Thursday, October 18, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Dan Hill presents Famous Faces Decoded: A Guidebook for Reading Others

Unless you’ve never been lied to in life, you know that words aren’t enough in assessing people and situations. Vital to emotional intelligence is fluently reading the language of facial expressions. Famous Faces Decoded reveals how emotions shape and reflect our personalities, driving behavior. This book is full of lively stories about stars you know, or think you know, from the realms of Hollywood, music, sports, and the media, to leading politicians and business people from The Silent Generation to Millennials.

In this unique mini-workshop / reading event, Dan will help guests get oriented to facial coding (reading expressions for emotions expressed) using large, mounted heads as examples. Guests are also invited to bring to the event photographs from either current events or personal moments like weddings, family reunions, etc. Readings from the book will highlight a range of personalities, with Q & A to follow.



Dan Hill, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized expert on the role of emotions in business, politics, sorts, and popular culture. His-wide ranging media coverage and appearances have included: front-page coverage in The New York Times, plus ABC’s Good Morning, America, NBC’s The Today Show, and CNN. Dan lives in St. Paul, and received his doctorate in English literature at Rutgers University following studies at Brown University, Oxford University and St. Olaf College. Dan’s blog Faces of the Week covers the emotional dynamics at play in today’s headlines.

Saturday, October 20, 5:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Be a Book Hero! Repair Your Books - How To and When Not To!, with Sophia S. W. Bogle

Bring your tired, your worn, your broken books. Master book restorationist Sophia will show you the way! Using everyday tools and just a few archival materials, you can treat many book problems: broken book bindings, bent corners, pages falling out, red rot and more. Learn simple, archival methods of book repair to retain the value of your books... and discover when, in order to retain the value of your book, no repairs should be done at all.

Free consultations and actual repairs demonstrated on your books. Get there early to put your book in the queue!

Sophia S.W. Bogle is a master book restorationist, and proprietress of Save Your Books, a business committed to bringing simple, archival, book repair resources to every bibliophile. Sophia has a diploma in book conservation from the American Academy of Bookbinding and over 25 years of experience restoring books with a focus on preserving their value. Sophia lives in Ashland, Oregon and is currently the events co-chair for the Northwest Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers. Sophia’s book Book Restoration Unveiled is due to come out in April of 2019. www.saveyourbooks.com

Sunday, October 21, 5:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Kathleen Novak presents The Autobiography of Corrine Bernard

The elusive lover of Do Not Find Me returns to tell her side of the story in The Autobiography of Corrine Bernard. From her hapless childhood under Nazi occupation in Paris to her life as a woman of letters in present-day New York City, Corrine remains scrappy and wise. When she is seventeen, she travels to America to visit her godmother and meets Charles Bernard, whose wealth and ruthlessness alter the entire course of her life.

In a bold and mesmerizing voice, Corrine details her intense pull towards Charles, her lifelong attraction to the blue-eyed Italian named Gigi Paulo, and her observations of Paris, New York, St. Johns and London, as she roams in exile for decades of her life. Dear Reader, she begins, I have my tales to tell. And so she does in this dark and compelling novel.


Kathleen Novak is a poet and writer who grew up on the iron mining range of northern Minnesota, and is the granddaughter of Italian and Croatian immigrants. A graduate of the University of Minnesota, she is the author of the highly praised novels Rare Birds, released in 2017, and Do Not Find Me, which was a finalist for the 2016 Minnesota Book Award.

Sunday, October 21, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Mill City Reading Series

The Mill City Reading Series is a monthly showcase of works in progress by MFA in Creative Writing students at the University of Minnesota. This reading series is free and open to the public.

Monday, October 22, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Brooke Barker presents Sad Animal Babies

Baby animals don’t play with toys. They don’t have favorite colors. And they don’t learn songs unless it's for self-defense. In this beautifully illustrated compendium of sweet and sad facts, Brooke Barker takes us into the world of baby animals and shows us just how complicated and adorable their fight for survival can be, from the moose who try to mate with cars, to the single parrots who talk to blenders and the newborn elephants who can’t control their trunks. If you already think you’d like to hug a baby animal Sad Animal Babies will make you realize just how much they need it.


