Step into a moment of living history as we welcome Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court, to the heart of Chicago. With her groundbreaking memoir, Lovely One, Justice Jackson opens the door to her extraordinary journey—one of resilience, purpose, and unparalleled impact.

Join us at the iconic House of Hope Arena for an inspiring evening that transcends the pages of her book. Experience a dynamic conversation about breaking barriers, championing justice, and the personal triumphs that shaped her legacy. This is more than an event—it's a celebration of history in the making.

This event is hosted collaboratively by Progressive Baptist Church, Salem Baptist Church of Chicago, and Trinity United Church of Christ, sponsored by The Will Group and in partnership with the University Club of Chicago.

All books purchased with tickets or at the event will be pre-signed by Justice Jackson. Due to security protocol, Justice Jackson will not be signing books on-site.

Register Here

While much of the mainstream discourse about love focuses on romantic love, it’s always important to emphasize the importance of platonic love and our need to foster healthy, meaningful friendships in community!

Join us on February 15 for a friendship speed-dating event that provides a low-stakes and fun environment to meet new people, all while snacking on delicious baked goods and non-alcoholic beverages!

Attendees must be 18+! Ticket price includes snacks and beverages.

RSVP Here!

February’s book club pick is Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao! In this genre-bending adventure, a woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and begins a magical quest when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop. Part cozy fantasy, part romance, this is a gorgeous read you don’t want to miss! Be sure to pick up your copy at the shop, and we’ll see you on February 13 at 7 p.m.!

Join #CareNotCops for an interactive reflection space on how and why abolition is love; write letters to incarcerated people; discuss prison support resources; and support mutual aid fund Nita’s Love Train through a bake sale! No registration required.

Let’s read alone…together! Our next Do Not Disturb silent reading party is next Friday, February 7 at 7 p.m. Bring a book (or buy one here), a beverage of your choosing, and let’s get some reading done in a cozy, welcoming setting.

RSVP Here!

On Tuesday, February 4 at 7 p.m., we will be welcoming author Julie Iromuanya to discuss and celebrate her latest novel, A Season of Light!

From the author of the acclaimed Mr. and Mrs. Doctor comes a compelling novel about a tightly bound Nigerian family living in Florida and the wounds that get passed down from generation to generation.

Perfect for readers of Sing, Unburied, Sing and Behold the Dreamers, Julie Iromuanya's A Season of Light is an all-consuming masterpiece.

RSVP HERE!

JULIE IROMUANYA is the author of A Season of Light (Algonquin Books 2025) and Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press 2015), a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the Etisalat Prize for Literature, and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for Debut Fiction. Her scholarly-critical work most recently appears in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism; Callaloo: A Journal of African American Arts and Letters; Afropolitan Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury Publishing), and the Georgia Review. She is a 2020 George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation fellow, and she was the inaugural Herbert W. Martin Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Dayton. Iromuanya earned her Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is an assistant professor for the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Chicago and affiliate faculty of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture.

Think you know it all?? We’re finally back with our beloved Trivia Night! Sign up with a group or come ready to make new friends in this fun, low-stakes general trivia night! Snacks and beverages are welcome (and we also have drinks for purchase available at the shop)!

RSVP HERE!

Freda Epum will be at Call & Response Books to discuss her latest book, The Gloomy Girl Variety Show. Merging memoir, poetry, and criticism, this radical literary revue traces a first-generation Nigerian American's search for home and belonging on her own terms.

In three parts, The Gloomy Girl Variety Show traces the joys and despairs of an imaginary house hunt. Epum takes the real-life housing inequity she encounters and spins it into a sprawling meditation on the larger cost of living and enduring as a Black disabled woman in America. Brick by brick, and despite the difficulties she faces, Epum creates space for women, people of color, disabled people, children of immigrants, and anyone else who has felt "in-between."

