Event Category: Reading & Signing

“Reckon” Book Launch at 191 Toole in Tucson

Date: Sunday, February 15, 2026

Time: 6:30-9:00 p.m., MST

Place: 191 Toole, 191 E. Toole Ave., Tucson

Celebrate the Reckon book launch with author Logan Phillips at 191 Toole in Tucson. The evening will be hosted by Natalie Brewster Nguyen with music by Alluvium, Hunblelianess and DJQ. The event is for all ages, open to the public, and “pay what you will.” Logan Phillips is a poet and cultural worker based in Tucson (traditional lands of the Tohono O’odham). He is author of Sonoran Strange, alongside numerous poetry chapbooks and art books, including the NoVoGRAFíAS series (2009–present). A seasoned performer and collaborator, Phillips has toured his work internationally, working on a wide range of arts, education, and land-based projects.

About the book:

What’s it like to have been born in Tombstone, Arizona?

In Reckon, artist Logan Phillips returns to the fabled town to face the history he was raised on as a boy—gunfights, outlaws, and Hollywood cowboys—for a new, personal confrontation with the West’s foundational mythology. This hybrid memoir also explores sexuality, masculinity, parenting, and what it means to love a land rife with contradiction and “slathered in murder.”

As innovative as it is moving, this memoir is constructed of essays, photography, poetry, newspaper clippings from the Tombstone Epitaph Local Edition, and of course, movie screenplays. As he writes the characters of his past––including Youngfather and Teenme––Phillips finds the real history to be much more complex than the stories he was told. This is Tombstone in the 1980s and 90s, a century after the West’s most famous gunfight––a fifteen-second event still performed every day in historical reenactments––where Phillips’s father works as a historical exhibit designer at the Courthouse Museum and his uncle as a stuntman at Old Tucson Studios

Ana Patricia Rodríguez at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C.

Date: Saturday, February 7, 2026

Time: 6 p.m., EST

Where: Politics and Prose at Union Market, 1324 4th Street NE, Washington, D.C.

Salvadorans make up thirty-two percent of the Washington D.C.’s Hispanic population, and one Salvadoran writer described the American Capital City as “another city in El Salvador.” Ana Patricia Rodríguez will read from her new book, Avocado Dreams: Remaking Salvadoran Life and Art in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area at Politics and Prose at Union Market on February 7, 2026. Rodríguez is an associate professor of U.S. Latina/o and Central American literatures at the University of Maryland, College Park.  She is past president of the Latina/o Studies Association (2017–2019). This book launch celebration is free and open to the public.

About the book:

For more than four generations, Salvadorans have made themselves at home in the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and have transformed the region, contributing their labor, ingenuity, and culture to the making of a thriving but highly neglected and overlooked community.

In Avocado Dreams, Ana Patricia Rodríguez draws from her own positionality as a Salvadoran transplant to examine the construction of the unique Salvadoran cultural imaginary made in the greater D.C. area. Through a careful reading of the creative works of local writers, performers, artists, and artivists, Rodríguez demonstrates how the people have remade themselves in relation to the cultural, ethnoracial, and sociolinguistic diversity of the area. She discusses how Salvadoran people have developed unique, intergenerational Salvadoreñidades, manifested in particular speech and symbolic acts, ethnoracial embodiments, and local identity formations in relation to the diverse communities, most notably Black Washingtonians, who co-inhabit the region.

 

Amber McCrary at Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, CO

Date: Thursday, November 20, 2025

Time: 6 p.m., MDT

Where: Maria’s Bookshop, 960 Main Avenue, Durango, CO

Amber McCrary, author of Blue Corn Tongue: Poems in the Mouth of the Desert, will read from her book at Maria’s Bookshop in Durango. McCrary is a Diné poet and zinester. She is Red House Clan born for Mexican people. Originally from Shonto, Arizona and raised in Flagstaff, Arizona. She earned her BA from Arizona State University in Political Science with a minor in American Indian Studies. She received her MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry at Mills College. McCrary is also the owner and founder of Abalone Mountain Press, a press dedicated to publishing Indigenous voices.

About the book:

In a voice that is jubilant, irreverent, sometimes scouring, sometimes heartfelt, and always unmistakably her own, Amber McCrary remaps the deserts of Arizona through the blue corn story of a young Diné woman figuring out love and life with an O’odham man. Reflecting experiences of Indigenous joy, pain, and family, these shapeshifting poems celebrate the love between two Native partners, a love that flourishes alongside the traumas they face in the present and the past. From her ethereal connection with her saguaro muse, Hosh, to the intricate tapestry of her relationships with Diné relatives and her awakening to the complex world of toxic masculinity, McCrary brings together DIY zine aesthetics, life forms of juniper and mountains, and the beauty of Diné Bizaad to tell of the enduring bonds between people and place.