Brooke Barker is a writer and illustrator who grew up outside of Minneapolis. Her first book, Sad Animal Babies, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times best-seller, and has been published in countless languages if you can't count higher than seven. Her work has been published in The Guardian, Lenny Letter and The New York Times. She currently lives in Amsterdam.

Tuesday, October 23, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Mike Corrao launches Man, Oh, Man, with Daniel Abbott and The Concrete, in conversation with Andrew Wilt (Age of Agility)

Come enjoy an evening with two debut novelists.


About Man, Oh, Man:

Two patrons appear in a dim cafe one day. How they've arrived, where they've come from, and why they're there at all, they have no idea. What they do know is that they hate one another.

So they smoke. They tinker. They talk about art. They talk about waiting. They talk about talking. They talk about talking about talking. They talk about the strange messages coming through the radio. They talk about the even stranger guests who arrive, only to disappear a moment later. And as they fall deeper and deeper into this hysteria, what's uncovered might just make these two unlikely protagonists the most human of us all.

Mike Corrao has with Man, Oh, Man masterly crafted a humorous yet insightful experiment that'll have you questioning how you've always approached novels.


Mike Corrao is a young writer and filmmaker working out of Minneapolis, where he earned his B.A. in film and English literature at the University of Minnesota. In 2016 he was an artist-in-residence for the Altered Esthetics Film Festival. His work has appeared in over 20 different publications, including Entropy, decomP, Cleaver, and the Portland Review.

Man, Oh, Man is his first novel.



About The Concrete:

Set in an impoverished area of Grand Rapids, Michigan, The Concrete follows the Carters and their foster sons, Isaac and Miles. The two boys share a dark past, though neither of them are aware of it..

As the boys try to escape the grim reality of the violent streets--in different ways--Isaac through basketball, Miles through music--the novel shifts back and forth in time, in the process revealing the story of an entangled community plagued by trauma and death, trying to confront the ghosts of its past, and seize a better life.

Daniel Abbott is a novelist and short story writer from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He earned a BA in Writing from Grand Valley State University and an MFA in Fiction from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Daniel's writing has appeared in Lit Hub, The Noctua Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, and The Owen Wister Review.

Wednesday, October 24, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Meghan O'Gieblyn presents Interior States, in conversation with Chris Stedman

What does it mean to be a believing Christian and a Midwesterner in an increasingly secular America where the cultural capital is retreating to both coasts?

The critic and essayist Meghan O’Gieblyn was born into an evangelical family, attended the famed Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for a time before she had a crisis of belief, and still lives in the Midwest, aka “Flyover Country.” She writes of her “existential dizziness, a sense that the rest of the world is moving while you remain still,” and that rich sense of ambivalence and internal division inform the fifteen superbly thoughtful and ironic essays in this collection. The subjects of these essays range from the rebranding (as it were) of Hell in contemporary Christian culture, a theme park devoted to the concept of intelligent design, the paradoxes of Christian Rock, Henry Ford’s reconstructed pioneer town of Greenfield Village and its mixed messages, and the strange convergences of Christian eschatology and the digital so-called Singularity.

Meghan O’Gieblyn stands in relation to her native Midwest as Joan Didion stands in relation to California – which is to say a whole-hearted lover, albeit one riven with ambivalence at the same time.


Meghan O'Gieblyn is a writer who was raised and still lives in the Midwest. Her essays have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, n+1,The Point, The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Best American Essays 2017, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. She received a B.A. in English from Loyola University, Chicago and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Interior States is her debut collection of essays. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her husband.

Chris Stedman is the author of Faitheist, "an intimate and deeply affecting portrait… [that] proves [he is] an activist in the truest sense and one to watch" (Booklist, Starred Review). His writing has appeared in outlets including Pitchfork, BuzzFeed Reader, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Washington Post, VICE, CNN, MSNBC, The Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. After serving as a Humanist chaplain at Harvard University and director of the Yale Humanist Community, he now lives in Minneapolis, where he is a writer, speaker, fellow at Augsburg University, and founding executive director of the Humanist Center of Minnesota. He is working on his second book and writes a monthly column exploring what it means to be "real" in the digital age for INTO.

