In-Person: HELL IF WE DON'T CHANGE OUR WAYS by Brittany Means

We are excited to welcome Brittany Means to celebrate the paperback release of HELL IF WE DON'T CHANGE OUR WAYS! For this event, Brittany will be joined in conversation by Julia Conrad.

Please note: This event is free to attend, but registration is required! By registering for this event, you agree to wear a mask throughout the duration of the event, per

"I can't write a story about myself as the sad, quiet child of two drug addicts. That's not how it was, even when it was. To me, sleeping in the car was normal. Better, it was comfy and fun. I loved my bed made of clothes inside a trash bag that I sank into slowly like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family movie. . . . I loved the motels and their swimming pools and trashy daytime TV channels. . . . Nobody could tell us what to do."

Brittany Means's childhood was a blur of highways and traumas that collapsed any effort to track time. Riding shotgun as her mother struggled to escape abusive relationships, Brittany didn't care where they were going--to a roadside midwestern motel, a shelter, or The Barn in Indiana, the cluttered mansion her Pentecostal grandparents called home--as long as they were together. But every so often, her mom would surprise her--and leave.

As Brittany grew older and questioned her own complicated relationships and the poverty, abuse, and instability that enveloped her, she began to recognize that hell wasn't only the place she read about in the Bible; it was the cycle of violence that entrapped her family. Through footholds such as horror movies, neuropsychology, and strong bonds, Brittany makes sense of this cycle and finds a way to leave it.

While untangling the web of her most painful memories, Brittany crafts a tale of self-preservation, resilience, and hope with a unique narrative style--a sparkling example of the human ability to withstand the most horrific experiences and still thrive.

Brittany Means is a writer and editor living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A graduate of Iowa's MFA Nonfiction Writing Program, Means has received several awards for her work, including the Magdalena Award and the Grace Paley Fellowship. Her other talents include doing horror movie screams and baking ugly but delicious cakes.

Julia Conrad is a writer, literary translator, and violin player. Her work engages with feminism, sex, classical music, Italian literature, meat, archives, and humor as an entry-point to social criticism. Her work is in The Massachusetts Review, Guernica, The Offing, The Millions, the anthology Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, and many others. She is a contributor to VAN Magazine, and her writing has been translated into Spanish, Italian, and German. A recent Fulbright fellow, she earned two MFAs from the University of Iowa, where she received an Iowa Arts Fellowship. She has been a resident at Vermont Studio Center and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She is currently working on Sex and the Symphony, a book about women in classical music, to be published by Simon & Schuster. Her writing is represented by Allison Devereux at Trellis Literary Agency.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email [email protected] by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email [email protected].

Event Venue

Women & Children First, 5233 North Clark Street, Chicago, United States