A headshot of Andrew Greer.

Distinguished Visiting Writers series: Andrew Sean Greer and Amanda Eyre Ward


On Friday, March 3rd, at 6:30 pm, join best-selling authors Andrew Greer and Amanda Ward at the Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix. There, they will be discussing their creative journeys, their writing, and their friendship. This event is free and open to the public. To learn more and register, go here.

Amanda Eyre Ward lives in Austin, TX. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Sleep Toward Heaven, How to Be Lost, Love Stories in This Town, Forgive Me, Close Your Eyes, The Same Sky, The Nearness of You, The Jetsetters, and The Lifeguards. An interview with Amanda Eyre Ward was published in Issue 7 of Superstition Review.

Andrew Sean Greer is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of seven works of fiction, including The Confessions of Max Tivoli and Less is Lost. He lives in San Fransisco and Milan. An interview with Andrew Sean Greer was published in Issue 15 of Superstition Review.

A poster for the event "Storyline Slam." The text reads: "The Storyline Slam presents Holidaze. 7pm November 25, 2022. Prepurchase tickets online for $10. Changing Hands Bookstore: Phoenix."

Storyline Slam

From 7pm – 9pm on Friday, November 25, the Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix will be hosting its monthly Storyline Slam. This is an event where eight storytellers are invited to share six-minute stories, which will be judged by members of the audience.

This event requires purchasing a $10 ticket, and slots for the storytellers are limited.

To learn more and sign up, visit here.

Storytelling in a Climate Crisis

Storytelling in a Climate Crisis

Storytelling in a Climate Crisis poster.
Storytelling in a Climate Crisis

On September 14 at 6pm, Lauren Kuby will be at the Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix to exchange poetry and stories about the environment and environmental crisis. Please note that performer signups are limited, and these signups close September 7.

The Changing Hands Bookstore is unique to Arizona and offers new and used books. They often host author events.

Lauren Kuby is a sustainability scientist at Arizona State University and a recognized national champion for climate action and clean energy.

Register here to join!

#ArtLitPhx: ‘There’s No Crying in the Newsrooms’

Authors Kristin Grady Gilger and Julia Wallace, both faculty at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, discuss and sign copies of their book about women newsroom leaders.

There’s No Crying in Newsrooms tells the stories of remarkable women who broke through barrier after barrier at media organizations around the country over the past four decades. They started out as editorial assistants, fact checkers and news secretaries and ended up running multi-million-dollar news operations that determine a large part of what Americans read, view and think about the world. These women, who were calling in news stories while in labor and parking babies under their desks, never imagined that 40 years later young women entering the news business would face many of the same battles they did – only with far less willingness to put up and shut up.

The female pioneers in There’s No Crying in Newsrooms have many lessons to teach about what it takes to succeed in media or any other male-dominated organization, and their message is more important now than ever before.

PARKING / LIGHT RAIL

  • Don’t want to drive? Take the Light Rail! It lets off at the Central Avenue/Camelback Park-and-Ride, which has hundreds of free parking spaces across the street from Changing Hands.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
KRISTIN GILGER is Senior Associate Dean at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. She spent the first 20 years of her career at newspapers in five different states, beginning as a farm reporter in St. Cloud, Minnesota in the 1980s when family farms were going bankrupt at an alarming rate.She left the Midwest in search of warmer weather and landed at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, where she edited a prize-winning project on race relations and ran two of the paper’s suburban news operations. She was managing editor of the Salem Statesman Journal in Oregon’s capital city and then assistant managing editor for news at The Arizona Republic in Phoenix before moving to academia, where she has helped build one of the country’s most prominent journalism programs. She has conducted training in ethics, leadership and newspaper management throughout the U.S. and in several other countries. She holds a master’s and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska.

JULIA WALLACE is an award-winning news industry executive with deep experience in investigative journalism, industry leadership, digital transformation and change leadership. She was an intern at the Atlanta Journal in 1977 and never imagined that she would return there, becoming the top editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution 25 years later. During her tenure, the Journal-Constitution won two Pulitzer Prizes and was nominated for two others. She was named E&P Editor of the Year in 2004. The newspaper aggressively moved into the digital age and was focused heavily on investigative reporting. Work during her time led to dozens of indictments of public officials and others. She also served as managing editor of USA TODAY, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Arizona Republic and executive editor of the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon. She led Cox Media Group Ohio for five years, running the news and other operations for three newspapers, a CBS station (WHIO) and three radio stations. Her first full-time journalism job was as a health reporter for the Norfolk (VA) Ledger-Star. Currently, she serves as the Frank Russell Chair at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. In that role, she has been involved in a variety of projects including head coach for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s “Initiative on Integrity and Leadership;” organizing and facilitating a speaker series on gender in the workplace; directing the Mayo Clinic-Cronkite Medical Journalism Fellowship and teaching investigative reporting in Albania and Lithuania. She teaches classes on the business of journalism, ethics and gender.

