Cocktails and Convos

A Dog-Eared Books Author Series

Meet the authors of exciting new books through our Cocktails & Conversations Author Series! Each Cocktails & Conversation event will include an author reading, a Q&A with time for audience questions, and a book signing. To add to the fun, customers can purchase a signature cocktail that matches the book.

To attend a Cocktails & Conversations, you’ll need to purchase a ticket for the event using the buttons below. The ticket price will include both a signed book and an evening of interaction with the author. If a family member would like to attend but does not need a book, additional tickets can be purchased at a nominal cost as an add-on to the base ticket. 

Below you’ll find a list of our upcoming Cocktails & Conversation events:

Mary Helen Stefaniak & The Six-Minute Memoir

Fans of short essay collections and writers of creative nonfiction will love this joyful book, The Six-Minute Memoir, and a night of conversation with its author, Mary Helen Stefaniak. Culled from two decades’ worth of Stefaniak’s “Alive and Well” column in the Iowa Source, each essay invites readers into the ordinary life of a woman “with a family and friends and a job . . . and a series of cats and a history living in one old house after another at the turn of the twenty-first century in the middle of the Middle West.”

Date: Friday, October 6                                                                      Time: 7 PM

Denise Williams & Technically Yours

Meet back up again with Pearl and Cord as a second chance at romance tempts them both! Reunited through their work at a  a nonprofit aimed at inspiring high schoolers to code, these two lovable characters could derail their careers if they pursue a public romance. They may be skilled programmers, but love isn’t easily debugged. Denise Williams will give a brief reading of her new book Technically Yours and share in a juicy conversation with us at Dog-Eared Books. Her events are always a blast, and you won’t want to miss this one.

Date: Thursday, December 7                                                                       Time: 7 PM

Theodore Wheeler & The War Begins in Paris

This historical fiction novel brings noir vibes to 1938 Paris. Shy pacifist and shunned Mennonite Mielle meets the brash American Journalist Jane, who will soon become a fascist propagandist in the second world war. As this recklessness devolves into militarism and an utter lack of humanity, Mielle is seized by a series of visions that show her an inescapable truth: Jane Anderson must die, and Mielle must be the one to kill her.

Date: Thursday, Jan 18                                                                   Time: 7 PM

Debra Marquart & Gratitude with Dogs under Stars

Beginning with the new poems, the collection travels back through Marquart’s illustrious career. Long-time fans and newcomers alike can track the trajectory of this poet laureate’s poetic life thus far—the quiet serenity of walking dogs under a starry sky, the horrors of fracking, the beginnings of a tender relationship at a firing range, reflecting on the follies of a youthful life lived carefree.

Date: February TBA                                                                      Time: 7 PM

Bennett Sims & Other Minds and Other Stories

These darkly humorous short stories expertly guide readers through the paranoia and obsession of everyday horrors, not least the horrors of overthinking what other people might be thinking. In this cerebral and eerie collection, a man lends his phone to a stranger in the mall, setting off an uncanny series of Unknown calls that come to haunt his relationship with jealousy and dread, and a private detective is hired to investigate a posthumous message that a widower has seemingly received from his dead wife, leading him into a foggy landscape of lost memories, shifting identities, and strange doublings. 

Date: Wednesday, March 27                                                                     Time: 7 PM

 Tracey Garvis Graves & Gratitude with Dogs under Stars

This contemporary romance follows forty-four-year-old Wren Waters who wants to put two recent life-altering blows behind her. No one is more surprised than Wren when she discovers that geocaching—the outdoor activity of using GPS to look for hidden objects—is the only thing getting her out of bed and out of her head. While on a geocaching trip, she meets a psychologist struggling with his own life-altering events, and what begins as a platonic road trip gradually blossoms into something deeper.

Date: Thurs, April  4                                                                    Time: 7 PM