Saturday, October 27, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Owen Husney presents Famous People Who've Met Me: A Memoir By the Man Who Discovered Prince

Famous People Who've Met Me is an outrageous collection of true stories starring oddball characters, behind-the-scenes gurus, scoundrels, and brilliant superstars in the music business straight out of Minnesota. The unique memoir does more than just recount tales; it’s a true in-depth character study as told through the eyes of musician, agent, concert promoter, and manager Owen Husney. The stories reflect not only his crazy, sometimes dark experiences but also his contributions to the world of music — from Elvis to Al Jarreau, Richard Harris to Yanni, Hendrix to K-Tel, Prince to The Revolution.

From lying his way into major record labels to possibly solving a decades-long cold-case rock and roll murder, Husney’s passion for music, his wild encounters, and his hilarious story telling ability make this book a must-read. It’s not just for the curious, but a great education for anyone entering the artist or industry side of the music business today.


Owen Husney discovered and signed the artist Prince to Warner Bros. Records. Husney guided Prince’s early career and handled all worldwide marketing for the artist’s launch. He eventually signed an additional eleven artists to various major record labels, earning him ten gold and platinum certified albums. Husney ran several record labels in association with Capitol Records, A&M Records and Sony. He also co-organized music for the John Hughes films, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, earning gold album awards for each.

Sunday, October 28, 5:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

New Somali Fiction: Ahmed Ismail Yusuf (The Lion's Binding Oath) in conversation with Fartumo Kusow (Tale of a Boon's Wife), moderated by Cawo Abdi (Elusive Jannah: The Somali Disapora and a Borderless Muslim Identity)

Join us for a conversation between two Somali fiction writers working in English, moderated by the University of Minnesota's Professor Cawo Abdi.

About The Lion's Binding Oath::

Religious and ethnic conflict may be the Horn of Africa’s most enduring recent legacy. But beneath its recent history of war and displacement lies human stories—families, clans, lovers, neighbors, and friends, all bound together through common cultural, religious, and historical ties.

The Lion’s Binding Oath, Ahmed Ismail Yusuf’s collection of short stories, introduces readers to the people of Somalia and their struggles: their humanity, faith, identity, friendship, and family bonds, as whispers of war grow louder around them. Through stories that span the years before and during Somalia’s civil war, Yusuf weaves together Somalia’s political, social, and religious conflicts with portrayals of the country’s love of poetry, music, and soccer. Yusuf’s collection is a powerful examination of love and resilience in a country torn apart by war, and written with deep compassion for the lives of its characters.


After fleeing Somalia, Ahmed Ismail Yusuf lived in several states but has lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota since 1997. He did not speak English when he arrived, he was a high-school dropout, and he was not sure what his actual age was. Today he has two college degrees and is the author of Somalis in Minnesota, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press, and Gorgorkii Yimi, a collection of stories in Somali, published by Ponte Invisible.  In February 2018, The History Theatre of St. Paul produced his play A Crack in the Sky, a memoir about how Yusuf found inspiration in Maya Angelou and Malcolm X during his early days as an immigrant to the U.S.




About Tale of a Boon's Wife:

In her debut English language novel, Windsor author Fartumo Kusow imagines a young Somali woman who defies convention and clan.

Idil has grown up as the adored daughter in a privileged family. She worships her father, a high-ranking official in the Somali army, and all that he represents. But as she matures and watches her parents’ marriage unravel, her father’s image tarnishes.

Always curious and questioning, Idil begins to rebel and becomes a threat and an affront to her family’s social standing. When she falls in love with gentle Sidow from the lower-class Boon tribe, their love is not only taboo, it may be doomed.

Idil is ready to give up her family and social status to be with the man she loves. But she cannot guess how terrifying the repercussions will be. As the country stumbles towards civil war, Idil’s actions set off a war within the family that will affect her as deeply as the politics around her.


Born in Somalia, Fartumo Kusow immigrated to Canada at the start of the civil war. Her first novel, Amran, was serialized in October Star, Mogadishu: Somali National Press in 1984. Since her arrival in Canada in 1991 she has earned a B. Arts Honours in English Language and Literature and B. Education from the University of Windsor. She now teaches English literature courses for the Greater Essex County District School Board. A mother of five adult children, she lives in Windsor, Ontario.


