Changing Hands Bookstore

#ArtLitPhx: Hanif Abdurraqib at Changing Hands Bookstore

Superstition Review

Poet, essayist, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib visits Changing Hands Phoenix (300 W Camelback Rd, Phoenix, Arizona 85013) on Monday, March 26 from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm with his acclaimed essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. The collection was named a 2017 book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, The Chicago Tribune, and others.

About the book

In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib’s is a voice that matters. Whether he’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.

In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers—for attempting to enter his own car.

In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—along with original, previously unreleased essays—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.

About the author

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New York Times, and MTV News, where he was a columnist. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, was published in 2016 by Button Poetry and is a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award for Poetry.

#ArtLitPhx: Fernando Pérez and Bojan Louis Poetry Reading

Superstition Review

Arizona State University alumni Fernando Pérez and Bojan Louis present their poetry collections at 7:00 pm on Friday, March 2, 2018, at Changing Hands bookstore (6428 S McClintock Dr, Tempe, AZ 85283). There will be an open reading from each, with possible signing opportunities. Pérez holds an MFA in Poetry from Arizona State University, and is a graduate of ASU’s Creative Writing Program. He currently works as an assistant professor of English at Bellevue College. Louis is also a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at Arizona State, and is currently the poetry editor at RED INK: An International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Arts, and Humanities, a journal established at the University of Arizona in 1989. As of 2013, the journal is now managed at Arizona State.

Each author’s work has ties to identity, family, and the struggles inherent in each. Pérez, a Chicano poet from Los Angeles, explores how divides of generation and distance affect identity and familial ties in his collection A Song of Dismantling. Louis, an Indigenous American writer, (specifically a member of the Navajo Nation-Naakai Dine’é; Ashiihí; Ta’neezahnii; Bilgáana) has previously written nonfiction work on banned books in “occupied territory” in his chapbook Troubleshooting Silence in Arizona, (Guillotine Series, 2012), and further explores topics of diaspora and Native experience poetically in Currents, his collection.

The venue is doubly appropriate for both its location and its mission. Changing Hands is known for its local events, including readings, seminars, Q&A sessions, and book clubs. They host both established and newer authors, and foster an audience for each. The store focuses on building a community of local readers, writers, and lovers of the arts, with a focus on supporting local business, public radio, and schools. They donate to causes that affect the community and remain a fixture of the literary community of Tempe and the surrounding area. As an independent bookstore, they have a commitment to their mission that has stayed true since their establishment in 1974. By showcasing Pérez and Louis, Changing Hands continues the legacy of supporting local authors– specifically, in this case, ones that have attended and graduated from Arizona State.

Though both authors have been featured in literary journals before, this is the first published collection for each. The collections have only been published recently, with A Song of Dismantling released February 15, 2018, and Currents released in November of 2017. Each book is available at Changing Hands both on their website and at their brick-and-mortar location in Tempe. For more information and book ordering, visit Changing Hands’ website or call their Tempe location at 480-730-0205.

 

#ArtLitPhx: Workshop with Daniel Magariel

Superstition Review

On Monday, August 28th, Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix will host Daniel Magariel for a workshop and conversation about his new novel One of the Boys. Purchase the book and you’ll get access to his workshop, “Editing with Abandon.” After the workshop, join the author for a presentation about the book. More information can be found here.

#ArtLitPhx: Meet 2016 Pulitzer Prize Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen

Superstition Review

Co-presented by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Changing Hands Bookstore brings author of The Sympathizer 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen to Phoenix. Nguyen will talk about his new short story collection The Refugees at Changing Hands Bookstore’s Phoenix location (300 W. Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85013)  on Thursday, April 20th, 2017 at 7 p.m.

The Refugees is a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration. It is a collection of  stories written over a period of twenty years, exploring questions of immigration, identity, love, and family.

There will be a book signing following the talk. This is a free event. Please RSVP on the Facebook Event page.

For more details please visit Changing Hands Bookstore’s webpage.