Ann Hedlund in Silver City, NM

Date: Sunday, February 8, 2026

Time: 3-4:30 p.m., MDT

Where: Flash Gallery, Light Art Space, 209 West Broadway, Silver City, NM

Ann Lane Hedlund, author of Mac Schweitzer: A Southwest Maverick and Her Art, will give an illustrated talk about her book, followed by book signing at Flash Gallery in Silver City. Flash Gallery at Light Art Space will host a showing of lithographs by Mac Schweitzer and photographs by Larry Ollivier from February 5 to 28, 2026. The exhibit opens in time for a first Friday ArtWalk on February 5, 5-7 p.m.

About the book:

In Tucson during the 1950s, nearly everyone knew, or wanted to know, the southwestern artist Mac Schweitzer. Born Mary Alice Cox in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1921, she grew up a tomboy who adored horses, cowboys, and art. After training at the Cleveland School of Art and marrying, she adopted her maiden initials (M. A. C.) as her artistic name and settled in Tucson in 1946. With a circle of influential friends that included anthropologists, designer-craftsmen, and Native American artists, she joined Tucson’s “Early Moderns,” receiving exhibits, commissions, and awards for her artwork. When she died in 1962, Mac’s artistic legacy faded from public view, but her prize-winning works attest to a thriving career.

Author Ann Lane Hedlund draws from the artist’s letters, photo albums, and published reviews to tell the story of Mac’s creative and adventuresome life. Her watercolors, oil paintings, prints, and sculptures—a diverse body of work never before seen in public—range from naturalistic studies of Sonoran Desert animals to impressionistic landscapes to moody abstractions.

 

Ann Hedlund in Scottsdale, AZ

Date: Thursday, October 30, 2025

Time: 6-7:30 p.m., MDT

Where: Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West, 3830 N. Marshall Way, Scottsdale, AZ

Ann Lane Hedlund, author of Mac Schweitzer: A Southwest Maverick and Her Art, will give an illustrated talk on how Schwetizer became an artist, what inspired her work, and what kind of creative experiments she pursued. The event is free and open to the public. After the presentation, the book will be available for purchase and signing by the author. This event is part of Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West’s exhibition of Mac Schweitzer’s work.

About the book:

In Tucson during the 1950s, nearly everyone knew, or wanted to know, the southwestern artist Mac Schweitzer. Born Mary Alice Cox in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1921, she grew up a tomboy who adored horses, cowboys, and art. After training at the Cleveland School of Art and marrying, she adopted her maiden initials (M. A. C.) as her artistic name and settled in Tucson in 1946. With a circle of influential friends that included anthropologists, designer-craftsmen, and Native American artists, she joined Tucson’s “Early Moderns,” receiving exhibits, commissions, and awards for her artwork. When she died in 1962, Mac’s artistic legacy faded from public view, but her prize-winning works attest to a thriving career.

Author Ann Lane Hedlund draws from the artist’s letters, photo albums, and published reviews to tell the story of Mac’s creative and adventuresome life. Her watercolors, oil paintings, prints, and sculptures—a diverse body of work never before seen in public—range from naturalistic studies of Sonoran Desert animals to impressionistic landscapes to moody abstractions.

 

Ann Hedlund on Panel in Scottsdale, AZ

Date: Thursday, November 20, 2025

Time: 6-8 p.m., MDT

Where: Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West, 3830 N. Marshall Way, Scottsdale, AZ

Moderator Andrew Nelson brings together Ann Lane Hedlund, author of Mac Schweitzer: A Southwest Maverick and Her Art, with two of her collaborators, Mark Bahti and Betsy Fahlman, for an exciting conversation about where artist Mac Schweitzer came from and how her work fits into the Western art world. The event is free and open to the public. After the presentation, the book will be available for purchase and signing by the author. This event is part of Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West’s exhibition of Mac Schweitzer’s work, which Hedlund curated. The event is free for Museum Members (Members, log-in first to reserve tickets), and free with Museum Admission. Tickets are $10 for just the program. Reserve a seat here.

About the book:

In Tucson during the 1950s, nearly everyone knew, or wanted to know, the southwestern artist Mac Schweitzer. Born Mary Alice Cox in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1921, she grew up a tomboy who adored horses, cowboys, and art. After training at the Cleveland School of Art and marrying, she adopted her maiden initials (M. A. C.) as her artistic name and settled in Tucson in 1946. With a circle of influential friends that included anthropologists, designer-craftsmen, and Native American artists, she joined Tucson’s “Early Moderns,” receiving exhibits, commissions, and awards for her artwork. When she died in 1962, Mac’s artistic legacy faded from public view, but her prize-winning works attest to a thriving career.