Cawo (Awa) Abdi is author of "Elusive Jannah: The Somali Diaspora and a Borderless Muslim Identity." Abdi is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota and a research associate in sociology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Monday, October 29, 7:00pm The Parkway Theater

Grace Bonney presents Good Company: The Fearless Issue (#2), with special guests Ann Kim, Meg Lewis, Safy-Hallan Farah, and Martha McQuade (co-presentation with the Parkway Theater)

Come be a part of the first season of a new podcast as Grace Bonney, founder of Design*Sponge and the New York Times bestselling author of In Good Company, leads an inspiring and lively conversation on how creatives from every community tackle the tough questions, the difficult decisions, the naysayers and natural disasters to find their way to success.

Bonney will be joined by special guests onstage. A copy of Good Company: The Fearless Issue is included in the ticket price ($30).

Tickets can be purchased via Eventbrite.

Grace Bonney is the author of the New York Times bestselling book In the Company of Women and of the popular Design*Sponge at Home. Founder of Design*Sponge, a daily website currently reaching nearly 2 million readers per day, she also runs an annual scholarship for up-and-coming designers, writes a free business column for creatives, and is the host of two podcasts:  After the Jump and the just-launched Good Company. Bonney lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her wife and their three pets.

Ann Kim is the culinary mind behind Pizzeria Lola, Hello Pizza and Young Joni; in 2017 Ann received her first James Beard Award semifinalist nomination for “Best Chef Midwest ” and in 2018 she was selected as a finalist for “Best Chef Midwest.” She is the Chef/ Owner of Pizzeria Lola, Hello Pizza, and Young Joni.

Meg Lewis is a value-based designer creating experiences for happy companies and happier lives for humans of all kinds. She’s 1/4 of Ghostly Ferns, a collective of designers & commercial artists and the co-owner of Fool Proof, a shared workspace for creativity & collaboration in Minneapolis. She specializes in creating positive emotional connections between companies and their community by adding personality to their brand. She coaches brands on how to become a happy company and individuals on how to make money being themselves!

Safy-Hallan Farah is a Twin Cities-based writer and editor whose work can be read almost everywhere.

Martha McQuade is a multi-disciplinary designer, design educator and co-founder of the Minneapolis based firm MAD.

Tuesday, October 30, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Jim Guhl presents Eleven Miles to Oshkosh

As the Vietnam War grinds on and the Nixon presidency collapses, Del "Minnow" Finwick's small world in Wisconsin has blown apart. His father, a deputy sheriff, has been murdered by the unknown "Highway 41 Killer." His mom has unraveled. And a goon named Larry Buskin has been pummeling Minnow behind Neenah High. Minnow finds support in the company of his roguish grandfather, his loyal pal Mark, and beautiful Opal Parsons, who has her own worries as the first African American student in their school. When the sheriff seems in no hurry to solve the murder, Minnow must seek justice by partnering with unlikely allies and discovering his own courage.


As a writer of regional fiction, Jim Guhl has relied heavily on his Wisconsin and Minnesota roots, a strategy that has paid off handsomely. He is a two-time recipient of the Jade Ring Prize for Short Story Fiction from the Wisconsin Writers Association and a finalist in the St. Croix Noir Writing Challenge. His debut novel, Eleven Miles to Oshkosh (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018) takes his Midwestern theme to the next level. Guhl resides in Hudson, Wisconsin after retiring from a career in engineering.

Sunday, November 4, 5:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Saymoukda presents When Everything Was Everything, with illustrations by Cori Nakamura Lin

In the tumultuous years during and after the Vietnam War, thousands of ethnic Lao fled Southeast Asia to avoid persecution, imprisonment and even death. Many of these refugees eventually settled in the Upper Midwest, in and around Saint Paul and Minneapolis. Decades later, the older generation of Lao Americans continues to navigate the trauma of the region-wide conflict that ripped them from their homeland thousands of miles away. Their wounds have yet to scab.

