Participate as a presenter (5 minute time-slots) or as an audience member and join the discussion.

Friendly and welcoming environment, works in progress welcome.

All arts welcome, even ones we haven’t thought of yet – if it’s art to you it’s probably art to us!

Sign up for a time-slot or take your chances and just show up! :)

For more information, visit https://allinthesamebreath.org/

Participate as a presenter (5 minute time-slots) or as an audience member and join the discussion.

Friendly and welcoming environment, works in progress welcome.

All arts welcome, even ones we haven’t thought of yet – if it’s art to you it’s probably art to us!

Sign up for a time-slot or take your chances and just show up! :)

For more information, visit https://allinthesamebreath.org/

We’re reopening in our new location at 109 5th Street North on Saturday, February 28! Join us for the big celebration!

Join us for Lessa Harvey’s Feminist Book Club! Lessa is an 1884 Fellow in the Women’s College at the Mississippi University for Women. She came up with the idea to host a feminist book club while working as an intern at Friendly City Books as part of The W’s Nancy Yates Community Engagement Program.

Join the group on February 25th at 4:00 p.m. for a discussion of Caitlin Moran’s What About Men?

The Feminist Book Club is free and open to the public and MUW students.

PLEASE NOTE LOCATION CHANGE: for this month only, the Feminist Book Club meeting will be held in the Gail P. Gunter room of Fant Memorial Library on MUW’s campus.

Spice Girls is our romance book club. February’s pick is Game Changer by Rachel Reid. Our club meets on the fourth Tuesday of every month at 7 pm at Friendly City Books. This month’s meeting will be in our new location at 109 5th Street North! See you there!

Using poetry examples and interview style prompts, we will help each other explore our lives (real and imagined!) in a free-for-all poetry romp. 

RSVP required - maximum of 10 seats available.

For more information, visit https://allinthesamebreath.org/

Cursed Books is our horror book club. February’s pick is The Reformatory by Tananarive Due. Our club meets on the third Tuesday of every month at 7 pm at Friendly City Books. See you there!

The Mississippi State University College of Arts & Sciences and the Department of English are proud to sponsor an evening with poet Kimiko Hahn at Taylor Auditorium in McCool Hall. After a reading from her 2024 collection The Ghost Forest, attendees will have the opportunity for a Q&A and book signing.

Kimiko Hahn is the author of ten books of poems, including: Foreign Bodies (W. W. Norton, 2020); Brain Fever (WWN, 2014), and Toxic Flora (WWN, 2010), both collections prompted by science; The Narrow Road to the Interior (WWN, 2006) a collection that takes its title from Basho’s famous poetic journal; The Unbearable Heart (Kaya, 1996), which received an American Book Award; Earshot (Hanging Loose Press, 1992), which was awarded the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and an Association of Asian American Studies Literature Award.

Honors: New York State Poet, Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN/Voelcker Award, Shelley Memorial Prize, The Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Lifetime Achievement Award, The American Book Award

Biographical information from https://kimikohahn.com/

Save the date for a book talk with special guests W. Ralph Eubanks and C.T. Salazar, followed by a performance from Delta blues duo Edna Nicole and Rev. Slim. Join us on Thursday, Feb. 12 at 5:30 pm at the Columbus Arts Council at 501 Main Street for a night like no other — free and open to the public!

Ralph Eubanks will be in conversation with C. T. Salazar to discuss his new nonfiction book When It’s Darkness on the Delta: How America’s Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land. Books will be available for purchase and signing. Click here to purchase online.

This event is produced in partnership with the Friendly City Books Community Connection, a special project of the CREATE Foundation.

Join the community discussion of Part III of Wright Thompson’s The Barn at Fant Memorial Library, located on the MUW campus. Visit muw.edu/read for more information.

Spice Girls is our monthly romance book club. January’s pick is The Dragon’s Bride by Katee Robert.

Spice Girls is a collaboration between Columbus-Lowndes Public Library System and Friendly City Books and meets on the fourth Tuesday of every month at 7 pm at Friendly City Books. See you there!

