Friday 10/31: Caitlin Doughty, host of the video series Ask a Mortician, is at the Packer Gallery in promotion of her memoir, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory. 6:30 p.m.
Scott Kenemore is at City Lit Books to read from his latest horror novel, The Grand Hotel. 6:30 p.m.
Saturday 11/1: Cheryl Wall is a professor of English at Rutgers, and she discusses the writer Zora Neale Hurston for the Chicago Humanities Festival. School of the Art Institute, 11:30 a.m.
Richard Fizdale is at Seminary Co-op to discuss his book 999: A History of Chicago in Ten Stories. 3 p.m.
Jesmyn Ward is the winner of the 2014 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, and she’s at Harold Washington Library (State and Van Buren!) in conversation with Mary Schmich about her memoir Men We Reaped. 3:30 p.m.
Sunday 11/2: Story Club wants to make sure all of its writers are paid in 2015, so it’s throwing a Gatsby-era party at The Green Mill and featuring Kelsie Huff, Lily Be, Don Hall, and Megan Stielstra. Bring your top hats and get ready to twirl your walking sticks. 1 p.m.
Poetry Foundation’s weekly series “Poetry Off the Shelf,” features Eileen Myles. She’ll read from her new fantasy and dog memoir, Afterglow. 2 p.m.
Come Home Chicago celebrates its 5th year of live lit readings with Rick Kogan, Irvine Welsh, Matt Martin, Kevin Coval, Jessie Ann Foley, Toya Wolfe, Liz Grear, Monica McFawn, Peter Ferry, Mason Johnson, Mark Thomas, and Pat McKenna. Underground Wonder Bar, 6 p.m.
Monday 11/3: The LitMash is back at Haymarket for another hotly contested literary competition. This month, Tim Stafford, Dominique Chestand, Billy Tuggle, J.H. Palmer, and Don Hall fight for the cash. 7:30 p.m.
Tuesday 11/4: City Lit Books hosts a book release celebration for Lindsay Hunter’s new novel, Ugly Girls. Hunter will read from her work and talk with Jac Jemc. Both of these women are the opposite of ugly. 6:30 p.m.
Volume 36 of The Wit Rabbit Reading Series is going to be a good one. Katy Didden, Sandra Lim, Claire McQuerry’s, Pedro Ponce, and Catherine Theis read at Quenchers. 7 p.m.
Tuesday Funk is back at Hopleaf, featuring Tom Haley, Maggie Jenkins, Melinda McIntire, Keesha Beckford, and William Shunn. 7:30 p.m.
Thursday 11/6: Jess Row released a new novel, Your Face in Mine, this past summer, and he’s at Seminary Co-op to read from it. 6 p.m.
William Gibson comes back to the Chicago Humanities Festival to celebrate his latest book, The Peripheral at the Northwestern University School of Law, Thorne Auditorium. He’ll be in conversation with Carol Anshaw. 6 p.m.
Garrett Caples discusses surrealism and contemporary poetry for the latest installment of the Harriet Reading Series at Poetry Foundation. Caples is an editor at City Lights Books in San Francisco and co-edited The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia. 6:30 p.m.
