women and children first

October 6th, 2009

Chicago’s Women and Children First, one of the few remaining women’s bookstores in the country, celebrated their thirtieth anniversary with a gala last weekend. I was one of the guests, along with Dorothy Allison and Nicole Hollander. It was a really fun evening. Nicole and I had a public conversation, and later, as things got a little wilder, Dorothy spoke to the crowd about her personal history with women’s bookstores. I managed to take a few very low res photos, and record a little bit of her talk with my phone. From those audio and video snippets, I put together this brief glimpse of Dorothy conjuring up her first visit to Women and Children First years and years ago, when she was touring with Trash.