Joins us as we celebrate the release of How We Heal with Alexandra Elle in conversation with Deun Ivory. 

EVENT DEETS

When: November 11 at 7:00 PM CST

Where: St. John's Downtown (2019 Crawford Street, HTX77002)

How: Get General Admission or VIP Meet & Greet tickets via Eventbrite. Each ticket comes with a book. 

About the Book

Beloved wellness author and teacher Alexandra Elle shares this practical and empowering guide to self-healing.

In How We Heal, bestselling author Alexandra Elle offers a life-changing invitation to heal yourself and reclaim your peace. In these pages, readers will discover essential techniques for self-healing, including journaling rituals to cultivate innate strength, accessible tools for processing difficult emotions, and restorative meditations to ease the mind.

Alex Elle elegantly weaves together themes like self-healing, mindfulness, inner child work, and boundary setting and presents the reader with easy-to-follow practices that have changed her life and the lives of the thousands of people she has taught. Her 4-part framework for healing will appeal to anyone who wants a clear process, while the compelling personal stories leave the reader feeling connected and ready to begin again.

Complementing the practices are powerful insights from Alex Elle's own journey of self-discovery using writing to heal, plus remarkable stories of healing from a range of luminary voices, including Nedra Tawwab, Morgan Harper Nichols, Dr. Thema Bryant, Barb Schmidt, and many more.

Brimming with encouragement and delivered with Alex Elle's signature warmth and candor, How We Heal is a must-have companion for anyone that wants to unlock their inner wisdom and confidence to heal on their own.

About the Author

Alexandra Elle is a writer, wellness educator, and certified Breathwork coach. Her work has been featured by a wide range of media outlines, including the New York Times, NPR, Good Morning America, ABC News, Essence, The Cut, MindBodyGreen, Bet, and Forbes, among many others. She teaches workshops and leads retreats centered around writing and self-care, and was host of the popular hey, girl podcast. She is the author of several books and journals, including, most recently, After the Rain and the In Courage Journal. She lives in the Washington DC metro area with her husband and three daughters.

About the Conversation Partner

Deun Ivory is a creative director, photographer and multidisciplinary artist whose work centers and celebrates black women.

As a multidisciplinary artist, Deun has photographed campaigns and projects for brands such as Apple, Google, Glossier and Nike, as well as covers and editorial shoots, including CRWN Mag’s cover of Issa Rae. She has also worked as the Art Director for Black Girl in Om. 

As the Founder and Creative Director of the body: a home for love – a 501 (c)3 non-profit and creative wellness space for black women, Ivory has cemented her power and influence as a thought-leader and visual storyteller in the mental health and wellness spaces. Ivory’s work has been featured in Essence, Glamour, Refinery29, Vogue and other national and international publications. 

Hip-Hop Is History is a book only Questlove could have written: a perceptive and personal reflection on the first half-century of hip-hop.

When hip-hop first emerged in the 1970s, it wasn’t expected to become the cultural force it is today. But for a young Black kid growing up in a musical family in Philadelphia, it was everything. He stayed up late to hear the newest songs on the radio. He saved his money to buy vinyl as soon as it landed. He even started to try to make his own songs. That kid was Questlove, and decades later, he is a six-time Grammy Award–winning musician, an Academy Award–winning filmmaker, a New York Times bestselling author, a producer, an entrepreneur, a cofounder of one of hip-hop’s defining acts (the Roots), and the genre’s unofficial in-house historian.

In this landmark book, Hip-Hop Is History, Questlove skillfully traces the creative and cultural forces that made and shaped hip-hop, highlighting both the forgotten but influential gems and the undeniable chart-topping hits—and weaves it all together with the stories no one else knows. It is at once an intimate, sharply observed story of a cultural revolution and a sweeping, grand theory of the evolution of the great artistic movement of our time. And Questlove, of course, approaches it with not only the encyclopedic fluency and passion of an obsessive fan but also the expertise and originality of an innovative participant.

Hip-hop is history, and also his history.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “The conscience of the AI revolution” (Fortune) explains how we’ve arrived at an era of AI harms and oppression, and what we can do to avoid its pitfalls.

“AI is not coming, it’s here. If we answer the beautiful call inside these pages, we can decide who we are going to be and how we’re going to use technology in service of what it means to be fully human.”—Brené Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead

A LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • Shortlisted for the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award

To most of us, it seems like recent developments in artificial intelligence emerged out of nowhere to pose unprecedented threats to humankind. But to Dr. Joy Buolamwini, who has been at the forefront of AI research, this moment has been a long time in the making.

After tinkering with robotics as a high school student in Memphis and then developing mobile apps in Zambia as a Fulbright fellow, Buolamwini followed her lifelong passion for computer science, engineering, and art to MIT in 2015. As a graduate student at the “Future Factory,” she did groundbreaking research that exposed widespread racial and gender bias in AI services from tech giants across the world.

