Calling all Chicago Readers!

Join us, and special guest Catherine Adel West as we discuss her book The Two Lives of Sara at Scratch Goods in the West Loop. Refreshments included.

Event+Book… $35

Event Only… $15

Book Only… $28

Join us for our first annual Seeds to Roses Fundraiser benefitting Rose Café Foundation. The Foundation supports our free book giveaways as well as the future purchase of our brick-and-mortar space and the subsequent community based services we will support in the space including tutoring, workforce development, and workshops.

refreshments | raffle | performances | semi-formal attire

Tickets are sold out! Please consider donating. Thank you!

Disclaimer: our 501(c)(3) status is in process. We expect to become a qualified charitable organization soon. In the meantime, donations and ticket sales will not be tax deductible.

Join co-founders of Rose Café as we discuss Everywhere You Don’t Belong with author Gabriel Bump.

Join the co-founders of Rose Café as we discuss Reading for Our Lives with author Maya Smart.

Come join us (and our books) at the Maker Mall, a market to shop from local women + minority-owned businesses for your holiday shopping!

Come join us (and our books) at the Maker Mall, a market to shop from local women + minority-owned businesses for your holiday shopping!

Come join us (and our books) at a pop-up market and shop local for the holidays!

In a special holiday event, co-founders of Rose Café will cook alongside Danielle Smith, a local Roseland author and owner of Candy Chick Sweets. Danielle will instruct us on how to make the perfect lemon meringue pie as well as discuss her new cookbook.

If you are interested in cooking along with us, please have the following ingredients ready:

• 1 cup of lemon juice

• fresh lemon zest

• 3 egg whites

• 2 12oz cans of sweetened condensed milk

• 1 graham cracker pie crust

Join co-founders of Rose Café as they discuss Bedrock Faith with author Eric Charles May.

Come find us at the South Loop Farmers Market!

Come find us at the South Loop Farmers Market!

Come find us at the South Loop Farmers Market!

Come find us at the South Loop Farmers Market!

Join co-founders of Rose Café as we discuss On Rotation with author Shirlene Obuobi.

Guns Down. Books Up.

We believe in the transformational impact literacy can have on a community.

Join us in walking for our mission: to promote literacy, education, and peace in the 60628.

The walk will end at 11001 S Michigan at a community farmers market hosted by Burst into Books. We are hosting a back-to-school school supply give away for students in the neighborhood at the market.

Purchase school supplies for our drive

We hope you will stay after the walk with us.

Purchase walk t-shirt

Join co-founders of Rose Café as we discuss Last Summer on State Street with author Toya Wolfe.

Join co-founders of Rose Café as we discuss L.I.T.E. It Up, Sis with author Kenyatta Young.

Join co-founders of Rose Café as we discuss I am D1: How to Conquer the World of Travel Basketball with author Chris Meadows and a panel featuring:

Sincere Malone, Eastern Illinois Commit

Jerome Randle, professional player for BC Budvinelnyk

Tony Young, Fenwick High School Head Coach

McKinley Nelson, Project Wish Chicago Founder

Refine Collective presents Planet Her, an out-of-this world, community- focused bazaar celebrating all things HER, taking place at Garfield Park Conservatory on March 11, 2022, featuring over 50 Chicago-based women makers and artists in celebration of Women’s History Month. 

Planet Her is a movement that invites people from all walks of life to celebrate and support the women who shape the culture. Tickets are $12 and include three cocktails.

Join co-founders of Rose Café as we discuss The Me I Choose to Be with author Natasha Tarpley.

What will you choose to be?
A free spirit?
A weaver of words?
A star dancing across the night sky?
A limitless galaxy?

The possibilities are endless in this uplifting ode to the power of potential. With lyrical text by bestselling author Natasha Anastasia Tarpley and images by Regis and Kahran Bethencourt—the team behind CreativeSoul Photography—each page of The Me I Choose To Be is an immersive call for self-love that highlights the inherent beauty of all Black and brown children.

Join co-founders of Rose Café as they discuss Three Girls from Bronzeville with author Dawn Turner.

Three Girls from Bronzeville is a piercing memoir that chronicles Dawn's attempt to find answers. It's at once a celebration of sisterhood and friendship, a testimony to the unique struggles of Black women, and a tour-de-force about the complex interplay of race, class, and opportunity, and how those forces shape our lives and our capacity for resilience and redemption.

Before our discussion with Dawn Turner about Three Girls from Bronzeville at 1pm

Read and Run Chicago will be hosting a run through Bronzeville to explore some of the places mentioned in the book. The run has a recommended $20 fee that will be donated to Rose Café.

More about Read & Run Chicago:

We were founded on the belief that reading about a city and running through a city are two of some of the best ways to learn about the place we live, connect with other likeminded people, and acknowledge the stories and lived experiences of those that inhabit Chicago.

We support local bookstores and local authors and aim to highlight stories that emcompass the multitude of versions of what daily life looks/looked like in the Second City.

Join co-founders of Rose Café as they discuss Redeeming Justice with author Jarrett Adams.

Jarrett Adams was seventeen when an all-white jury sentenced him to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Now a pioneering lawyer, he recalls the journey that led to his exoneration--and inspired him to devote his life to fighting the many injustices in our legal system.

In this illuminating story of hope and full-circle redemption, Adams draws on his life and the cases of his clients to show the racist tactics used to convict young men of color, the unique challenges facing exonerees once released, and how the lack of equal representation in our courts is a failure not only of empathy but of our collective ability to uncover the truth. Redeeming Justice is an unforgettable firsthand account of the limits--and possibilities--of our country's system of law.