Meanwhile, every generation of Lao still grapples with misrepresentation – or no representation at all – in popular and historical narratives, school curriculums, community conversations, and the arts. As a trans-generational narrative, When Everything Was Everything signifies a turning point for Lao American refugee stories.

Artfully stitched together from the author’s own imaginings, reimaginings and memories as a child raised on food stamps and forced into ESL classes while continuously being shuttled from one public housing address to the next, this remarkable picture book is a love letter to survivors that is sure to resonate with readers of all ages.


Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a poet, playwright, and cultural producer. Her work has been presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Theater Mu, and Lazy Hmong Woman Productions. She's received fellowships from the Loft Literary Center and Playwrights Center; and creative grants from Jerome Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and Bush Foundation, to name a few. Keep up with her @refugenius.

Cori Nakamura Lin is a Japanese/Taiwanese-American illustrator and graphic designer based in Minneapolis & Chicago. Through art she amplifies stories from underrepresented people and cultures. When Everything Was Everything is her first book.

Tuesday, November 6, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Election Day: Austin Smith presents Flyover Country

Flyover Country is a powerful collection of poems about violence: the violence we do to the land, to animals, to refugees, to the people of distant countries, and to one another. Drawing on memories of his childhood on a dairy farm in Illinois, Austin Smith explores the beauty and cruelty of rural life, challenging the idea that the American Midwest is mere “flyover country,” a place that deserves passing over. At the same time, the collection suggests that America itself has become a flyover country, carrying out drone strikes and surveillance abroad, locked in a state of perpetual war that Americans seem helpless to stop.

In these poems, midwestern barns and farmhouses are linked to other lands and times as if by psychic tunnels. A poem about a barn cat moving her kittens in the night because they have been discovered by a group of boys resonates with a poem about the house in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis. A poem beginning with a boy on a farmhouse porch idly swatting flies ends with the image of people fleeing before a drone strike. A poem about a barbwire fence suggests, if only metaphorically, the debate over immigration and borders. Though at times a dark book, the collection closes with a poem titled “The Light at the End,” suggesting the possibility of redemption and forgiveness.

Building on Smith’s reputation as an accessible and inventive poet with deep insights about rural America, Flyover Country also draws profound connections between the Midwest and the wider world.


Austin Smith grew up on a family dairy farm in northwestern Illinois. He is the author of two poetry collections, Almanac and Flyover Country (both published through the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets). His work has appeared in New Yorker, Poetry, Harper’s, Ploughshares, and many other publications. He teaches at Stanford but currently lives in a 100-year-old farmhouse in Jo Daviess, County in northwestern Illinois, where he writes and gardens.

Wednesday, November 7, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Erin Gibson presents Feminasty: The Complicated Woman’s Guide to Surviving the Patriarchy Without Drinking Herself to Death

Since women earned the right to vote a little under one hundred years ago, our progress hasn't been the Olympic sprint toward gender equality first-wave feminists hoped for, but more of a slow, elderly mall walk (with frequent stops at Cinnabon) over the four hundred million hurdles we still face. Some of these obstacles are obvious — unequal pay, under-representation in government, reproductive restrictions, lack of floor-length mirrors in hotel rooms. But a lot of them are harder to identify. They’re the white noise of oppression that we’ve accepted as lady business as usual, and the patriarchy wants to keep it that way.

Erin Gibson has a singular goal - to create a utopian future where women are recognized as humans. In Feminasty—titled after her nickname on the hit podcast "Throwing Shade”—she has written a collection of make-you-laugh-until-you-cry essays that expose the hidden rules that make life as a woman unnecessarily hard and deconstructs them in a way that's bold, provocative and hilarious. Whether it's shaming women for having their periods, allowing them into STEM fields but never treating them like they truly belong, or dictating strict rules for how they should dress in every situation, Erin breaks down the organized chaos of old-fashioned sexism, intentional and otherwise, that systemically keeps women down.

Feminasty is Erin Gibson’s revolutionary handbook for dismantling the patriarchy, one pay gap joke at a time.



