In her hometown Renee Bracey Sherman will be in conversation with Zora’s Place bookstore owner and author of Stop Waiting for Perfect L’Oreal Thompson Payton.

Renee Bracey Sherman will be in conversation with Allison Terracio Councilwoman & Palmetto State Abortion Fund Advisory Member, and Liberation is Lit at the Hideout Café in West Columbia, South Carolina.

Renee Bracey Sherman will be in conversation with activist Sarah Elgatian about Liberating Abortion at The Atlas Collective.

For this double book event, Renee Bracey Sherman will join Rebecca Kelliher for the launch of her book Just Pills, and Kendra Carson of the DC Abortion Fund at Lost City Books.

Renee Bracey Sherman will be in conversation with reproductive justice organizer Maya Hart at Letters Community Bookshop.

Renee Bracey Sherman and Regina Mahone will join the hosts of The Astigmatism Comedy Show for their Book of the Month Q&A during the New York Comedy Festival!

Renee Bracey Sherman will be in conversation with Jessica Lee Mathiason and Julia R. Steinberg at the University of Maryland’s Women & Gender Studies Department.

Renee Bracey Sherman will be in conversation with Jasmine Burnett at Tropes & Trifles romance bookstore.

Renee Bracey Sherman will present a lecture on liberating abortion, sexuality, and pleasure with reproductive justice activist Jasmine Burnett

Renee Bracey Sherman will be at the Louisville Book Festival on Saturday, October 11th to sign copies of Liberating Abortion!

Renee Bracey Sherman will be in conversation with community organizer Camille Richoux at Paper Hearts Books in partnership with the Arkansas Abortion Support Network.

About the Author

LEILA MOTTLEY is the author of the novel Nightcrawling, an Oprah’s Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller, and the poetry collection woke up no light. She is also the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. She was born and raised in Oakland, where she continues to live.

From the author of Oprah's Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller Nightcrawling, here is an astonishing new novel about the joys and entanglements of a fierce group of teenage mothers in a small town on the Florida panhandle.

Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, who weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck.

The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships, and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood.

Full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of these friends’ secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big confirms Leila Mottley’s promise and offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.

Now, interweaving her own journey as a provider, Dr. Sella invites readers into a typical week at her clinic to demystify the experience. She shares the stories of people like

• Clarissa, a mother of 2 whose third suffered a massive stroke in utero with no chance of recovery

• Mary, a devoted Catholic whose fourth round of IVF offered a late-in-life chance at motherhood, only to be dashed by anomalous test results

• Laura, a mother to 4 already whose bruised arms tell a painful story, one she couldn't bring herself to write a fifth child into

Beyond Limits is not just a testament to a standard of care grounded in competence, compassion, and sensitivity. It is also a call for a paradigm shift that moves beyond Dobbs, beyond Roe, beyond limits to provide care. And it is a tribute to the real people whose hearts, reasons, and stories are more complex than politicized conversations about abortion lead us to believe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Shelley Sella is a board-certified ob-gyn and the first woman to openly practice third-trimester abortion care in the US, which she did for 20 years. She was prominently featured in the Emmy Award-winning documentary After Tiller. Dr. Sella served two terms on the board of the National Abortion Federation and in 2022 was awarded its highest honor, the Christopher Tietze Humanitarian Award. She is retired from clinical practice and now focuses on advocacy.

Hey there Hartford! Renee will be in conversation with Liz Gustafson, co-founder of The REACH Fund of Connecticut, and Cassie Lehr, board member of The REACH Fund of Connecticut at the Gentle Bull Shop. Books will be sold by River Bend Books.