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix 

Date: Wednesday, September 4

Time: 7 p.m.

For more information about the event, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: Long and Short of It

Long and Short of It Book Club is a new bimonthly club that explores one book and one story collection connected by a theme.

Tonight the group discusses The Gone Dead and The Man Who Shot My Eye Out is Dead, both by Chanelle Benz. The Gone Dead is a debut novel about a young woman who returns to her childhood home in the American South and uncovers secrets about her father’s life and death. The Man Who Shot My Eye Out is Dead is a debut collection about lives across history marked by violence and longing.

Stop by Changing Hands Phoenix or Tempe (or order online by clicking “add to cart” below) to get your copies of The Gone Dead for 20% OFF and The Man Who Shot My Eye Out is Dead for 10% OFF.

Then meet fellow book lovers at First Draft Book Bar to discuss the pick.

FREE PARKING / LIGHT RAIL

  • Don’t want to drive? Take the Light Rail! It lets off at the Central Avenue/Camelback Park-and-Ride, which has hundreds of free parking spaces across the street from Changing Hands.


About The Gone Dead:
Billie James’ inheritance isn’t much: a little money and a shack in the Mississippi Delta. The house once belonged to her father, a renowned black poet who died unexpectedly when Billie was four years old. Though Billie was there when the accident happened, she has no memory of that day—and she hasn’t been back to the South since.


Billie James’ inheritance isn’t much: a little money and a shack in the Mississippi Delta. The house once belonged to her father, a renowned black poet who died unexpectedly when Billie was four years old. Though Billie was there when the accident happened, she has no memory of that day—and she hasn’t been back to the South since.

Thirty years later, Billie returns but her father’s home is unnervingly secluded: her only neighbors are the McGees, the family whose history has been entangled with hers since the days of slavery. As Billie encounters the locals, she hears a strange rumor: that she herself went missing on the day her father died. As the mystery intensifies, she finds out that this forgotten piece of her past could put her in danger.

Inventive, gritty, and openhearted, The Gone Dead is an astonishing debut novel about race, justice, and memory that lays bare the long-concealed wounds of a family and a country.


About The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead:
A brother and sister turn outlaw in a wild and brutal landscape. The daughter of a diplomat disappears and resurfaces across the world as a deadly woman of many names. A young Philadelphia boy struggles with the contradictions of privilege, violence, and the sway of an incarcerated father. A monk in sixteenth century England suffers the dissolution of his monastery and the loss of all that he held sacred.

The characters in The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, Benz’s wildly imaginative debut, are as varied as any in recent literature, but they share a thirst for adventure which sends them rushing full-tilt toward the moral crossroads, becoming victims and perpetrators along the way. Riveting, visceral, and heartbreaking, Benz’s stories of identity, abandonment, and fierce love come together in a daring, arresting vision.

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix 

Date: Tuesday, August 20

Time: 7 p.m.

For more information about the event, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: Found in Translation Meeting

This month Changing Hands will discuss China Dream by Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew.

Whether you’re a seasoned traveler, a voracious reader, or a dreamer who wants to see the world, all are invited to our newest book club focused on international literature. Sometimes visiting other countries doesn’t always give travelers an insider’s view into foreign cultures; sometimes we are still too outside, too different, to get at the heart of a place. Often the best way to understand distant lands and peoples is to read their literature, to get inside the head of a foreign author, to hear their myths and fairy tales molded around words they penned in their mother tongue.

In Found in Translation, you will delve into a work of international literature in a small group setting while enjoying coffee, beer, or wine drinks from First Draft Book Bar, located in Changing Hands Phoenix.

Stop by Changing Hands Phoenix or Tempe (or order online by clicking “add to cart” below) to get your copy of China Dream for 20% OFF.

Then meet us at First Draft Book Bar to discuss the pick and enjoy happy hour prices all through the event.

FREE PARKING / LIGHT RAIL

  • Don’t want to drive? Take the Light Rail! It lets off at the Central Avenue/Camelback Park-and-Ride, which has hundreds of free parking spaces across the street from Changing Hands.

ABOUT THE BOOK 
Blending fact and fiction, China Dream is an unflinching satire of totalitarianism. Ma Daode, a corrupt and lecherous party official, is feeling pleased with himself. He has an impressive office, three properties, and multiple mistresses who text him day and night. After decades of loyal service, he has been appointed director of the China Dream Bureau, charged with replacing people’s private dreams with President Xi Jinping’s great China Dream of national rejuvenation. But just as he is about to present his plan for a mass golden wedding anniversary celebration, his sanity begins to unravel. Suddenly plagued by flashbacks of the Cultural Revolution, Ma Daode’s nightmare visions from the past threaten to destroy his dream of a glorious future.

This darkly comic fable exposes the damage inflicted on a nation’s soul when authoritarian regimes, driven by an insatiable hunger for power, seek to erase memory, rewrite history, and falsify the truth. It is a dystopian vision of repression, violence, and state-imposed amnesia that is set not in the future, but in China today.