Contributor Update: Come Together With Mary Sojourner

Superstition Review

Good afternoon, everybody! Today, we are excited to announce that past contributor Mary Sojourner, featured in the Fiction section of both our 3rd and 10th issue, will be teaching a women’s writing circle at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe this Sunday, April 2, from 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm. Details can be found here. This wonderful opportunity coincides with a reading/book signing of Mary’s new book “The Talker,” out now from Torrey House Press. The price of admission is just purchasing a copy of “The Talker,” so if you’re at the reading and want your copy signed, joining the writing circle is a breeze! Come through, hear selections from “The Talker,” and come together as part of our wonderful writing community!

Go to this reading, buy this book!
The cover of Mary Sojourner’s new book “The Talker.”

#ArtLitPhx: Meet Anthony Doerr

Superstition Review

Changing Hands Bookstore presents the Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times bestselling author Anthony Doerr and his paperback release of his international bestseller All the Light We Cannot See. Doerr will talk at the Mesa Arts Center  (1 E Main St, Mesa, AZ 85201) on Monday, April 3rd, 2017 at 7pm. After the talk there will be a book signing.  Tickets are available for order exclusively at the Changing Hands webpage. Tickets include a signed copy of the book. Tickets start at $24. For more information visit the Facebook event page.

Up to 48 hours before the event, admission vouchers, which are required for entry, are available for pick-up at both of the Changing Hands locations. After that, vouchers will be available exclusively at the venue.

Doerr has won numerous prizes for his fiction, including the 2015 Pulitzer Prize. His most recent novel, All the Light We Cannot See, was named a best book of 2014 by a number of publications, and was a #1 New York Times Bestseller.

All the Light We Cannot See is a beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

 

#ArtLitPhx: Cynthia Hogue and Jenny Irish Poetry Reading

Superstition Review

9781597090377Irishc-250x386Cynthia Hogue, ASU’s Marshall Chair in Poetry, and Jenny Irish, Assistant Director of ASU’s Creative Writing Program, give a poetry reading at Changing Hands Bookstore at the Tempe location 6428 S McClintock Dr, Tempe, AZ 85283 on Thursday, February 23rd, 2017 at 7 p.m. Hogue will be reading from her ninth collection, In June the Labyrinth and Irish will be reading from her debut collection, Common Ancestor. For more information on this event, visit the Changing Hands Bookstore’s website. This event is free and open to the public.

Hogue’s In June the Labyrinth the main character of this postmodern fable, travels a trans-historical and trans-geographical terrain, on a quest of sorts, investigating not only the “labyrinth” as myth and symbol, but something akin to the “labyrinth of the broken heart.” The story is an earnest female pilgrim’s journey, full of disappointment but also hard-won wisdom and courage.

Hogue has been described in a New York Times micro-review as having a “knack for intensity.” She has published fourteen books, including nine collections of poetry, most recently Revenance, listed as one of the 2014 “Standout” books by the Academy of American Poets, and In June the Labyrinth (Red Hen Press, 2017). With Sylvain Gallais, Hogue co-translated Fortino Sámano (The overflowing of the poem), from the French of poet Virginie Lalucq and philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy (Omnidawn 2012), which won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets in 2013. Hogue served as the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Cornell University in the Spring of 2014. She was a 2015 NEA Fellow in Translation, and holds the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University.

Irish lives in Tempe, Arizona, where she teaches creative writing and serves as the Assistant Director of the Creative Program at Arizona State University. In addition to her new collection of poetry, Irish’s fiction has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, Catapult, Colorado Review, Epoch, and The Georgia Review. Irish’s debut collection of prose poems, Common Ancestor, is an awe-inspiring read. From the confident power of its narratives to the hurricane-force language of its vision, this poetry is riveting. In two dramatic personae series of gorgeous, near-gothic detail, Irish looks at all the havoc humans wreak and does not blink. She scrutinizes violence with rare sang froid, and though never moralizing, leaves us in little doubt of the moral center of her universe: “Metal is not guilty for what it does in man’s hands, absent of soul,” as one poem puts it. In lines laced with brilliant figure and sly internal rhyme, Irish’s poetry is charged by truth’s searing song.