Cursed Books is our horror book club. January’s pick is Crafting for Sinners by Jenny Kiefer. Our club meets on the third Tuesday of every month at 7 pm at Friendly City Books. See you there!

All Columbus citizens are invited to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day at “From Words to Work: Pressing Beyond the Dream” presented by the City of Columbus on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. Our third annual public reading of Letter from Birmingham Jail will take place immediately following the Prayer Breakfast at the Trotter Convention Center.

8:00 AM - Freedom Walk from the Municipal Complex to the Trotter Convention Center

9:00 AM - Prayer Breakfast at the Trotter Convention Center (upper level)

10:00 AM - Letter from Birmingham Jail at the Trotter Convention Center (lower level)

These events are free and open to the public, and free copies of Letter from Birmingham Jail will be provided on a first come, first serve basis thanks to the Columbus Lowndes Chapter of the NAACP and the Friendly City Books Community Connection, a special project of the CREATE Foundation.

Mark your calendars for Friendly City Books’ 5th birthday party on Small Business Saturday! Stay tuned for more details.

Join us for an afternoon of festive fun with our friend Landon Bryant — better known as @landontalks, the most popular Mississippian on the internet! On Saturday, November 22 at 2 pm, we’ll have a kids’ craft activity, storytime, and a meet and greet at Friendly City Books, complete with Christmas cookies and egg nog. Come get your picture made and your book signed!

Thacker Mountain Radio Hour is coming to Columbus for a special taping with Michael Farris Smith, Hartle Road, and The W’s Jazz Combo. Join us for this free event on Sunday, October 26, at 3 pm — and bring a lawn chair!

Spice Girls is our new monthly romance book club! Our pick for October is Tusk Love by Thea Guanzon.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A merchant’s daughter who yearns for adventure gets more than she bargained for when she falls for a broodingly handsome stranger in this saucy romantasy from the author of The Hurricane Wars.

“A true delight of a book! Spicy and heartfelt—this one is a winner all around.”—Katee Robert, author of Neon Gods

Spice Girls is a collaboration between Columbus-Lowndes Public Library System and Friendly City Books and meets on the fourth Tuesday of every month at 7 pm at Friendly City Books. See you there!

The Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium is held each October in honor of The W's most famous alumna. A diverse group of Southern writers and scholars are invited to present their work. All Symposium events will be held October 23-25, 2025 on the MUW campus and are free and open to the public. The Symposium will also be live-streamed online. To learn more, visit muw.edu/welty.

Session 2:

• Kendall Dunkelberg, Tree Fall with Birdsong

• Jordan LaHaye Fontenot, Home of the Happy

• Semyak Shertok, No Rhododendron

• Lauren Rhoades, Split the Baby

Food Network celebrity chef Jeff Henderson will speak at the 2025 Welty Gala, an an annual fundraiser for the MUW Scholarship Fund. Click here to purchase tickets.

From humble beginnings in South Central Los Angeles to success as an award-winning celebrity chef and best-selling author, Jeff Henderson is a powerful example of personal transformation. Since he discovered his passion and gift for cooking in prison, Jeff turned his life around and today serves as a popular and powerful voice for self-transformation.

Alive with the energy of street life, the sober reality of prison, and the visceral thrill of being inside the fast-paced kitchens of great restaurants, Cooked is an extraordinary memoir that chronicles a gifted man's against-the-odds journey of second chances.

The Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium is held each October in honor of The W's most famous alumna. A diverse group of Southern writers and scholars are invited to present their work. All Symposium events will be held October 23-25, 2025 on the MUW campus and are free and open to the public. The Symposium will also be live-streamed online. To learn more, visit muw.edu/welty.

