Independent Bookstore Day!
2026-04-25 11:00 - 17:30 (America/Chicago) | Garden Party Books, 602 7th St NW, Rochester, Minnesota, 55901, United States
This national one-day party celebrates independent bookstores across the country! In Rochester, come celebrate at Garden Party and Griot Arts!

We’ll have so many fun things in store and free gifts for you:

Exclusive and/or autographed editions of Black AF History, The Secret History of Fantasy, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Party Pooper, Last Night in Brooklyn, Crowntide, and a Warriors-based role playing game!

Free indie bookstore day stickers, bookmarks, coloring books, activity books, and puzzle books!

One @librofm golden ticket hidden in the store. If you find it you get 12 free audio books!

A station to make free collage postcards!

A free adorable die cut bookmark if you spend $35 or more!

A free ARC with any purchase!

Free 2026 Midwest Bookstore Indie Roadmaps!

AND MORE! Watch this space for more info on all of this!

There will be limited supplies of everything, so make sure to come early if there’s something you especially want!

Griot Arts is also celebrating Indie Bookstore Day at their store downtown! They are at 115 N Broadway Avenue, Rochester, MN 55906, and they’ll be open from 11AM to 5PM. Follow them on social media to get more info about their celebration!

Local Author Book Launch!
2026-05-01 19:00 - 20:30
Come celebrate local author Kate Laack and the publication of her THIRD book, By Any Other Name! There will be a meet & greet, author talk, and a book signing! (along with drinks and snacks!)Book synopsis:

Jordan Marlowe needs a plan.

Fresh out of her MFA program, she’s bombed an interview at Columbia, collected a stack of rejections from agents and publishers, and stalled out in a spiral of writer’s block. Meanwhile, her best friend is thriving in a PhD program, and her boyfriend is climbing the tech ladder.

Then a delayed flight pushes Jordan into an airport bookstore, and everything changes. On the shelf, she finds a debut novel: The Unbearable Weight of Secrets by Beatrice Mitchell. Just a few paragraphs in, her exhaustion turns to shock. The book isn’t just familiar. It’s hers: a manuscript she drafted, revised, and workshopped years earlier, but never published.

Stunned, Jordan launches a desperate search for answers. Who stole her work, and why? A critique partner who read an early draft? An ambitious classmate eager for a leg up? Her mentor, with the most access to her writing but the most to lose by risking her own, successful career? Or someone else entirely, a stranger who inexplicably knows Jordan’s voice as well as she does?To reclaim her story, Jordan must be willing to risk everything: her relationship, her future career, and her already fragile belief in herself. Because unmasking Beatrice Mitchell isn’t just about justice. It’s about proving, once and for all, that Jordan Marlowe isn’t just chasing the dream of being a writer. She already is one.