#ArtLitPhx: Cat Mac

Superstition Review

C9781943837427at Mac will be reads from her first work of poetry at the Tempe location of Changing Hands Bookstore 6428 S McClintock Dr, Tempe, AZ 85283 at 7 pm on February 10th. The event will include some performance pieces / compositions taken from the book. Performances are by ‘mac and the kat’ (Cat Mac and Kat O’Malley) singing and playing accordion, guitar and cajon. This is part of Changing Hands Bookstore’s Friday Poetry series. This event is free and open to the public.
Cat Mac
Cat Mac’s first collection of poetry, set in Vancouver, B.C. and Mexico, is about a poet growing up in the sixties, in a home of multiple addictions, who gets out from under negative influences, comes out as a lesbian, and becomes a healthy, happy poet-singer-songwriter. She received the Milieu Emerging Writer’s Award for under the influence in 2004.

Cat Mac is a singer-songwriter author rainbird from Vancouver, B.C., glad to be in Phoenix half the year. She is a multi-instrumentalist and writes in many genres. Her newest book Emily and Elspeth is fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

#ArtLitPhx: Aaron Gilbreath: Everything We Don’t Know

Superstition Review

everything we don't know Aaron Gilbreath

Aaron Gilbreath will be reading at Changing Hands Bookstore at the Phoenix location 300 W Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85013 on Thursday, February 9th, 2017 at 7 p.m. He will be sharing his latest collection of essays Everything We Don’t Know which examines the false starts and free falls that often accompany growing up in contemporary America. Gilbreath is an essayist and journalist for New York Times, Harper’s, and Vice, as well as others. This event is free and open to the public. For more event information visit Changing Hands Bookstore’s website.

With keen journalistic instincts and his signature unrelenting curiosity, Gilbreath takes on topics both personal and prescient, such as mental illness, the environmental impact of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, his nostalgia for the demolished “Googie” architecture of his youth, drug use and addiction, interning at age 30, falling in love and breaking up, and more. Deftly crafted and surprisingly wise, Everything We Don’t Know is just the beginning of Gilbreath’s bold and bright career. Gilbreath is an essayist, journalist, and burrito enthusiast. His essays and articles have appeared in Harper’s, New York Times, Paris Review, Vice, The Morning News, Saveur, Tin House, The Believer, Oxford American, Kenyon Review, Slate, Virginia Quarterly Review, Narratively, and Brick. His essay “\’ra-di-k?l\” from Hotel Amerika is a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2013, and “Dreams of the Atomic Era” from the Cincinnati Review is a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2011.

#ArtLitPhx: Laurie Stone: My Life as an Animal: Stories

Superstition Review

animal-cover-march-2016

Changing Hands Bookstore, ASU Master of Liberal Studies and Superstition Review present author and performer Laurie Stone. Stone will be presenting her new book My Life as an Animal: Stories on Tuesday, November 15 at 7 p.m. at Changing Hands Phoenix.  Patricia Colleen Murphy, founder of the literary journal, will be discussing autobiographical fiction with the author. For more information please visit the event website.

Laurie Stone is author of My Life as an Animal: Stories (TriQuarterly Books, Northwestern University Press), Starting with Serge, and Laughing in the Dark (Ecco). Former theater critic for The Nation, critic-at-large on Fresh Air, and decades-long writer for the Village Voice, she’s editor of and contributor to the memoir anthology Close to the Bone (Grove). She won the 1996 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle. Her memoir essays and stories have appeared in Fence, Open City, Anderbo, The Collagist, Nanofiction, The Los Angeles Review, New Letters, Ms.,TriQuarterly, Threepenny Review, Memorious, Creative Nonfiction, St Petersburg Review, and Four Way Review. Her short fiction and nonfiction’s been anthologized in They’re at It Again: Stories from Twenty Years of Open City, In the Fullness of Time, The Face in the Mirror, The Other Woman, Best New Writing of 2007, Full Frontal Fiction, and Money, Honey, among others. She lives in New York City.