Session 2:

• Robert Busby, Bodock

• Olivia Clare Friedman, An Arm Fixed to a Wing

• Carrie R. Moore, Make Your Way Home

• Ephemera Awards Reading

The Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium is held each October in honor of The W's most famous alumna. A diverse group of Southern writers and scholars are invited to present their work. All Symposium events will be held October 23-25, 2025 on the MUW campus and are free and open to the public. The Symposium will also be live-streamed online. To learn more, visit muw.edu/welty.

Session 1:

• drea brown, Conjuring the Haint

• Addie Citchens, Dominion

• Kathleen Driskell, Goat-Footed Gods

• Rickey Fayne, The Devil Three Times

Award-winning poet Ashley M. Jones will give the keynote for the 37th Annual Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium at MUW’s Poindexter Hall.

In her fourth poetry collection Lullaby for the Grieving, Jones studies the multifaceted nature of grief: the personal grief of losing her father, and the political grief tied to Black Southern identity. How does one find a path through the deep sorrow of losing a parent? What wonders of Blackness have to be suppressed to make way for “progress”?

Journeying through landscapes of Alabama, the Middle Passage and Underground Railroad, interior spaces of loss and love, and her father's garden, Jones constructs both an elegy for her father and a celebration of the sacred exuberance and audacity of life.

Ashley M. Jones served as the first Black and youngest Poet Laureate of Alabama from 2022-2026. She is the author of three previous collections of poetry, including Reparations Now!, longlisted for the PEN Voelker Poetry Award. Jones and her work have been featured by Poetry, Good Morning America, the BBC, the New York Times and other publications. Jones holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is currently a PhD student in English at Old Dominion University. She is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival in Birmingham, Alabama.

Join the MUW Women’s College Colloquium for their next Feminist Book Club meeting hosted by 1884 Fellow Lessa Harvey.

Margaret Ryan never really meant to start a book club — or a feminist revolution — in her buttoned-up suburb, in this humorous, thought provoking, and nostalgic romp through a pivotal and tumultuous American year … an ode to self-discovery, persistence, and the power of sisterhood.

“Ideal for fans of historical fiction and those who enjoyed Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry, Kristin Hannah’s The Women, or Kate Quinn's The Briar Club.” — Library Journal Starred Review

Join us for our horror book club Cursed Books! We’re reading Out There Screaming by Jordan Peele for October.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

WINNER OF THE BRAM STOKER AWARD

The visionary writer and director of Get Out, Us, and Nope, and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation.

“Every piece is strong and memorable, making this not only likely to be the best anthology of the year, but one for the ages.”—The Guardian

Cursed Books meets on the third Tuesday of every month at 7 pm at Friendly City Books. See you there!

Hope Compass is a new book club at Friendly City Books led by local faith leaders. For October, we are discussing Hope Rising by Casey Gwinn and Chan Hellman. Come for conversation and community, then read the book after our gathering!

Hope is a social gift that flourishes when we build intentional relationships in our community. We invite you to join us for a book study led by local faith leaders that will help strengthen the skills that bring people together to foster connection.

Hope is the most predictive indicator of well-being in a person's life in all the research done on trauma, illness, and resiliency. Based on nearly 2,000 published studies about hope, including their own research, Casey Gwinn and Chan Hellman call for rising hope to be the focus not only in personal lives, but in public policy in education, business, social services, and every other part of society.

Hope is measurable. Hope is malleable. Hope changes lives. Hope Rising: How the Science of Hope Can Change Your Life provides a roadmap to measure hope in your life, assess what may have robbed you of the power of hope, and then provides strategies to increase hope.

Join us for our Banned Books Week annual readaloud with Mississippi University for Women students and community members. Free copies available while supplies last courtesy of the Friendly City Books Community Connection, a special project of the CREATE Foundation.

“This wonderful book finds the human drama behind the scientific breakthrough of the discovery of cells taken from a young Black woman dying of cervical cancer without her knowledge,” according to School Library Journal. Learn why this book has been challenged.

Join the MUW Women’s College Colloquium for their first Feminist Book Club meeting hosted by 1884 Fellow Lessa Harvey.

In her comic, scathing essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters.

This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf 's embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women.