Freda Epum is a Nigerian American writer and artist. She is the author of two chapbooks, Input/Outputand Entryways into memories that might assemble me, which won the Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Competition. She is the co-creator of the Black American Tree Project. Epum's work has been published in The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Vol. 1. Brooklyn, Entropy, Bending Genres, and others. She received her MFA from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Originally from Tucson, she now lives in Cincinnati.

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Join us for a discussion with Dr. Uché Blackstock, moderated by L'Oreal Thompson Payton, on her book Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine!

Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our health-care system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacy is Dr. Blackstock’s odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician—to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Dr. Uché Blackstock is a physician and thought leader on bias and racism in healthcare. She appears on air regularly as an MSNBC medical contributor and is the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, as well as a former associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and the former faculty director for recruitment, retention, and inclusion in the Office of Diversity Affairs at NYU School of Medicine. Dr. Blackstock received both her undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University, making her and her twin sister, Oni, the first Black mother-daughter legacies from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Blackstock currently lives in her hometown of Brooklyn, New York, with her two small children.

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Join us for a discussion of Renee Bracey Sherman’s co-authored book, Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve!

Liberating Abortion will take you back to the basics of sex education, detailing the patterns of abortion over centuries, while examining how society interacts with abortion in general. You’ll find rigorous research, never-before-heard stories, and eye-opening interviews with over 50 people of color who have had abortions, including activists, actresses, television writers, politicians, and the two Black members of Jane, the Chicago feminist service that provided abortions before Roe.

RSVP Here!

Renee Bracey Sherman is a reproductive justice activist, abortion storyteller, and writer. She is the founder and co-executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions and share their stories at the intersection of race, class, and gender. She is also an executive producer of Ours to Tell, an award-winning documentary elevating the voices of people who have had abortions. Originally from Evanston, Illinois, she currently resides in Washington, D.C.

Natalie Y. Moore is an award-winning journalist based in Chicago, whose reporting tackles race, housing, economic development, food injustice, and violence. Natalie’s acclaimed book The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation received the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and was Buzzfeed’s best nonfiction book of 2016. She is also the co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang and Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation, as well as the play “The Billboard.” The Pulitzer Center named her a 2020 Richard C. Longworth Media fellow for her international reporting.

This event will take place at First Sip Cafe, 1057 W. Argyle St. Chicago IL 60640.

If you’ve always longed for a grown-up version of the Scholastic Book Fair, come out to First Ship Cafe in Uptown for an evening filled with books, friends, and great coffee provided by our friends from First Sip! This event is also BYO(Bottle). No registration required!

[This event was originally scheduled to be held at Semicolon’s Mag Mile location; please note the venue change!! This will take place at Call & Response Books at the same scheduled time of 6 p.m.]

In this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative—a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human. This is a story unlike anything you’ve read before.

RSVP HERE

Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.

When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.

Nnedi Okorafor is the author of multiple award-winning and New York Times bestsellers, including the Binti trilogy, Who Fears Death, and Lagoon, currently in development at Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. She has won every major prize in speculative fiction, including the World Fantasy, Nebula, and Eisner Awards; multiple Hugo Awards; and the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. Born in Cincinnati to Igbo Nigerian immigrant parents, she now resides in Phoenix, Arizona, with her daughter, Anyaugo.

Whether your 2024 was one of your best years, or it brought some lessons and trials, join us on January 15 at 6 p.m. to look back on the previous year and get excited for what 2025 has in store! This will be a low-stakes but intimate setting to make new friends and consider our goals for the coming years! In collaboration between Call & Response Books and Lemon Pepper Steppas.

RSVP Here!

Fiilthy Glo Zine is kicking off 2025 with a free event in celebration of their third issue, TRANSPiRE. There will be art, vendors, and vibes galore! Bring your friends (and a mask, please!)! No RSVP required!

Kick back with a book (bring your own or grab one here!), a beverage of your choosing, and let’s read together!

RSVP HERE

Join us on Thursday, January 9 at 7 p.m. for our monthly book club discussion. This month’s pick is Only for the Week by Natasha Bishop! You can pick up a copy in store! No RSVP is required to attend book club!