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix 

Date: Wednesday, August 14

Time: 7 p.m.

For more information about the event, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: Heather Hillenbrand’s ‘A Girl’s Magic’

Join author Heather Hillenbrand for a book launch party in Phoenix. A Girl’s Magic is an empowering approach to educating girls about menstruation, puberty, and sex.

Parents will be guided on how to open those tough conversations with colorful symbolism, images, and poetry that help young girls gain a deeper understanding of what it is to be a girl. This book helps parents prepare daughters for physical changes, teach about menstruation from an age-appropriate creative perspective, inspire confidence about natural body development, and empower girls to feel magical.

Created to look like a children’s book, A Girl’s Magic is designed to keep young audiences engaged with this challenging topic. A parent guide in the back of the book offers a language for dialogue as well as other resources to support conscious parenting choices in our ever-changing world.

Please note: This event is primarily for adults.

PARKING / LIGHT RAIL

  • Don’t want to drive? Take the Light Rail! It lets off at the Central Avenue/Camelback Park-and-Ride, which has hundreds of free parking spaces across the street from Changing Hands.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
While studying and working in spiritual sexuality, Heather Hillenbrand was inspired to create this book. She offers workshops and coaching for women and parents to be able to tackle this challenging area. Heather is working toward certification as a Sex Educator through the American Association for Sex Educators, Therapists and Counselors (AASECT). She has also been accepted to and will complete the Human Sexuality Certificate through the University of Minnesota in Spring 2020. Heather resides in Phoenix with her sweet cat.

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix 

Date: Saturday, August 10

Time: 5:30 p.m.

For more information about the event, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: Art Reception with Koryn Woodward Wasson

Local artist Koryn Woodward Wasson celebrates the opening of her new art show, “Just a Thought,” an exploration of her father, Stephen Lucas Woodward, and the objects and memories he left with us.

August 7, 2019 marks a year since his passing, and these drawings are both a gift to him and the fulfillment of a life-long request: “You should make cards.”

PARKING / LIGHT RAIL

  • Don’t want to drive? Take the Light Rail! It lets off at the Central Avenue/Camelback Park-and-Ride, which has hundreds of free parking spaces across the street from Changing Hands.

ABOUT THE ARTIST 
Koryn Woodward Wasson was born and raised in Tempe, AZ. She is a teaching artist, and works with her husband, Roy Wasson Valle as Fireweather Studio, focusing on intergenerational interactive art installation. Her daily practice of art making is watercolor and mixed media. She is currently teaching for the Phoenix Center for the Arts and raising her two magical daughters, Cora and Xochi.

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix 

Date: Wednesday, August 7

Time: 5 p.m.

For more information about the event, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: PhxLitServ Meeting

Date: August 10
Time: noon to 3 p.m.
Location: Changing Hands, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix
Cost: Free

About this Event 

Come together with creative writing community organizers in Phoenix, AZ for the second meeting of the #PhxLitServ on Saturday, August 10, 2019 from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Changing Hands Phoenix (300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix, AZ 85013).

Where the first meeting brought everyone together to meet each other, share goals, and collaboratively determine what the #PhxLitServ should be, the second meeting will focus on setting up structure, identifying initiatives, and organizing committees. 

Please note: this meeting is not open to the public. You must have an access code to register for the meeting. Members will receive access codes, agendas, and more information about the meeting via email. You must be a member in order to attend.

#PhxLitServ is open to any individual organizing a recurring event, teaching a class, or providing some other kind of creative writing program, product, service or space with a six month history of actively serving the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. All genres and forms are welcome. Membership is free. 

To join the #PhxLitServ and become a member, visit our website at http://piper.asu.edu/phxlitserv. For more information, contact Marketing and Outreach Specialist Jake Friedman at 480.727.0818 or jake.friedman@asu.edu.

#ArtLitPhx: First Draft Book Club

Join Changing Hands at First Draft Book Bar (the wine and beer bar inside Changing Hands Phoenix) for a discussion of this month’s pick, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong.

Stop by Changing Hands Phoenix or Tempe to get your copy of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.

Then meet Changing Hands and Arizona Republic reporter Barbara VanDenburgh at First Draft Book Bar to discuss the pick and enjoy HAPPY HOUR prices all through the event.

Sign up for Barbara VanDenburgh’s weekly “Feel Good 5” newsletter here, and join the First Draft Book Club Facebook group here.

ABOUT THE BOOK 

Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. 

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

WHAT IS FIRST DRAFT BOOK CLUB? 
First Draft Book Club is the official book club of First Draft Book Bar – the coffee, beer, and wine bar inside Changing Hands Phoenix. Every month, Arizona Republic reporter Barbara VanDenburgh picks a hot new book and hosts a guided book club discussion.

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix 

Date: Wednesday, July 24

Time: 7 p.m.

For more information about the event, click here.