In-Store Book Launch: TOWN AND GOWN by Jan English Leary

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

Please note: Pre-registration for this event is required. By pre-registering, you are verifying that you are fully vaccinated and will wear a mask throughout the entirety of the event.

Two girls grow up in the same rural college town where class and family expectations guide them onto predictable paths: marriage for one and college for the other. However, Wanda and Callie defy the expectations and make other choices, ones with serious consequences. What does it cost a young woman to determine her path in life?

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Jan English Leary retired after a career teaching at Francis W. Parker School to write full time. Since then, she has published three books: a novel, Thicker Than Blood, a collection of short stories, Skating on the Vertical, and her new novel, Town and Gown, all published by Fomite Press. Her short fiction has appeared in journals such as Pleiades, Carve, The Literary Review, and Long Story, Short. She also taught at Northwestern and volunteered for The Pen-City Writers, a college-credit writing program for inmates at a maximum-security prison in Texas. Travel has inspired her writing, but she also finds Chicago a rich source of material. A neighborhood resident, she is grateful to Women & Children First for sponsoring the launch of her new book.

Lynn Sloan is a writer and a photographer. Her novel Midstream (Fomite, 2022) was called “luminous” by Foreword Reviews and her Principles of Navigation was chosen for Chicago Book Review’s Best Books of 2015. She is the author of the story collection This Far Isn’t Far Enough. Fortune Cookies, featuring her flash fiction, was produced as an art book by Lark Sparrow Press in 2022. Her short fiction has appeared in Ploughshare and included in NPR’s Selected Shorts. Her photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work can be found at http://www.LynnSloan.com

Accessibility: This event is hosted in the bookstore, which is an accessible space. Seating is on a first come, first serve basis. For other questions or access requests, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.