But it's not May quite yet! Indie Bookstore Day is this Saturday! And the best way to celebrate IBD is to participate in the Chicagoland Indie Bookstore Crawl. Use this handy Google map to plan your route for visiting 10 to 15 stores in a single, fantastically book-filled day!

Also in celebration of Indie Bookstore Day, a $1,000 match has been offered for all wishlist purchases for Chicago Books to Women in Prison. Friday, April 28 through Monday, May 8, anything you buy for CBWP from the wishlist HERE or in store will count toward the $1,000 match goal. CBWP, an all-volunteer, donation-funded 501(c)(3) nonprofit, sends free books to women and trans people in prisons nationwide. CBWP and W&CF appreciate the support of friends like you.

Please join us for a virtual event celebrating the release of Momfluenced by Sara Petersen! For this event, Sara will be in conversation with Kate Baer. 

Join us for an in-person event celebrating Ellie Engle Saves Herself! by Leah Johnson! For this event, Leah Johnson will be in conversation with Julian Randall.

Join us for in-person story time with Miss Linda! This event is held the first Wednesday of every month. Doors open at 10:15 am. Stories start at 10:30 a.m.

Women & Children First is excited to welcome New York Times-bestselling author Emily St. John Mandel for a reading, conversation, and book-signing in honor of the paperback release of Sea of Tranquility. For this event, Mandel will be in conversation with producer and host of the WBEZ podcast Nerdette, Greta Johnsen.

The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

Join us for an in-person event celebrating the release of Side Notes from the Archivist by Anastacia-Reneé. For this event, Anastacia-Reneé will be in conversation with avery r. young, the newly announced Chicago Poet Laureate. 

Please join us for an in-person event celebrating the release of If Tomorrow Doesn't Come by Jen St. Jude! For this event, Jen will be in conversation with Jas Hammonds. 

Join us for an in-person event celebrating the release of Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them by Tove Danovich! For this event, Tove will be joined in conversation by Sophie Lucido-Johnson. 

Since first domesticating the chicken thousands of years ago, humans have become exceptionally adept at raising them for food. Yet most people rarely interact with chickens or know much about them. In Under the Henfluence, culture reporter Tove Danovich explores the lives of these quirky, mysterious birds who stole her heart the moment her first box of chicks arrived at the post office.

Please join us for an event celebrating the re-release of A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett and the release of Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante!

A new edition of two-time Lambda Literary Award–winner Casey Plett’s acclaimed debut short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, is something to celebrate! By the author of Little Fish and A Dream of a Woman, eleven unique short stories feature young trans women stumbling through loss, sex, harassment, and love in settings ranging from a rural Mennonite town to a hipster gay bar in Brooklyn.

Saturday, May 13 from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m.

Outside the bookstore

Buy baked goods & support MAC!

Here's what your donations to MAC can do:

• $10: a ride-share from the train station to the clinic.

• $25: a short distance bus or a train ticket.

• $40: food stipend for a day.

• $75: child care stipend for a day. (Six in 10 women who have abortions are already mothers.)

• $100: one night in a low-cost hotel.

• $450: round-trip airfare for those who have to travel out of region.

Please join us to celebrate the release of Bianca by Eugenia Leigh! For this event, Eugenia Leigh will be joined by Jameka Williams and C. Russell Price. 

“I thought I forgave you,” Eugenia Leigh tells the specter of her father in Bianca. “Then I took root and became / someone’s mother.” Leigh’s gripping second collection introduces us to a woman managing marriage, motherhood, and mental illness as her childhood abuse resurfaces in the light of “this honeyed life.” Leigh strives to reconcile the disconnect between her past and her present as she confronts the inherited violence mired in the body’s history.

Mundelein Center for the Fine and Performing Arts

1020 West Sheridan Road

Three years after the release of the New York Times bestseller Wow, No Thank You, beloved author, celebrated comedian, and famed blogger Samantha Irby joins WBEZ's Nerdette host Greta Johnsen to discuss her new collection of essays, Quietly Hostile.

Join us on May 18th at the Mundelein Theater as Irby reveals all that is behind Hollywood’s mirage of glitz and glamor--from her experience in the writers’ room of the Sex and the City reboot to flop sweats on the red carpet.

Join us for an in-person story time and book release party celebrating J Is for Justice! by Veronica I. Arreola! 

Join us for an in-person event celebrating the release of Period: The Real Story of Menstruation by Kate Clancy! For this event, Kate will be in conversation with Heather Corrina. 

Menstruation is something half the world does for a week at a time, for months and years on end, yet it remains largely misunderstood. Scientists once thought of an individual's period as useless, and some doctors still believe it's unsafe for a menstruating person to swim in the ocean wearing a tampon. Period counters the false narratives that have long defined the study of the uterus, exposing the eugenic history of gynecology while providing an intersectional feminist perspective on menstruation science.

Join us for an in-person event celebrating the paperback release of Neruda on the Park by Cleyvis Natera. For this event, Cleyvis will be in conversation with Jessamine Chan. 

Join us for an in-person book launch celebrating the release of Town and Gown by Jan English Leary. For this event, Jan will be joined in conversation by Lynn Sloan. 

Join us for an in-person event celebrating the release of Women We Buried, Women We Burned by Rachel Louise Snyder! For this event, Rachel will be joined by Elizabeth Taylor. 

For decades, Rachel Louise Snyder has been a fierce advocate reporting on the darkest social issues that impact women's lives. Women We Buried, Women We Burned is her own story.

Join us for an in-person event celebrating Everybody Come Alive: A Memoir in Essays by Marcie Alvis Walker. For this event, Marcie will be in conversation with Jenny Booth Potter.

In her debut book, Everybody Come Alive, Marcie Alvis Walker invites readers into a deeply intimate and illuminating life story told in lyrical essays and remembrances of being a curious child of the seventies and eighties, raised under the critical and watchful eye of Jim Crow matriarchs who struggled to integrate their lives and remain whole.

Join us for an in-person event celebrating Dykette by Jenny Fran Davis. For this event, Jenny will be in conversation with Rivka Yeker!

Same Time Next Summer

In-person Panel Discussion

In-person Book Launch

In-person Author Reading