Emmy-nominated Southern loudmouth Erin Gibson is an expert at mixing social commentary, political satire, and vagina jokes into neat little comedy packages. Based in Los Angeles, she's one half of the Throwing Shade empire, which includes an award winning political absurdist comedy podcast, international live touring show, the Funny or Die web series and a TV Land late night show. She also created the long running Emmy-nominated "Gay of Thrones" starring her real-life hair stylist, Jonathan Van Ness. Feminasty is her debut book of comedic essays.

Thursday, November 8, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Bonnie J. Rough presents Beyond Birds & Bees: Bringing Home A New Message to Our Kids About Sex, Love, and Equality, in conversation with Kate Hopper (Use Your Words)

Now that the #MeToo moment has highlighted the pervasive nature of sexism and harassment in American life, having “the talk” with kids about sex and gender equality takes on an added layer of urgency for parents. How can we do a better job imparting healthy, shame-free and egalitarian attitudes about bodies, sex, gender, and love? Author Bonnie J. Rough has two surprising answers, backed by rigorous research: First, learning healthy sexuality begins at birth. Second: We have lots to learn from the Dutch.

After living in Holland for eighteen months with a young daughter and then returning to the U.S., Rough began to suspect that the Dutch knew something she didn’t about how to raise happy, healthy children who were comfortable with their own bodies and with each other. Years of research, lots of life experience, and interviews with dozens of experts in both countries have culminated in her new book, Beyond Birds & Bees: Bringing Home A New Message to Our Kids About Sex, Love, and Equality.

Compared with the U.S., Holland boasts lower rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections—and much higher gender equality. While Dutch and American teenagers begin having sex at roughly the same age, Dutch teens report more positive experiences and fewer partners. Dutch adults report greater respect and cooperation among genders, as compared with American survey results. Why?

Rough finds that the carefree Dutch attitude toward nudity—children running naked in public parks and swimmers using unisex locker rooms at public pools—sheds light on how Americans automatically sexualize nude bodies. She learns how the Dutch explain sex to their children in ways that are neither embarrassing nor erotic, and why such conversations challenge American ideas about childhood “innocence.” And she confronts one of the greatest worries of American parents—teenage sex—with the Dutch perspective that embracing adolescent relationships gives parents the opportunity to advise and support their teenagers as they contemplate their first sexual experiences. With lots of personal anecdotes and a “been there, survived that” tone, Beyond Birds and Bees presents a new model for addressing issues as commonplace as children “playing doctor” and as complex as social norms surrounding how boys and girls should dress, think, and interact.


Bonnie J. Rough is the author of The Girls, Alone, and Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA. An award-winning essayist and memoirist with an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa, her essays have appeared in numerous publications. Rough lives with her husband and two daughters in Seattle and makes frequent trips back to their former home in the Netherlands.

Kate Hopper is the author of Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers and Ready for Air: A Journey Through Premature Motherhood, and she’s co-author of Silent Running, a memoir of one family’s journey with autism and running. Her writing has appeared in a number of journals, including Brevity, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times online, Poets & Writers, and River Teeth. Kate has her MFA from the University of Minnesota and has been the recipient of two Minnesota State Arts Board Grants, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant, and a Fulbright Scholarship. Kate is the founder of Motherhood & Words and teaches in Ashland University’s Low-residency MFA program, online, and at ModernWell and the Loft Literary Center. She also leads retreats for women writers in the Midwest. She lives in Minneapolis with her family. www.katehopper.com.

Sunday, November 11, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Will McGrath launches Everything Lost is Found Again: Four Seasons in Lesotho

Funny and heartfelt, this blend of memoir and essay collection, the winner of the 2017 Dzanc/Disquiet Open Borders Book Prize, tells the story of nearly two years the author spent in Lesotho, the small, landlocked kingdom surrounded by South Africa. There he finds a spirit of joyful absurdity and resolve, welcomed by people who take strangers’ hands as they walk down the road, people who—with sweetest face—drop the dirtiest jokes in the southern hemisphere. But Lesotho is also a place where shepherds exact Old Testament retribution, where wounded pride incites murder and families are devastated by the AIDS epidemic.

Driven by a spirit of openhearted cultural exchange, and reminiscent of Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country and Alexandra Fuller’s Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, Will McGrath’s Everything Lost Is Found Again brings humor and heart to pop ethnography—an off-kilter celebration of our common human identity.

“With astute sensitivity, a reporter's eye, and a poet's command of language, Will McGrath introduces us to so much more than a place. He situates us inside the small quiet moments of grace that define everyday lives. The writing is at once joyous and devastating, luminous and tender..”
—Inara Verzemnieks, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Among the Living and the Dead


Will McGrath has worked as a reporter, homeless shelter caseworker, public radio producer, UPS truck loader, Burger King mayo-applicator, ghostwriter, and ghosteditor, in slightly different order. He spent twenty months living in the southern African kingdom of Lesotho, and has written for The Atlantic, Pacific Standard, Foreign Affairs, Guernica, and Roads & Kingdoms, among other magazines. His writing has won nonfiction awards including the 2014 Felice Buckvar Prize and has been translated into Chinese, Hungarian, and Japanese.

Wednesday, November 14, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Allen Eskens presents The Shadows We Hide

Purchase the book (available November 13, 2018)

Joe Talbert, Jr. has never once met his namesake. Now out of college, a cub reporter for the Associated Press in Minneapolis, he stumbles across a story describing the murder of a man named Joseph Talbert in a small town in southern Minnesota. Full of childhood dreams about who his father might have been, Joe is shocked to find that none of the town's residents have much to say about his father's murder-other than that it was long overdue. Joe discovers that his father was a loathsome man who cheated his neighbors, threatened his daughter, and squandered his wife's inheritance after she, too, passed away--an inheritance that may now be his.

Mired in uncertainty and plagued by his own tenuous relationship with his mother, whose sobriety has led her to seek reconciliation with her distant son, Joe must put together the missing pieces of his family history-- before his quest for discovery threatens to put him in a grave of his own.


Allen Eskens is the USA Today bestselling author of The Life We Bury, The Guise of Another, The Heavens May Fall, and The Deep Dark Descending. He is the recipient of the Barry Award, the Rosebud Award, and the Silver Falchion Award, and has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Thriller Award, the Anthony Award, and the Minnesota Book Award. His debut novel, The Life We Bury, has been published in 16 languages and is being developed for a feature film.

Thursday, November 15, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

May Yang presents Leaving Laos, with Pang Yang

Through the ups and downs of life, whom do you count on the most?

Twelve-year-old Blong does not have much, but he has his older sister Ka-Ying. Now, their world is suddenly and forever changed. Homes are abandoned. People disappear overnight. Any new friendship is temporary.

The year is 1975, and South Vietnam has fallen to North Vietnam. The Vietnam War is finally over. In the neighboring country of Laos, the Royal Lao Army is defeated by the Communist Pathet Lao. That civil war, too, ends. American soldiers who were fighting in the Secret War in Laos are returning home to America. The Hmong, who were recruited by the CIA to fight in the Secret War, are now going to be persecuted and punished for helping the Americans.

Blong, his sister, and their grandparents must find a way to escape from Laos. The Communist Pathet Lao is celebrating their victory, but already there are rumors of retribution against the Hmong.


May Yang is a Hmong American high school English teacher and taught for 19 years in both Minnesota and Florida. She took a one year break from teaching and worked in educational test and survey administration and processing. It was during this break that May wrote her first novel, Leaving Laos. As an educator, she noticed the lack of diversity with regard to young adult novels, and it never sat well with her. This was one of the many reasons she was so passionate about publishing a book for this genre. 

Pang Yang is a graduate of St. Paul Public Schools, a lifelong educator, and a mother of 7 children. She works to preserve the Hmong language, culture, and history in her Hmong for Native Speakers World Language courses and her community.  Amplifying student voices through published books is one way to she helps tell authentic stories from the heart.

Sunday, November 18, 5:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Dorothy Van Soest launches Death, Unchartered

When a child’s skeleton is discovered during the excavation of the site for a new charter school being built in the Bronx, former teacher Sylvia Jensen is certain of only two things. She is sure that the remains are those of eight-year-old Markus LeMeur, her third-grade student who disappeared in the violent and tumultuous fall of 1968. And she is sure that his death was no accident. Determined to find out who killed Markus and why, Sylvia again joins forces with investigative reporter J. B. Harrell and together they delve into the strikes and political protests of the late 1960s and corporate greed of the present. As Sylvia fights to make peace with her own past, she realizes that she missed her chance to save Markus, and she becomes driven to find his killer, before he can kill again.


Novelist Dorothy Van Soest, professor emerita and retired dean at the University of Washington, holds a B.A. in English Literature and a Masters and Ph.D. in Social Work. Death, Unchartered, the second of her Sylvia Jensen mysteries, is grounded in her career as an educator that spanned the teaching of high school English, elementary and preschool, undergraduate and graduate courses at the university levels. dorothyvansoest.com

Sunday, November 18, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Mill City Reading Series

The Mill City Reading Series is a monthly showcase of works in progress by MFA in Creative Writing students at the University of Minnesota. This reading series is free and open to the public.

Monday, November 19, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Thomas Peacock presents Beginnings: The Homeward Journey of Donovan Manypenny

In this compelling, lyrical novel, Ojibwe character Donovan Manypenny reconnects with his lost cultural roots and language by retracing the long ago migration of his tribal ancestors.

Raised by his grandparents on a northern Wisconsin Ojibwe reservation until their passing when he is ten years old, Manypenny becomes a ward of the state of Wisconsin and enters the child welfare system— foster care, children’s home, and adoption. The trauma he experiences as a result of losing his grandparents and way of life leads him to put his past behind him for over forty- three years. Then, at the age of fifty-three, events in his life take him back to his childhood home, retracing the historical westward migration of his Ojibwe ancestors.

Heartfelt and bittersweet, and layered with meaning, Beginnings: The Homeward Journey of Donovan Manypenny will resonate with anyone who longs to make the journey home, wherever that may be, as well those who seek or have experienced cultural or spiritual awakening, and healing.


Thomas D. Peacock is a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior (Anishinaabe Ojibwe). Several of his books (Ojibwe Waasa Inaabida, The Good Path) were Minnesota Book Award winners. The Seventh Generation won a national Multicultural Children’s Book of the Year award. Other books include A Forever Story, Collected Wisdom, The Four Hills of Life, and To Be Free. An illustrated children’s book, The Forever Sky, will be released in 2018. He lives with his wife, Betsy, in Little Sand Bay, Red Cliff, Wisconsin, and Duluth, Minnesota.

Monday, November 26, 7:00pm Magers And Quinn Booksellers (map)

Peter Sagal presents The Incomplete Book of Running

Peter Sagal, the host of NPR’s Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me! and a popular columnist for Runner’s World, shares lessons, stories, advice, and warnings gleaned from running the equivalent of once around the earth.

At the verge of turning forty, Peter Sagal—brainiac Harvard grad, short bald Jew with a disposition towards heft, and a sedentary star of public radio—started running seriously. And much to his own surprise, he kept going, faster and further, running fourteen marathons and logging tens of thousands of miles on roads, sidewalks, paths, and trails all over the United States and the world, including the 2013 Boston Marathon, where he crossed the finish line moments before the bombings.

In this new book, Sagal reflects on the trails, tracks, and routes he’s traveled, from the humorous absurdity of running charity races in his underwear—in St. Louis, in February—or attempting to “quiet his colon” on runs around his neighborhood—to the experience of running as a guide to visually impaired runners, and the triumphant post-bombing running of the Boston Marathon in 2014. With humor and humanity, Sagal also writes about the emotional experience of running, body image, the similarities between endurance sports and sadomasochism, the legacy of running as passed down from parent to child, and the odd but extraordinary bonds created between strangers and friends. The result is a funny, wise, and powerful meditation about running and life that will appeal to readers everywhere.


Peter Sagal is the host of the Peabody Award-winning NPR news quiz Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me!, the most popular show on public radio, heard by five million listeners each week. He is also a playwright, a screenwriter, the host of Constitution USA with Peter Sagal on PBS, a one-time extra in a Michael Jackson music video, a contributor to publications from Opera News to The Magazine of the AARP and a featured columnist in Runner’s World. He’s run fourteen marathons across the United States. Sagal lives near Chicago with his wife Mara.