Unmasking AI goes beyond the headlines about existential risks produced by Big Tech. It is the remarkable story of how Buolamwini uncovered what she calls “the coded gaze”—the evidence of encoded discrimination and exclusion in tech products—and how she galvanized the movement to prevent AI harms by founding the Algorithmic Justice League. Applying an intersectional lens to both the tech industry and the research sector, she shows how racism, sexism, colorism, and ableism can overlap and render broad swaths of humanity “excoded” and therefore vulnerable in a world rapidly adopting AI tools. Computers, she reminds us, are reflections of both the aspirations and the limitations of the people who create them.

Encouraging experts and non-experts alike to join this fight, Buolamwini writes, “The rising frontier for civil rights will require algorithmic justice. AI should be for the people and by the people, not just the privileged few.”

In the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a page-turning 93-year history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the nation’s last segregated asylums, that New York Times bestselling author Clint Smith describes as “a book that left me breathless.”

On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland. Under the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks, and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state’s Hospital for the Negro Insane. For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. Madness transports readers behind the brick walls of a Jim Crow asylum.
 
In Madness, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family’s experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations.
 
As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, the institution became a microcosm of America’s evolving battles over slavery, racial integration, and civil rights. During its peak years, the hospital’s wards were overflowing with almost 2,700 patients. By the end of the 20th-century, the asylum faded from view as prisons and jails became America’s new focus.
 
In Madness, Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people’s bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable.

The most comprehensive publication to date on widely celebrated artist Rashid Johnson

‘Johnson is a leading voice of his generation.’ – New York Times

The most comprehensive publication to date on widely celebrated artist Rashid Johnson

Working with a variety of media that includes painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance, Rashid Johnson has created a nuanced and iconographic body of work that connects literature, music, and art. Personal references and pervasive cultural narratives are interweaved with the legacy of modernist abstraction, producing what critics have labelled ‘conceptual post-black art’. A precocious talent (his work was included in the seminal ‘Freestyle’ exhibition in New York in 2001), Johnson received the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Prize, which honours contributions in the field of African-American art.

A searing and compassionate new novel about a young Black nurse’s shocking discovery and burning quest for justice in post-segregation Alabama, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wench.

Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend intends to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she hopes to help women shape their destinies, to make their own choices for their lives and bodies.

But when her first week on the job takes her along a dusty country road to a worn-down one-room cabin, Civil is shocked to learn that her new patients, Erica and India, are children—just eleven and thirteen years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for those handling the family’s welfare benefits, that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica, and their family into her heart. Until one day she arrives at their door to learn the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.

Decades later, with her daughter grown and a long career in her wake, Dr. Civil Townsend is ready to retire, to find her peace, and to leave the past behind. But there are people and stories that refuse to be forgotten. That must not be forgotten.

Because history repeats what we don’t remember.

Inspired by true events and brimming with hope, Take My Hand is a stirring exploration of accountability and redemption.

*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

Radical Justice brings together two bodies of socially-engaged photographic portraiture by Accra Shepp, who has documented New York City’s Occupy Wall Street movement starting in 2011 and its racial justice/BLM protests since 2020.  

Working in the style of August Sander with a large format camera and black and white film, Shepp pictures fellow New Yorkers on their city’s streets in acts of sit-ins and active protest, both unplanned and highly organized, both independent and unified, to address notions of the 99% and 1%, which have become part of the American political vernacular.  Bearing witness to defining events of the last decade that echo the United States’ longer historical arch, Shepp’s empathetic depictions of fellow citizens standing up for the fair protection of the Constitution provide a prophetic mirror of current events, which reflects back centuries to where the American experiment began, to suggest where we’ll find ourselves in the years to come.

Celebrate D is for Dance: Dancing Through the Diaspora with Stacey Allen and Brynne Hentry! Come meet the author and illustrator, hear a beautiful story about dance and culture, and enjoy a dance demonstration by Nia's Daughters Movement Collective!

EVENT DEETS

When: Saturday, August 2 @ 1 PM

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St #2, Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you're coming or RSVP WITH BOOK to secure your copy of D is for Dance: Dancing Through the Diaspora.

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stacey Allen is an award-winning dancemaker, curator, and advocate for arts education, equity, and reproductive justice. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective, a professional dance company committed to creating and supporting art and wellness initiatives through the lens of Black women and girls. Stacey is the author of two children’s books, A Little Optimism Goes a Long Way—recipient of the 2024 Children’s Publication Award from the National Association of Multicultural Education—and D is for Dance: Dancing Through the Diaspora. She also created The Fairytale Project, a touring dance-theater production inspired by Texas Freedom Colonies.

