In an uncanny coincidence of timing, award-winning author Pam Houston’s reproductive life corresponded, nearly exactly, with the forty-nine and a half years that Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. In her new book, Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood, and Freedom (Torrey House Press, September 2024), Houston tells the story of how her personal and professional life was powered by access to abortion. Alongside her own account, Houston examines the legal history of abortion and shines a bright light on the impact of reproduction rights on all American women during the days of Roe v. Wade.

This program is in-person only. Register to save your seat. A book signing with Chapter One Bookstore will follow.

Click here to watch a recording of this program.

Houston will be in convseration with the library's executive director, Jenny Emery Davidson.

For the day of the program, the Pro-Voice Project’s Worth of a Woman traveling exhibit will be displayed in the Library's Lecture Hall. Designed to elevate the conversation around reproductive healthcare, the exhibit examines the connections between women’s health and community health, the barriers that stand in the way of women accessing care, how the care system is currently failing us, and how conditions might be improved. The display brings a historically difficult conversation into the public sphere to address a real-time problem, destigmatize its discussion, and envision a better future collaboratively.

Pam Houston is the author of the short story collection Cowboys Are My Weakness and the memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, as well as six other books of fiction and nonfiction. She teaches creative writing at UC Davis and the Institute of American Indian Arts, is the cofounder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers, and fiction editor at the environmental arts journal Terrain.org. She lives on a homestead at 9,000 feet near the headwaters of the Rio Grande.