Author Ann Lane Hedlund draws from the artist’s letters, photo albums, and published reviews to tell the story of Mac’s creative and adventuresome life. Her watercolors, oil paintings, prints, and sculptures—a diverse body of work never before seen in public—range from naturalistic studies of Sonoran Desert animals to impressionistic landscapes to moody abstractions.

 

Ann Hedlund in Albuquerque

Date: Monday, December 1, 2025

Time: 6 p.m., MDT

Where: Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande Blvd NW, Albuquerque, NM

Ann Lane Hedlund, author of Mac Schweitzer: A Southwest Maverick and Her Art, will be in conversation with Tom White, the son of artist Mac Schweitzer, at Bookworks in Albuquerque. White is a well-known Albuquerque restauranteur. After a brief illustrated talk, the two will discuss Mac’s adventures in Navajo and Hopi country during the 1950s and early 1960s.

About the book:

In Tucson during the 1950s, nearly everyone knew, or wanted to know, the southwestern artist Mac Schweitzer. Born Mary Alice Cox in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1921, she grew up a tomboy who adored horses, cowboys, and art. After training at the Cleveland School of Art and marrying, she adopted her maiden initials (M. A. C.) as her artistic name and settled in Tucson in 1946. With a circle of influential friends that included anthropologists, designer-craftsmen, and Native American artists, she joined Tucson’s “Early Moderns,” receiving exhibits, commissions, and awards for her artwork. When she died in 1962, Mac’s artistic legacy faded from public view, but her prize-winning works attest to a thriving career.

Author Ann Lane Hedlund draws from the artist’s letters, photo albums, and published reviews to tell the story of Mac’s creative and adventuresome life. Her watercolors, oil paintings, prints, and sculptures—a diverse body of work never before seen in public—range from naturalistic studies of Sonoran Desert animals to impressionistic landscapes to moody abstractions.

 

Laura Da’ Reads at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle

Date: Thursday, September 4, 2025

Time: 7 p.m., PST

Where: Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave. Seattle, WA

Laura Da’, author of Severalty, will read from her latest collection in the Readings Room at Elliott Bay Book Company. Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher who studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is the author of Tributaries, an American Book Award winner; and Instruments of the True Measure, a Washington State Book Award winner. Da’ is Eastern Shawnee, and she lives in Washington with her family. The event is free and open to the public; registration is requested, so the store can estimate audience size.

About the book:

Severalty begins in a garden and moves through ancestral and contemporary hometowns that shimmer between wholeness and severing. In these poems, river currents tick with the intrusion of the clock’s lavish precincts. From powerfully compressed lyrical fragments to pulsing narrative sequences, Severalty shifts perspectives to examine devastation and healing, transience and seasonality, loss and resurrection.

With clear roots in her first two books of poetry, Tributaries and Instruments of the True Measure, this volume joins the author’s poetic trilogy with a deeply personal accounting of history, community, and selfhood.

Rick A. López in Amherst, MA

When: Tuesday, October 23, 2025

Time: 4:30-6:30 p.m.

Where: Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, 650 East Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA

Rick A. López celebrates his new book Rooted in Place: Botany, Indigeneity, and Art in the Construction of Mexican Nature, 1570–1914, with a seminar at the Kinney Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. This Five College Renaissance Seminar is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase. López is Anson D. Morse 1871 Professor of Latin American History and Environmental Studies at Amherst College.

About the book:

Since the first moment of conquest, colonizers and the colonized alike in Mexico confronted questions about what it meant to be from this place, what natural resources it offered, and who had the right to control those resources and on what basis.

Focusing on the ways people, environment, and policies have been affected by political boundaries, historian Rick A. López explores the historical connections between political identities and the natural world. López analyzes how scientific intellectuals laid claim to nature within Mexico, first on behalf of the Spanish Empire and then in the name of the republic, during three transformative moments: the Hernández expedition of the late sixteenth century; the Royal Botanical Expedition of the late eighteenth century; and the heyday of scientific societies such as the Sociedad Mexicana de Historia Natural of the late nineteenth century.

 

2026 AWP Conference & Bookfair

When: March 4-7, 2026

Where: Baltimore, Maryland

Join us in Baltimore for the 2026 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference & Bookfair. Learn more about the conference at the AWP website.

About AWP:

“The AWP Conference & Bookfair is the essential gathering for writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers. Join thousands of attendees, explore hundreds of events and exhibitors, and immerse in four days of vital literary community and celebration in Baltimore!”

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