Stacey lives in the Greater Houston area with her husband, Chase Allen, and their three children: Chase Jr., Zora, and John. Learn more about her work at www.niasdaughters.com and follow her on Instagram at @theblackartsymom and @niasdaughters.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Brynne Henry is a Houston-based illustrator, mixed-media artist, researcher, and K-12 instructor. She graduated from the University of North Texas with a B. F. A. in Art Education and has held multiple positions in research spanning across the African-American arts and humanities. Her interest in African-American humanities was sparked in her college art history classes and fueled by a research fellowship she received from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. Her love for art was passed down generationally and she sincerely hopes to inspire the next generation of artists to continue using art as a vehicle for information exchange and self-expression. View more of her work at www.brynnehenry.com

PRE-ORDER. ON SALE DATE: March 31, 2026

“Violent, smart, gruesome and wildly original, this novel pulls readers into a horrific world of murder and cannibalism while also critiquing misogyny, exploring Asian fetishization and stereotypes, sharing what it’s like to navigate two cultures and telling a touching story of a family in turmoil.” —New York Times Book Review

TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this brilliantly subversive, feminist psychological horror novel about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying . . . yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Mouthwatering blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescendingly toward Ji-won and her sister, as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. But George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

No matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

"I was enticed from the first line and entertained throughout. The Eyes Are the Best Part is a quirky, engaging read."—Oyinkan Brainthwaite, author of My Sister, the Serial Killer

A woman’s trip home reveals frightening truths in a twisty novel of murder and family secrets by the New York Times bestselling author of And Now She’s Gone and These Toxic Things.

TV writer Yara Gibson’s hometown of Palmdale, California, isn’t her first choice for a vacation. But she’s back to host her parents’ twentieth-anniversary party and find the perfect family mementos for the celebration. Everything is going to plan until Yara receives a disturbing text: I have information that will change your life.

The message is from Felicia Campbell, who claims to be a childhood friend of Yara’s mother. But they’ve been estranged for years—drama best ignored and forgotten. But Yara can’t forget Felicia, who keeps texting, insisting that Yara talk to her “before it’s too late.”

But the next day is already too late for Felicia, whose body is found floating in Lake Palmdale. Before she died, Felicia left Yara a key to a remote lakeside cabin. In the basement are files related to a mysterious tragedy, unsolved since 1998. What secrets was Felicia hiding? How much of what Yara knows about her family has been true?

The deeper Yara digs for answers, the more she fears that Felicia was right. Uncovering the truth about what happened at the cabin all those years ago will change Yara’s life—or end it.

Celebrate the release of Watermelon & Red Bird Birds: A Cookbook for Juneteeth & Black Celebrations with James Beard Award nominated food writer and chef Nicole A. Taylor!

Event DEETS: 

When: Thursday, June 23 @ 7:00 PM CST

Where: Assembly HTX (2015 Berry Street, HTX 77004)

How: Space is limited. Tickets With Book includes all the necessary materials for cocktail class. Ticket Without Book is for the author talk and materials/supplies for cocktails. 

About the Book

On June 19, 1865, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and issued General Order Number 3, informing the people of Texas that all enslaved people were now free. A year later, in 1866, Black Texans congregated with music, dance, and BBQs—Juneteenth celebrations.

All-day cook-outs with artful salads, bounteous dessert spreads, and raised glasses of “red drink” are essential to Juneteenth gatherings. In Watermelon and Red Birds, Nicole puts jubilation on the main stage. As a master storyteller and cook, she bridges the traditional African-American table and 21st-century flavors in stories and recipes. Nicole synthesizes all the places we’ve been, all the people we have come from, all the people we have become, and all the culinary ideas we have embraced.

Watermelon and Red Birds contains over 75 recipes, including drinks like Afro Egg Cream and Marigold Gin Sour, dishes like Beef Ribs with Fermented Harissa Sauce, Peach Jam and Molasses Glazed Chicken Thighs, Southern-ish Potato Salad and Cantaloupe and Feta Salad, and desserts like Roasted Nectarine Sundae, and Radish and Ginger Pound Cake. Taylor also provides a resource to guide readers to BIPOC-owned hot sauces, jams, spice, and waffle mixes companies and lists fun gadgets to make your Juneteenth special. These recipes and essays will inspire parties to salute one of the most important American holidays, and moments to savor joy all year round

About the Author

Nicole A. Taylor (@foodculturist) is a James Beard Award-nominated food writer, master home cook, and producer.  She has written for the New York Times, Bon Appétit, and Food & Wine. Nicole is the author of The Up South Cookbook and The Last O.G. Cookbook. She is the executive producer of If We So Choose, a short documentary about the desegregation of an iconic southern fast food joint. Nicole is the co-founder of The Maroon, a marketplace and retreat house focused on radical rest for Black creatives. She lives in New York City and Athens, Georgia, with her husband and son.

About the Moderator

Chef Vicky V (@thequeenofyum) is a United States-based, Houston native Chef Consultant/FoodStylist/Influencer/Media Producer/ & Black Restaurant Liaison. Chef Vicky V is the powerhouse for food media and championing people to expand their palates while living life beyond the stereotypes! Chef Vicky V garnered professional training in Philadelphia at JNA Institute of Culinary Art. After moving back to Houston she has successfully navigated as a food media personality. She has recently centered in on the Food & Travel/ and Unique brand forward recipe development.

Chef Vicky V has rebranded herself as the Queen of Yum in 2020 with a powerful engine of followers she calls the “yumcrumb” behind her! She has
worked with many Regional and National brands to create delicious, colorful, beautifully aesthetic food media with engagement reaching in the multiple of millions.