Lauded by Booklist as “timely and important” and by Kirkus Reviews as “an excellent starting point for much-needed change,” author Monique W. Morris' nonfiction Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools will be the subject of a November 17 discussion at the Davenport Public Library's main branch, with activist and feminist icon Gloria Steinem saying that “Morris tells us exactly how schools are crushing the spirit and talent that this country needs.”

Lauded by Rolling Stone for delivering “the kind of sun-through-clouds loveliness that's been picking up indie rockers' spirits for ages,” the alternative rockers of Nada Surf headline a November 12 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, with the band's most recent album Never Not Together described by Pop Matters as “the best record Nada Surf have made in quite a while, as it sees the indie-rock/power-pop group stress the need for more empathy in the world.”

A free, inaugural event organized by the Quad Cities' newest non-profit Truth First Film Illiance Inc., a special screening of the documentary Stout Hearted: George Stout & the Guardians of Art will be held at Davenport's Figge Art Museum on November 11, the film's titular figure an Iowa native whose heroic actions in World War II were memorialized by George Clooney in the 2014 movie The Monuments Men.

Described by the Chicago Tribune as “clever, funny, moving, lively, and geeky,” and filled with what Time Out Chicago called “deliciously dorky references to the early days of the Internet,” the Dungeons & Dragons-fueled comedy-drama-action-adventure She Kills Monsters serves as the first mainstage production in St. Ambrose University's 2021-22 season, its November 12 through 21 run guaranteed, according to the New York Times, to “slash and shapeshift its way into your heart.”