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Tower Grove Pride 2025Saturday, September 27, 2025 - 11:00pm to Sunday, September 28, 2025 - 5:00pm
About the Speakers:
Viktoria Capek - Dear Reader: An Immersive Literary Journey Through Taylor Swift's Lyrics
Presented by Left Bank Books & Left Bank Books Foundation
Saturday, September 27, 2025 - 2:00pm
Left Bank Books is thrilled to bring Viktoria Capek, Communications and Development Manager at The Venture Center, a non-profit in Arkansas where she drives communication, public relations, and content creation strategies, focusing on economic and entrepreneurial growth with an emphasis on inclusivity for women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community. For Swifties everywhere, this guided journal with interactive prompts and questions, complete with stunning illustrations and a silky ribbon, explores all the literary easter eggs in Taylor's lyrics, revealing the best of her personal library - from The Bell Jar to The Great Gatsby.
Capek will personalize and sign copies after the presentation!
Esme Symes-Smith - Sir Callie and the Witch's War
Presented by Left Bank Books & Left Bank Books Foundation
Saturday, September 27, 2025 - 2:30pm
Left Bank Books is thrilled to bring celebrated St. Louis middle grade author Esme Symes-Smith to Tower Grove Pride. Symes-Smith is celebrating the paperback release for Sir Callie and the Witch's War in anticipation of the fall release for the final book in the bestselling series Sir Callie and the Final Stand!
"A page-turning continuation of an adventuresome series." -- Kirkus Reviews
Symes-Smith will personalize and sign copies after the presentation!
Roque Raquel Salas Rivera - Algarabía: The Song of Cenex, Natural Son of the Isle Alarabíyya / La Canción de Cenex, Hijo Natural de la Ínsula Alarabíyya
Presented by Left Bank Books & Left Bank Books Foundation
Sunday, September 28, 2025 - 2:00pm
Left Bank Books is thrilled to bring Roque Raquel Salas Rivera to Tower Grove Pride 2025 for a reading and book signing. Salas Rivera is a Puerto Rican poet and translator with many awards including a Lambda Literary Award. His new book Algarabía follows Cenex, a trans being who narrates his life while navigating the stories told on his behalf. It is a Puerto Rican trans epic that blends poetic play and speculative fiction. Join us to help Salas Rivera celebrate this new gift of a book.
"In the era of labyrinths, binary delusions, erasures, and -harms, Algarabía is both salve and triumph. Roque Raquel Salas Rivera cultivates an epic universe, in every sense of the poetic tradition, while subverting the canon to embrace an expansive trans sanctuary of cosmologies, myths, yearning, humor, and joy. This collection is a sigil and atlas that calls out into the abyss a 'canto of unwavering tenderness in the face of our extermination.' Salas Rivera gathers a chorus to fashion a trans haven to affirm Algarabía as 'a revolution as wild and communal as language, ' a language that Salas Rivera dexterously assembles to remind readers that he is one of the most vital voices for today, tomorrow, and the days that must still be imagined."--Anthony Cody, author of Borderland Apocrypha
Salas Rivera will personalize and sign copies after the presentation!
Kieron Walquist - Our Hands Hold Violence: Poems
Presented by Left Bank Books & Left Bank Books Foundation
Sunday, September 28, 2025 - 2:00pm
Left Bank Books is thrilled to bring Kieron Walquist to Tower Grove Pride 2025 for a poetry reading. Walquist [he/they] is a queer neurospicy poet + visual artist from mid-Missouri. Join us to help Walquist celebrate this new gift of a book that comes out on October 14th. You can join us on October 27th for an event in store to celebrate their debut poetry book.
"Kieron Walquist's poems are thrilling. He yokes together violences and intimacies, arranges language into dazzling and resonant patterns, and breaks open memory to release music that's torqued and incandescent. This music is queer, rooted in Missouri, and announces the arrival of a voice that sings to and against the place that birthed it." --Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine
Walquist will personalize and sign postcards in anticipation of the book release after the presentation! Books are available to pre-order with personalization from Left Bank Books.
Nikki Alexander - Arc of the Universe
Presented by Left Bank Books & Left Bank Books Foundation
Sunday, September 28, 2025 - 2:30pm
Left Bank Books is thrilled to bring debut author Nikki Alexander to Tower Grove Pride. Alexander grew up in St. Louis and is excited to celebrate her new book with the community. Arc of the Universe is a queer, Black, space novel from a Harvard educated lawyer who has studied race, gender, and outer space.
Alexander will personalize and sign copies after the presentation!
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Tower Grove Park, 4214 Main Dr, St Louis, MO 63116, United States, Southhampton
