Legendary 100-year-old activist and historian Timuel Black discusses his new book, Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black, which chronicles the life and times of this Chicago icon. Bart Schultz, editor of the book, and Bennett Johnson, activist and publisher of Path Press, will talk with Black about his life in this event co-sponsored by Northwestern University’s Department of African-American Studies. Evanston civil rights legend Bennett Johnnson will also join the discussion. Register to reserve a seat at https://evanston.libnet.info/event/1971364

About the Speakers:

Timuel D. Black, Jr. has spent his life furthering the cause of social justice, and his two volumes of oral histories, Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Black Migration and Bridges of Memory: Chicago's Second Generation of Black Migration, published by Northwestern University Press, chronicle black Chicago history from the 1920s to the present.

Bennett Johnson is a legendary civil rights activist and publisher in Evanston. He helped found Evanston’s branch of the Congress of Racial Equality and the Chicago League of Negro Voters. He has worked for Urban Consulting Inc. and as the president of the Evanston Minority Business Consortium He co-founded Path Press, which began publishing books in 1969 as one of the first black-owned publishers, and continues to this day.

Bart Schultz is a senior lecturer in humanities and director of the Civic Knowledge Project at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many works, including Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe.

Various kinds of migrations—their own and those of others, chosen and forced, geographical and emotional—inform the work of many writers. The ones featured in this reading will share writing situated along contested borders and within official documents, in sites of historical significance and in classrooms, in remembered homelands and in imagined family trees—work that explores what it means to find a home in this world, what it takes to secure a sense of belonging despite the forces of fear, exclusion, xenophobia, even shame.

Readers include Jan-Henry Gray, Nestor Gomez, Kimberly Dixon-Mays, Daniela Morales, Nina Sudhakar, Jeremy T. Wilson, Foster Monroe, and Liam Hubbard, and the event is hosted by Faisal Mohyuddin.

Refreshments will be served, and free parking is available directly across the street from the event space.

Rebecca Sive's Vote Her In: Your Guide to Electing Our First Woman President addresses the unrealized dream of millions of American women: electing our first woman President. It makes the case for the urgency of women attaining equal executive political power at all levels, including the presidency, and offers a comprehensive strategy for every woman to be a part of this campaign—the most important of our lifetimes. Sive speaks with Michele Weldon, the editorial director of Take the Lead and author of Escape Points. This event is cosponsored by Take the Lead.

About Vote Her In: “inspiring, savvy and persuasive on why America needs more female leadership now. Rebecca offers not just the analysis, but the practical steps every woman and man can take to help get women into the C-suite and the Oval Office. And argues that the time to do it is now.”--Jessica Yellin, former CNN White House correspondent

About the Author: Rebecca Sive’s career has spanned executive positions − in business, government, philanthropy, academia, and the not-for-profit sector − where she has earned a reputation as a smart and inspirational women’s leadership and politics strategist, writer, speaker, and teacher. At the University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy, Sive was the founding Program and Academic Director of its Women in Public Leadership executive education initiative, and was a lecturer. Sive has received distinguished achievement awards from her undergraduate alma mater, Carleton College, and from the University of Illinois (from which she received an M.A. in American History), and leadership awards from the United Negro College Fund, the Jaycees, and the YWCA, among others. Sive was among the national leaders who developed women's issues agendas for Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. She was a gubernatorial appointee to the Illinois Human Rights Commission; a mayoral appointee as a commissioner of the Chicago Park District; a founding board member of the Chicago Foundation for Women; is in Feminists Who Changed America, University of Illinois Press (2006), and has served as a director of many other organizations and foundations.

About the Interlocutor: Michele Weldon is editorial director of Take the Lead, and is emerita faculty in journalism at Northwestern University, where she taught on the graduate and undergraduate levels for 18 years. She is director of the Northwestern Public Voices Fellowship through The OpEd Project, where she is a senior leader. Weldon is the author of four nonfiction books, I Closed My Eyes (1999); Writing To Save Your Life (2001); Everyman News (2008); and her latest, Escape Points: A Memoir (2015) was named one of the best books of 2015 by Booklist of the American Library Association and was a finalist in the Society of Midland Authors Literary Awards for 2015. She has contributed chapters in seven other books and anthologies. Her commentary appears regularly in outlets such as New York Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, CNN, Cosmopolitan, Washington Post, Huffington Post, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Medium, Pacific Standard, Quartz, Slate and hundreds more. Weldon co-directed TEDX NorthwesternU 2014 and competed in the 2012 Moth Story Chicago GrandSlam in 2012. She is a frequent guest on radio, TV and digital sites.

Join One Book, One Northwestern for a book talk with author and Northwestern Associate Professor of Medical Social Sciences, Medical Education and Obstetrics & Gynecology Katie Watson JD. Watson will discuss her new book, Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law & Politics of Ordinary Abortion. Scarlet A explains the law of abortion, challenges the toxic politics that make it a public football and private secret, offers tools for more productive private exchanges, and leads the way to a more robust public discussion of abortion. Planned Parenthood campus co-president Sloane Scott will engage Professor Watson in conversation before opening the program up for Q& A from the audience. This event is co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood Generation Action (PPGA).

Please join us for this discussion about how to tell the stories of refugees and asylum-seekers — in Chicago and the rest of the world — ethically and effectively. The award-winning journalists and artists of 90 Days, 90 Voices are producing a collaborative storytelling project called Asylum City to fill the gap in coverage about asylum seekers in Chicago and fight ignorance about why they are coming to the United States. Alex V. Hernandez, a reporter for Block Club Chicago and Engagement Director for 90 Days, 90 Voices, will discuss his reporting on refugees along with Northwestern professor Wendy Pearlman, author of We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, whose work focuses on telling the stories of Syrian refugees. Award-winning journalist Nissa Rhee, Executive Director of 90 Days, 90 Voices, will moderate the discussion. This event is co-presented by the Middle East and North African Studies Program at Northwestern, 90 Days, 90 Voices, Chicago City of Refuge, and the Chicago Network for Justice and Peace. This event is supported by PEN America. llustration by Dan Rowell for 90 Days, 90 Voices and the Chicago Reader.

