communities from the ground up.

Friday, April 24 at 7 p.m.

Body Weather: Notes on Chronic Illness in the Anthropocene

by Lorraine Boissoneault

in conversation with Abby Geni

Women & Children First

We are thrilled to host the launch event for Body Weather by Lorraine Boissoneault. Lorraine will be in conversation with Abby Geni.

Science writer Lorraine Boissoneault has been in pain for most of her adult life. Unable to control or make sense of her chronic illness diagnoses, she began describing the ebb and flow of her symptoms as “body weather.” At first an imaginative approach to coping with flare-ups, the phrase has become a waypoint in Lorraine’s explorations of the intimate relationship between our fragile bodies and the world around us.

Saturday, April 25

ALL DAY

Chicagoland Bookstore Crawl

Independent Bookstore Day

LEARN MORE

This year, the annual Chicagoland Bookstore Crawl is BACK with 81 bookstores joining the celebration for Indie Bookstore Day! Each year, independent bookstores across the greater Chicago area–from Antioch to Homewood and St. Charles to the Loop–encourage book lovers to indulge in bookstore tourism by visiting 10 or more stores in a single day.

Wednesday, April 29 at 7 p.m.

The Way Disabled People Love Each Other: Poems

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Women & Children First

In collaboration with the Arts and Culture Project at Access Living, we are thrilled to host a hybrid event for the new poetry collection by author and disability justice movement worker, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

Lambda Award-winning poet, memoirist, and disability justice movement worker Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha returns with their long-awaited fifth collection of poems, written over five years of pandemic lockdown, during which time they lost a cherished friend and comrade and met their estranged parents' end of life.

Thursday, April 30 at 7 p.m.

Emotional Support Animals by Nicole Georges

in conversation with Jessica Hopper

Women & Children First

We are thrilled to host Nicole Georges for an event celebrating the release of Emotional Support Animals: Anonymous Fuzzball Comics + Workbook. For this event, Nicole will be joined in conversation by Jessica Hopper.

This event will include a conversation and a short comics-drawing workshop. No supplies needed!

Emotional Support Animals is a collection of comics and worksheets featuring adorable and irresistible emotional support animals offering words of compassion and wisdom, delivering smiles along with experience, strength, and hope.

Friday, May 1 at 6:30 p.m.

Green Card Youth Voices

Women & Children First

We are excited to welcome Green Card Youth Voices for an event celebrating Chicago's memorable youth voices and the release of Immigration Stories from Chicago High Schools: Green Card Youth Voices. This event will include a reading, conversation panel, and book signing.

Sunday, May 3 at 6:30 p.m.

The Memory Museum by M Lin

in conversation with Ananda Lima

Women & Children First

We are very excited to host M Lin for an event celebrating the release of Memory Museum: Stories. For this event, M Lin will be joined in conversation by Ananda Lima. This event is co-presented with the Chicago Review of Books.

Stretching from the present to the future, from China to America and beyond, M Lin’s piercing debut collection depicts characters finding beauty amidst the disorientation of migration, the contradictions of living between cultures, the perverse realities of race and class, and the delicate dance between survival and resistance.

Tuesday, May 5 at 6:30 p.m.

Fat Swim by Emma Copley Eisenberg

in conversation with Rebecca Makkai

Haymarket House

800 W. Buena Ave.

We are thrilled to welcome back Emma Copley Eisenberg for an off-site event at Haymarket House (800 W Buena Ave) to celebrate the release of Fat Swim! For this event, Emma will be joined in conversation by Rebecca Makkai.

An electrifying collection of linked stories following a cast of characters navigating bodies, queerness, power, and sex—with radical results—from the bestselling author of Housemates.

“These interconnected stories blitzed my brain and gut. Prepare to be shaken.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy.