Tuesday, September 22, 2020 - Wisconsin Book Festival: Rowan Hisayo Buchanan & Leila Chatti

7:00pm - Registration Link: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/starling-days--deluge/register?utm_source=website&utm_medium=event-page

Presented in partnership with the University of Wisconsin Program in Creative Writing, this edition of Wisconsin Wednesdays features UW Alumnae Rowan Hisayo Buchanan for her new novel, Starling Days, and Leila Chatti for her new poetry collection, Deluge. 

About Starling Days: The moving new novel by the author of Harmless Like You, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and NPR Great Read. On their first date, Mina told Oscar that she was bisexual, vegetarian, and on meds. He married her anyhow. A challenge to be met. She had low days, sure, but manageable. But now, maybe not so much . . . Mina is standing on the George Washington Bridge late at night, staring over the edge, when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the policeman she’s not about to jump, but he doesn’t believe her. Oscar is called to pick her up. With the idea of leaving New York for London—a place for Mina “to learn the floorplan of this sadness”—Oscar arranges a move. In London, Mina, a classicist, tries grappling with her mental health issues by making lists. Of women who survivied—Penelope, Psyche, Leda. Iphigenia, but only in one of the tellings. Of things that make her happy—enamel coffee cups. But what else? She at last finds a beam of light in Phoebe, and friendship and attraction blossom until Oscar and Mina’s complicated love is tested. A gorgeously wrought novel, variously about love, mythology, mental illness, Japanese beer, and the times we need to seek out milder psychological climates, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s Starling Days, written in exquisite prose rich with lightly ironic empathy, is a complex and compelling work of fiction by a singularly gifted young writer. 

About Deluge: In her early twenties, Leila Chatti started bleeding and did not stop. Physicians referred to this bleeding as flooding. In the Qur’an, as in the Bible, the Flood was sent as punishment. The idea of disease as punishment drives this collection’s themes of shame, illness, grief, and gender, transmuting religious narratives through the lens of a young Arab-American woman suffering a taboo female affliction. Deluge investigates the childhood roots of faith and desire alongside their present day enactments. Chatti’s remarkably direct voice makes use of innovative poetic form to gaze unflinchingly at what she was taught to keep hidden. This powerful piece of life-writing depicts Chatti’s journey from diagnosis to surgery and remission in meticulous chronology that binds body to spirit and advocates for the salvation of both. Chatti blends personal narrative, religious imagery, and medical terminology in a chronicle of illness, womanhood, and faith.

------------------------------------------ 

Thursday, September 24, 2020 - Book & Author Virtual Book Club: Katherine Center & Brené Brown Discuss Things You Save in a Fire

6:00pm CST/7:00 pm EST - https://www.crowdcast.io/e/2wq3jo2v/register

Join us for the next installment of Macmillan’s Book + Author series: a virtual book club event with prolific and acclaimed author Katherine Center for the paperback release of her bestselling book Things You Save in a Fire. We've partnered with Macmillan to bring this opportunity to book club members across the country, who can tune in to hear a discussion with Brené Brown and participate in the live Q&A. Register through the link above.

-------------------------------------------

Tuesday, October 6, 2020 - Wisconsin Book Festival: Quan Barry, Anthony Doerr & Lysley Tenorio

7:00pm - Registration Link: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/wbf-son-of-good-fortune/register?utm_source=website&utm_medium=event-page

Amy Quan Barry, Anthony Doerr, and Lysley Tenorio, all former UW-Madison Writing Fellows, discuss their latest works in a wide-ranging conversation with UW-Madison Professor, Ron Kuka. 

About The Son of Good Fortune: From award-winning author Lysley Tenorio, comes a big hearted debut novel following an undocumented Filipino son as he navigates his relationship with his mother, an uncertain future, and the place he calls home. Excel spends his days trying to seem like an unremarkable American teenager. When he’s not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed pizza shop) or passing the time with his girlfriend Sab (occasionally in one of their town’s seventeen cemeteries), he carefully avoids the spotlight. But Excel knows that his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima, was once a Filipina B-movie action star who now makes her living scamming men online. The old man they live with is not his grandfather, but Maxima’s lifelong martial arts trainer. And years ago, on Excel’s tenth birthday, Maxima revealed a secret that he must keep forever. “We are ‘TNT’—tago ng tago,” she told him, “hiding and hiding.” Excel is undocumented—and one accidental slip could uproot his entire life. Casting aside the paranoia and secrecy of his childhood, Excel takes a leap, joining Sab on a journey south to a ramshackle desert town called Hello City. Populated by drifters, old hippies, and washed-up techies—and existing outside the normal constructs of American society—Hello City offers Excel a chance to forge his own path for the first time. But after so many years of trying to be invisible, who does he want to become? And is it possible to put down roots in a country that has always considered you an outsider? Thrumming with energy and at once critical and hopeful, The Son of Good Fortune is a luminous story of a mother and son testing the strength of their bond to their country—and to each other.

About We Ride Upon Sticks: From the author of the widely acclaimed She Weeps Each Time You’re Born, a comic tour de female force about a 1980s field hockey team. In the coastal town of Danvers, MA, home of the original 1692 witch trials, the 1989 Danvers Falcons will do anything to make it to the state finals — even if it means tapping into some devilishly dark powers. In chapters dense with ’80s iconography–from Heathers to “big hair”–Quan Barry expertly weaves together the individual and collective journeys of this enchanted team as they storm their way to the championship. Helmed by good-girl captain Abby Putnam (a descendant of the infamous Salem accuser Ann Putnam) and her co-captain Jen Fiorenza, whose bleached blond “Claw” sees and knows all, the DHS Falcons prove to be wily, original, and bold, flaunting society’s stale notions of femininity in order to find their glorious true selves through the crucible of team sport and, more importantly, friendship.

Set during World War II, All the Light We Cannot See interweaves the lives of a young, blind French girl, Marie-Laure, and an orphaned German boy, Werner, whose paths collide as they try to survive the physical and emotional destruction of the war. When the book opens, Marie-Laure lives with her father, the lockmaster at the Museum of Natural History, in an apartment in Paris. When she becomes blind he creates a miniature model of the neighborhood, so that she can learn every house, every street corner, first with her fingers and then with her feet. As the German occupation begins, they flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast—carrying with them what might be the museum’s most fabled and valuable diamond—and live with Marie-Laure’s great-uncle in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In Germany, another world, Werner grows up an orphan with his beloved sister Jutta. A fascination with radios turns into a mastery of building and fixing the instruments, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and heinously brutal military academy for Hitler Youth, and then a special assignment to track the Resistance through their radios. Werner travels through the heart of Nazi Germany, to Russia, and finally to France, where his story converges with Marie-Laure’s. Throughout the novel Doerr returns to the themes of light and time, nature and war, the courage and frailties of the human heart, to brilliant effect. Like Pat Barker’s Regeneration or Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, All The Light We Cannot See is a sweeping, stunningly ambitious and lushly-written novel that will catapult its author’s name onto the short-lists of great novelists.

--------------------------------

Saturday, October 10, 2020 - Nonfiction Pop-Up Shop

10am-4pm - 1426 Emery Street, Eau Claire

Join us for the first in our series of themed pop-up shops. First up, Nonfiction! Stop by to browse memoirs, essays, and other nonfiction titles for readers of all ages. 

Weather permitting, we'll have books available to browse in Margaret's front yard and on her porch. If it's raining, books will be on Margaret's porch - 4 people will be allowed to browse at a time. We'll have lots of hand sanitizer available. Please wear a mask. 

--------------------------------------------

Wednesday, October 21, 2020 - Wisconsin Book Festival: Elizabeth Ames Staudt & Meg Wade

 7:00pm - Registration Link: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/wbf-others-gold-slick-like-dark/register?utm_source=website&utm_medium=event-page

Presented in partnership with the University of Wisconsin Program in Creative Writing, this edition of Wisconsin Wednesdays features UW Alumnae Elizabeth Ames Staudt for her new novel, The Other's Gold and Meg Wade for her new poetry collection, Slick Like Dark.  

About The Other's Gold: An insightful and sparkling novel that opens on a college campus and follows the friendship of four women across life-defining turning points. Assigned to the same suite during their freshman year at Quincy-Hawthorn College, Lainey, Ji Sun, Alice, and Margaret quickly become inseparable. The leafy green campus they move through together, the idyllic window seat they share in their suite, and the passion and ferocity that school and independence awakens in them ignites an all-encompassing love with one another. But they soon find their bonds–forged in joy, and fused by fear–must weather threats that originate from beyond the dark forests of their childhoods, and come at them from institutions, from one another, and ultimately, from within themselves. The Other’s Gold follows the four friends as each makes a terrible mistake, moving from their wild college days to their more feral days as new parents. With one part devoted to each mistake–the Accident, the Accusation, the Kiss, and the Bite–this complex yet compulsively readable debut interrogates the way that growing up forces our friendships to evolve as the women discover what they and their loved ones are capable of, and capable of forgiving. A joyful, big-hearted book that perfectly evokes the bittersweet experience of falling in love with friendship, the experiences of Lainey, Ji Sun, Alice, and Margaret are at once achingly familiar and yet shine with a brilliance and depth all their own.

About Slick Like Dark: Fueled by questions of faith and desire, and steeped in the Southern Gothic, Meg Wade’s Slick Like Dark is a haunting examination of the Southern body and one woman’s survival in it. These poems burn in their intensity. With a menacing wink they trace a hard line through trauma’s wreckage and ask God who is to blame. They take us to the dark corners of honky-tonks and spin us wide around the room. Through the lyric, Wade gives us a voice piercingly honest and desperate for what’s real.

--------------------------------------------

Saturday, October 24, 2020 - Fiction Pop-up Shop

10am-4pm - 1426 Emery Street, Eau Claire

Join us for the second in our series of themed pop-up shops. Next up, Fiction! Stop by to browse novels, short stories, poetry, other fiction titles for readers of all ages. 

Weather permitting, we'll have books available to browse in Margaret's front yard and on her porch. If it's raining, books will be on Margaret's porch - 4 people will be allowed to browse at a time. We'll have lots of hand sanitizer available. Please wear a mask. 

--------------------------------------------

Wednesday, October 28, 2020  - Wisconsin Book Festival: Traci Brimhall & Lauren Russell

7:00pm - Registration Link: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/wbf-come-the-slumberless-descent/register?utm_source=website&utm_medium=event-page

Presented in partnership with the University of Wisconsin Program in Creative Writing, this edition of Wisconsin Wednesdays features UW Alumnae Elizabeth Ames Staudt and Meg Wade for their new poetry collections, Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod, and Descent. 

About Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod: Written during the trial for a close friend’s murder, Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod exposes that the whimsical, horrible, and absurd all sit together. In this ambitious collection, Traci Brimhall corresponds with the urges of life and death within herself as she lives through a series of impossibilities: the sentencing of her friend’s murderers, the birth of her child, the death of her mother, divorce, a trip sailing through the Arctic. In lullaby, lyric essay, and always with brutal sincerity, Brimhall examines how beauty and terror live right alongside each other—much like how Nod is both a fictional dreamscape and the place where Cain is exiled for murdering Abel. By plucking at the tensions between life and death, love and hate, truth and obscurity, Brimhall finds what it is that ties opposing themes together; how love and loss are married in grief. Like Eve thrust from Eden, Brimhall is tasked with finding meaning in a world defined by its cruelty. Unrelenting, incisive, and tender, these poems expose beauty in the grotesque and argue that the effort to be good always outweighs the desire to succumb to what is easy. 

About Descent: In 2013, poet Lauren Russell acquired a copy of the diary of her great-great-grandfather, Robert Wallace Hubert, a Captain in the Confederate Army. After his return from the Civil War, he fathered twenty children by three of his former slaves. One of those children was the poet’s great-grandmother. Through several years of research, Russell would seek the words to fill the diary’s omissions and to imagine the voice of her great-great-grandmother, Peggy Hubert, a black woman silenced by history. The result is a hybrid work of verse, prose, images and documents that traverses centuries as the past bleeds into the present.

-------------------------------------------

Thursday, November 5, 2020 - Wisconsin Book Festival: Aimee Nezhukumatahil

7:00pm - Registration Link: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/wbf-world-of-wonders/register?utm_source=website&utm_medium=event-page

Presented in partnership with the University of Wisconsin Program in Creative Writing, this edition of Wisconsin Wednesdays features former UW Writing Fellow, Aimee Nezhukumatathil for her debut work of nonfiction--a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us.  

As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted--no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape--she was able to turn to our world's fierce and funny creatures for guidance. "What the peacock can do," she tells us, "is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life." The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world's gifts. Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.

--------------------------------------------

Wednesday, November 18, 2020 - Wisconsin Book Festival: Aria Aber & Elizabeth A.I. Powell

7:00pm - Registration Link: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/hard-damage--atomizer/register?utm_source=website&utm_medium=event-page

Presented in partnership with the University of Wisconsin Program in Creative Writing, this edition of Wisconsin Wednesdays features UW Alumnae Aria Aber and Elizabeth Powell for their new poetry collections, Hard Damage and Atomizer. 

About Hard Damage: Hard Damage works to relentlessly interrogate the self and its shortcomings. In lyric and documentary poems and essayistic fragments, Aria Aber explores the historical and personal implications of Afghan American relations. Drawing on material dating back to the 1950s, she considers the consequences of these relations—in particular the funding of the Afghan mujahedeen, which led to the Taliban and modern-day Islamic terrorism—for her family and the world at large. Invested in and suspicious of the pain of family and the shame of selfhood, the speakers of these richly evocative and musical poems mourn the magnitude of citizenship as a state of place and a state of mind. While Hard Damage is framed by free-verse poetry, the middle sections comprise a lyric essay in fragments and a long documentary poem. Aber explores Rilke in the original German, the urban melancholia of city life, inherited trauma, and displacement on both linguistic and environmental levels, while employing surrealist and eerily domestic imagery.

About Atomizer: In Atomizer, Elizabeth A. I. Powell examines pressing questions of today, from equality and political unrest to the diminishing of democratic ideals, asking if it is even appropriate to write about love in a time seemingly hurtling toward authoritarianism. With honesty and humor, her poems explore fragrance and perfumery as a means of biological and religious seduction. Evoking Whitman's sentiment that we are all made of the same atoms, Atomizer looks toward an underestimated sense--scent--as a way to decipher the liminal spaces around us. Molecules of perfume create an invisible reality where narratives can unfold and interact, pathways through which Powell addresses issues of materialism, body image, and the physical and psychological contours of emotional relationships. A work of fearless social satire and humorous yet painful truth, Atomizer offers a cultural, political, and sociological account of love in the present moment.

--------------------------------------------

Saturday, November 28, 2020 - Small Business Saturday in your Jammies!

All Day at dottersbooks.com

It's our favorite day of the year and we are so sad that we won't be able to invite you into our shop for coffee, treats, Story Time, music, and all the other festivities we've come to enjoy so much.  Like most everything this year, things will be a little different.

Here's what won't be different: 

• We have tons of books in stock for everyone on your shopping list (including you!). Need a little help with what to buy? We put together gift guides for you to peruse - or, send us an email at dottersbooks@gmail.com and we'll be very happy to help with recommendations. 
• We have art prints, greeting cards, and other holiday gifts!
• The first five people to spend $25 will receive a free tote bag. (This only applies to orders made on our website - not special orders made via email)
• Everyone who makes a purchase, from sunup to sundown, will be entered to win a basket of books and other goodies. (This only applies to orders made on our website - not special orders made via email)

We hope that you'll choose to invest in our community by shopping local all day. The Chippewa Valley is so fortunate to have so many incredible small businesses. Please know that when you choose to shop with us, in your community, you directly contribute to the culture of your city and make it possible for us to stay in business during a very challenging time. We're so grateful to you all and cannot wait to welcome you through our doors again. 

Happy Holidays!

--------------------------------------------

Wednesday, August 2, 2023 - Joe Milan, Jr. in conversation with Nickolas Butler

Join us for an evening of great books and  great conversation!

In a reverse of the American immigrant novel, Joe’s debut novel, The All-American, follows Bucky, a Korean American high school senior whose real name no one can pronounce. Never knowing his mother and abandoned by his father, Bucky grows up in a rural Washington trailer park dreaming of playing college football. However, his football dreams are snuffed out as the U.S. government deports him and the South Korean government conscripts him. With this, Bucky confronts the fact that how he sees himself is not how others see him.

Joe and Nick will be discussing Joe’s new book and so much more. I hope you can join us for a very special evening at Dotters Books.

JOE MILAN, JR. is a second-generation Korean American and taught in South Korea for nine years. An assistant professor of creative writing at Waldorf University, he lives in Forest City, Iowa.

NICKOLAS BUTLER is the internationally-bestselling and prize-winning author of Shotgun Lovesongs, Beneath the Bonfire, The Hearts of Men, Little Faith, and Godspeed.  He is also an award-winning poet and newspaper columnist.  Butler lives with his family on 16 acres south of Eau Claire between Cleghorn and Brackett in the town of Washington, though he collects his mail in Fall Creek.

 ----------------------------

Thursday, November 2, 2023 - Fred Poss Book Release

6:30-8:00pm at Dotters Books

Celebrate the release of local author Frederick Poss's debut novel, Murder on Big Stony Lonesome. Mr. Poss will be reading from his novel, answering your questions, and signing books. See you there!

 -----------------------

Thursday, November 9, 2023 - Tom Manus & Kristi Flick Manus Book Event

4pm-6pm at Dotters Books

Stop into the shop to meet Tom & Kristi, freelance travel writers who are passionate about road trips, local culture, history, and nature. For the past 20 years, Tom & Kristi have lived in various regions around the United States and now they're back in Eau Claire with a new book: Secret Wisconsin: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure. 

They'll be spending the afternoon with us in the shop. We'll have copies of their book for sale and they'll be happy to answer your questions and sign your books. This is a GREAT gift idea, so stop in and meet these wonderful travelers. 

You can find more about them and their travels at Small Town Plus Size and TravelAwaits.

 -----------------------

Tuesday, November 14 - Chippewa Valley Learning in Retirement: Books Make the Best Gifts

1:30-3:00pm in the Riverview Room at L.E. Phillips Memorial Library

Feeling overwhelmed by your holiday shopping list? Let’s talk about books! Margaret Leonard of Dotters Books will present her favorite books to gift - for everyone on your list. Recommendations will include books for all the readers in your life, from babies to best friends, and maybe a few you’d like to add to your own wish list. Books will be available for perusal at the event.

This event is open to the public! Please register here.

------------------------------------------------

Wednesday, November 15 - Holiday Book Open House

6pm at Dotters Books

The holidays are upon us. Are you looking for a little help in putting together your shopping list? Jason Gobble, Sales Rep Extraordinaire with Penguin Random House, will be in the shop talking about his favorite books for everyone on your list. 

Jason is one of my favorite people to talk books with. He's thoughtful and funny and I hope you'll all be able to join us because this is going to be a fun one!

We'll have books to peruse and purchase - plus, you know I want to hear about all of the books that you've loved this year that you'll be passing on to the book lovers in your life. Hope you can make it!

------------------------------

Saturday, December 9, 2023 - A Very Special Story Time with Tom Manus & Kristi Flick Manus 

10:30am at Dotters Books

Tom & Kristi, authors of Secret Wisconsin: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure will be joining us for a very special Story Time. They'll be reading one of their favorites and then they'll be hanging out with us in the shop to answer questions about their book and sign copies for the travelers in your life.

Fun fact about Secret Wisconsin: It was very important to Tom & Kristi that they choose lots of lesser-known gems to feature in their Wisconsin Travel Book. Not only will you finds lots of way to discover our home state, but it's affordable. The ENTIRE book can be experienced for less than $65. 

--------------------

Saturday, January 20, 2024 at 1:00pm - Clear Water Book Launch!

Join us on Saturday, January 20th at 1pm for a book talk with Melanie Walby, a Creative Director, Designer and Illustrator in Minneapolis who grew up in Eau Claire. We're celebrating the launch of her Kickstarter campaign to publish Clear Water Exhibit as a book. The book talk will be an opportunity to meet Melanie, see a preview of what's to come and learn how you can support the work. You can learn more about her work here.

 ---------------------

Saturday, January 27 at 10:30am - A Very Special Story Time with Pey Carter & Abigail Bailey

Pey & Abby will join us to read their new book, winner of a Mom's Choice Award, Bendy Bones & Stretchy Skin: An Ehler-Danlos Book.  Pey is a public speaker and author specializing in mental health, disabilities, and trauma. Abby is their daughter and the star of Bendy Bones. 

We're so excited to have them in the shop to share their special book, answer your questions, and sign your books.

 ------------------------------

Thursday, February 1 at 6:15pm - Book Talk with Dave Greschner

Join us February 1 at Dotters Books to celebrate the release of Soul of the Outdoors: Reflections. 

Dave Greschner is an award-winning outdoor writer and columnist. He served as the sports/outdoors editor at the Rice Lake Chronotype in northwest Wisconsin for over 40 years, where he won 20 Wisconsin Newspaper Association first-place awards. He currently contributes to the Leader-Telegram. Soul of the Outdoors is his first book.

---------------------------------

Saturday, March 9, 2023 - A Very Special Story Time with Kolina Cicero 

Kolina Cicero is the author of the children's book Rosie and the Hobby Farm, the story of a girl who learns important values with the arrival of different animals to her family's hobby farm.

She is a freelance writer and a grant writer for the Eau Claire-based nonprofit, Power of Perception, Inc. Aside from her day job and taking care of her two children, Kolina spends most of her time reading books and working on her second novel. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and their kids.

----------------------------------

Saturday, March 23, 2023 - A Very Special Story Time with Rebecca Mullin

Rebecca Mullin is the author of the Gardening Board Book Series. She'll be reading her first two books, One Tomato and Purple Carrot. One Tomato was shortlisted for the Indiana Authors Award. She's gots lots of fun activities for the kids, too, including a vegetable identification activity and a craft. She'll also have tote bags to give away with the purchase of her books.

Before writing for children, Rebecca was a bookseller and a Board Member of the Great Lakes Independent Bookseller Association. Rebecca now lives in Eau Claire, WI with her husband, four daughters, and an ever-expanding garden.

--------------------------------

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 at 8pm - Name That Book Trivia Night at The Plus!

Dotters Books and The Plus (208 S Barstow, ECWI) are partnering for a night of Name That Book Trivia on Wednesday, April 17th! Join us- it's free and all ages!

All of our questions this evening will be about works of literature - children's books, young adult, memoirs, classics... all of the above! It will be a fast-paced, accessible, and challenging-but-not-as-hard-as-you-think-it-might-be night of fun.

How much do you know? Put a team together and show us!
Food, event, and beverage giveaways for our top teams, including a gift certificate to Dotters Books!

Dotters Books is a local, women-owned, independent bookseller!

-------------------------------------

Friday, May 17, 2024 at 6:15pm at Dotters Books - Lindsay Starck in Conversation with Eric Rasmussen

Lindsay Starck, author of Monsters We Have Made, will be at the shop and in conversation with Eric Rasmussen, editor of Barstow & Grand. They'll be talking about writing monstrous places with a particular emphasis on setting a modern, gothic novel in the northwoods.

Monsters We Have Made is a beautiful and haunting novel that explores the bounds of familial love, the high stakes of parenthood, and the tenuous divide between fiction and reality.

Come out for an evening of books and conversation!

--------------------------------------

Tuesday, May 21 at 6:15pm at Dotters Books - A Special Evening with L.J. Winter

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and we're very happy to have L.J. Winter, local author of Superhuman Being, in the shop to discuss his own mental health journey and his family's experiences with mental illness. 

Larry is a retired Social Worker and Certified Peer Specialist. He'll be reading from his first book, taking your questions, and signing copies, which will be for sale at Dotters Books.

--------------------------------------

Saturday, June 22 at 10:30am at Dotters Books - A Very Special Story Time with Joanna Trujillo

Join us for a Very Special Story Time with Joanna Trujillo, author of Mindfulness in the Wild. Joanna's beautifully illustrated book is full of mindfulness practices that teach children creative ways to slow down and connect with their emotions, bodies, and thoughts. The book features 20 different animals from Ecuador.

Joanna will go through a few mindfulness activities with the kids. Her books will be available for purchase and she'll be happy to answer questions and sign your books.

--------------------------------------

Saturday, June 29 at 10:30am at Dotters Books - A Very Special Story Time with Karen Condit

Local author and former teacher, Karen Condit, will be in the shop to share her wonderful book, Turtle on the Track. There’s no time to dillydally in Scurryville until it’s Oscar’s day to ride the train. When a turtle wanders across the track in front of the Scurryville Express, everyone on board is forced to wait. The restless, impatient passengers can’t help but blow off a little steam. Can Oscar help them slow down and enjoy the ride?

Karen will read her book to the kids and lead them in some fun turtle activities. Hope you can join us!

----------------------------

DATE CHANGE! Tuesday, July 16, 2024 at 6:15pm at Dotters Books - BJ Hollars in conversation with Margaret Leonard

In November 2020, B.J. Hollars answered a call from his father-in-law while teaching. “When will you be home?” Steve asked. “I have news."  So began the Hollars family’s year of plenty—a year of cancer, COVID, and falling short as parents, partners, and people.  Overwhelmed and exhausted, Hollars and his wife wonder what so many have before: How can we make the most of our time when our time feels so short?

To mark the release of Year of Plenty: A Family’s Season of Grief, join B. J. Hollars and Margaret Leonard for a candid conversation on finding family, living through loss, and seeking beauty and solace in grief.  Books will be available for purchase.  Click here for a book trailer.

-------------------------------------

Thursday, July 25 at 6pm at L.E. Phillips Memorial Library, Riverview Room - Adam Kunz - An Evening with Apatheism

The population of the United States is becoming less and less affiliated with any religion, at the same time that national, state, and local governments are considering policies that elevate religious freedom over other civil rights and liberties. Meanwhile, religious extremism and religiously motivated violence are steadily rising. In these vigorous debates, the loud voices of extremists drowned out religious and irreligious moderates. How should this “silent majority” approach such a pressing national conversation? Dr. Adam Kunz, author of To Hell With Heaven, offers one theory: apatheism.

Copies of To Hell With Heaven will be available for purchase.

-------------------------

Saturday, August 3 at 1pm at Dotters Books - Sister Simone Campbell talks about Hope

Sister Simone Campbell is a religious leader, attorney, author, and recipient of a 2022 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor. She has spent her life and career traveling to communities and learning about where hope lives and what brings people together.

Sister Simone's latest book, Hunger for Hope: Prophetic Communities, Contemplation, and the Common Good, is a heartfelt narrative that combines her advocacy for those in need with her profound practice of contemplation and community-building. She engages with the different challenges communities face amidst the pervasive individualism of today's America.

Following an introduction, Sister Simone will present the key themes from Hunger for Hope, and then open the floor for a discussion. We'll explore questions like: What fuels your hope? How can we foster unity and healing in our community? It's an opportunity to listen, learn, and engage in meaningful conversations that can transform our communities.

Don’t miss this chance to be part of a movement towards hope and unity!

-----------------------------

Thursday, August 8 at 6:15 at Dotters Books - Erik Meyer

Erik will read from Cryptoamnesiac, his science fiction novel, and talk about his writing process before taking questions and chatting with attendees.

Books will be for sale through Dotters, and macarons will be provided for those present.

------------------------------

Saturday, August 10 at 5:30pm at 2 Roots Art & Wine Gallery - Ann & Louis Recine

You are invited to an evening of stories, food, and conversation, accompanied by Piano Prodigy, Josh Gallagher. Ann and Lou's book, Home Again and Again: Recollections, Stories, and Guideposts, is about hope. Ann will share stories about finding and refinding (when it’s lost) the peace and strength of what home can mean to each of us. Her stories can open our eyes to that blue sky and patch of bright white clouds we look for on a rainy day and treasure on a clear day. All will have an opportunity to converse about their own experiences of hope and home. 

The book release is coming up. Dotters Books will be taking pre-orders. 

----------------------------------

Wednesday, August 21 at 6:30pm at Altoona Public Library - Claire Lombardo

--------------------------------  

Thursday, August 29 at 6:15pm at Dotters Books - Topaz Winters with Elan Mccallum & S.Z. Putnam

Join us to celebrate the release of the Fifth Anniversary Edition of Topaz Winters's poetry collection Portrait of My Body As a Crime I'm Still Committing. 

Topaz is a writer, artist, editor, performer, & author of So, Stranger (Button Poetry 2022, winner of the Button Poetry Short Form Contest), Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing (Button Poetry 2019 & 2024, finalist in the Broken River & Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prizes), & poems for the sound of the sky before thunder (Math Paper Press 2017). She serves as editor-in-chief of Half Mystic Press, an independent, international, & interdisciplinary publishing project, & as co-editor of Kopi Break, a journal of new Singapore poetry.

This will be an incredible evening of poetry as two of our favorite local poets - and frequent Subscription Box contributors - S.Z. Putnam and Elan Mccallum, will be joining Topaz and reading some of their work.

I really hope you can make it to this very special evening.

------------------------------

Friday, September 13 at 6:15pm at Dotters Books - Eric T. Kasper & Troy A. Kozma

Eric T. Kasper & Troy A. Kozma will be in the shop to discuss their new book, The Supreme Court & The Philosopher: How John Stuart Mill Shaped U.S. Free Speech Protections.

They will discuss some different interpretations of the First Amendment, followed by an explanation of John Stuart Mill’s theory about free speech from his book On Liberty, how Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes adopted Mill’s approach to free speech over a century ago, and how over time more and more justices have adhered to that theory. They will conclude by discussing how some justices have begun to criticize that approach.

---------------------------------

October 17-22, 2024 at various locations around Eau Claire 

The 25th Annual CHIPPEWA VALLEY BOOK FESTIVAL is coming up soon!

The Chippewa Valley Book Festival is an annual celebration of the written word and its impact on the human experience. Check out this year's lineup and we'll see you there!

Dotters Books is the official bookseller for the Chippewa Valley Book Festival.

-----------------------------------

Friday, October 25 at 6:15pm at Dotters Books - Kimberly Blaeser in Conversation with Max Garland

Join former Wisconsin Poet Laureates Kimberly Blaeser and Max Garland for a reading from their latest collections (Ancient Light and Into the Good World Again, respectively) and a conversation on poetry and its place in the modern world.

Books will be available for purchase.

 --------------------------------

Saturday, November 9 at 10:30am at Dotters Books - A Very Special Story Time with Karen Condit

Karen Condit will be joining us for a Very Special Story Time celebrating her newest book, Turkey in the Tunnel!

Karen will read her book, share some fun turkey treats, and sign her books.

----------------------------------

Thursday, November 14 at 6:15pm at Dotters Books - Books are the Best Gifts: a Very Special Presentation from Jason Gobble & Margaret Leonard

As you start to think about holiday gifting, please join Margaret and Jason Gobble, our esteemed Penguin Random House Representative - and truly one the most fun people to talk books with - as they present their picks for the best books to give to the book lovers in your life.

 We’ll have something for everyone and it’s going to be lots and lots of fun! Treats are very very likely.

-------------------------------------

Wednesday, November 20 at 6:15pm at Dotters Books - Brian Reisinger

Brian Reisinger, author of Land Rich, Cash Poor: My Family and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer, will be in the shop to discuss his book, taking on this working-class story of heart and hardship and weaving forgotten eras of American history with his own family’s four-generation fight for survival in Midwestern farm country.

Brian will read from his book, take your questions, and sign your books.

--------------------------------------