To register for a seat, please go to the Evanston Public Library site.

Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU, discusses her new book, HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship, with Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago law professor and the author of Sex and the Constitution.

Please help us welcome author/activists Amy and Dave Freeman who are stopping at the Bookends & Beginnings during their 1,750 mile book tour by bicycle from Ely, Minnesota to Washington, D.C. They are sharing their new book, A Year in the Wilderness: Bearing Witness in the Boundary Waters (Milkweed Editions), and continuing their efforts to protect the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from the threat of proposed copper mining. They will arrive at the store around 5:30 pm, towing their canoe behind their bikes, and then give a presentation about the year they spent living in the Boundary Waters. From listening to a wolf pack run through their campsite as the lakes were freezing around them in the late fall, to watching the loons return as the ice melted in the spring, the Freemans’ engaging presentation is designed to transport audiences into the wilderness and inspire them to help protect this national treasure for future generations. Afterwards, attendees can sign the canoe, which is serving as a petition showing popular support for protecting the Boundary Waters!

The Freemans have delivered more than 700 presentations to a wide range of audiences. They've been featured on The Today Show, in Outside Magazine, NPR, Sierra Magazine, and in 2014 were named National Geographic Adventurers of the Year. A Year in the Wilderness was named one of 20 Big Indie Books of Fall 2017 by Publishers Weekly and was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Canoe & Kayak, Shelf Awareness, Los Angeles Review, City Pages, among other media outlets. This tour is a collaborative effort between the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, the Freemans, and Milkweed Editions.

The election of Donald Trump showed how the American electoral system is clearly falling apart. In It’s Time To Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics, Roosevelt University political science professor David Faris offers accessible, actionable strategies for American institutional reform. Faris will discuss his ideas with John K. Wilson, author of President Trump Unveiled: Exposing the Bigoted Billionaire (trumpunveiled.com).

Presented in conjunction with the NU College Democrats.

A great notion about Female Empowerment is suddenly sweeping the publishing industry. The shelves at Bookends & Beginnings are swelling with books like Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, Rad Women Worldwide, Strong is the New Pretty, and Feminist Baby. Not since the 1970s has the country seen such an exuberant literature of female assertiveness—and yet, is really getting easier to be a girl? Are there downsides as well as upsides to all this exhortation to girls to be bad and rad and brazen? Join us for a spirited discussion of contemporary girls’ coming-of-age with Renee Engeln, author of Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women, and Megan Stielstra, author of The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays. The conversation will be moderated by Bookends & Beginnings owner Nina Barrett, whose essay “Mind-Body Story,” about female coming-of-age, appears in the Great Books Foundation anthology Her Own Accord: American Women On Identity, Culture, and Community.

What are the most important challenges to academic inquiry at Northwestern now? Which constituencies and/or bodies of governance (student, faculty) and administrative structures are crucial in protecting and bolstering such inquiry? How?  A number of recent cases at Northwestern lead us to engage in a conversation about the status of academic inquiry on our campus and the challenges it faces. This roundtable event will feature 10-minute interventions by Professors Stephen Eisenman (Art History), Peter Kirstein (History, St. Xavier University), Andrew Koppelman (Law and Political Science), and Jacqueline Stevens (Political Science) responding to the prompts above. The event will also include a question-and-answer period with audience members, and will also include a discussion about organizing a chapter of the American Association of University Professors at Northwestern.

Daniel Borzutzky, the National Book Award-winning poet (The Performance of Becoming Human) will read from his new book, Lake Michigan, a series of 19 lyric poems imagining a prison camp located on the beaches of a Chicago that is privatized, racially segregated, and overrun by a brutal police force. Patricia Smith noted, "Borzutzky’s surreal and terrifying lakeside dreamscape—sparked by the real-world specter of the city’s infamous ‘blacksite’ interrogation warehouse—is deftly crafted and chilling in its proximity to the real.”

He will be joined by Peruvian poet and professor Margarita Saona, who will also be reading her poetry. She is head of the department of Hispanic and Italian Studies at the University of Illinois. She has published numerous articles, two books on literary and cultural criticism, Novelas familiares: Figuraciones de la nación en la novela latinoamericana contemporánea  (Rosario, 2004) and Memory Matters in Transitional Perú (Londres, 2014), two books of short fiction, Comehoras (Lima, 2008) and Objeto perdido (Lima, 2012). Corazón de hojalata/Tin Heart  (Chicago, 2017) is her first book of poems.

Be a part of non-violent action. Join us as we gather again this year at Bookends and Beginnings in Evanston to offer our voices in resistance to the current state of local, national, and global affairs that threaten to pull us apart and even set us against each other. The world is on fire! Bring your voices and hearts to this singular event, as you hear authors and activists read from original works expressing their thoughts and opinions based on this year's theme. 
Our reading lineup is (not in order):
Nina Kavin (activist and founder/writer of Dear Evanston) 
Rachel Jamison Webster (poet/writer/Director of Creative Writing in the Department of English at Northwestern University)
Dan Stolar (writer)
Liana Wallace (ETHS student) 
Jerry Brennan (author/editor of Tortoise Books)
Liz Radford (writer/co-founder Women's March Chicago)
Dina Elenbogen (poet/event host)
Ema Wallace (student)
Natania Rosenfeld (poet/writer) 
Faisal Mohyuddin (writer, artist, educator)
Ignatius Valentine Aloysius (writer/event host)