Fiction, Interviews, Lit, Live lit events, Nonfiction, Poetry

Interview: Feeling Beatific—Jerry Cimino of the Beat Museum/Beatmobile

Jerry and Estelle Cimino are on the road, spreading the Beat Gospel to the world. As founders of the Beat Museum in San Francisco, they’ve made a mission of keeping […]

Dan Kelly /
Architecture, Chicago history, Design, Interviews, Lit, Nonfiction

Interview: Tim Samuelson and the Intangible of History

When Timothy Samuelson stood in the center of his windowless, crowded studio, surrounded by gorgeous artifacts of the past, I thought he might break into song.  “Nothing in here doesn’t […]

Adam Kaz /
Chicago history, Children's books, Interviews, Lit, Nonfiction

Interview: Hearts Beat Still—Maggie Schmieder, Author of Hopeful Hearts in Highland Park

Hopeful Hearts in Highland Park is author Maggie Duplace Schmieder’s attempt to make sense out of something senseless. She and her family attended the Highland Park Independence Day parade this […]

Dan Kelly /
Design, Lit, Painting & sculpture

Interview: Wild Cards—Artist David Wilson and the Great Lakes Tarot Deck

Fortune favors the bold. Ohio artist David Wilson’s life journey has seen a typical array of ups, downs, and divergent paths, but it all led (more or less) to his […]

Dan Kelly /
Fiction, Lit, Reviews

Review: Lynn Sloan’s Midstream Carries Readers on a Cinematic Tour de Force

Unlike the turbulent 1970s she lives in, Polly Wainwright is determined to be calm, competent, and professional. She’s got a boyfriend making a name for himself as a war correspondent […]

Caitlin Archer-Helke /
Lit, Poetry, Reviews

Review: Kathleen Rooney’s Where Are the Snows Meets the Present with Wry Humor and Hope

The title of Where Are the Snows, Kathleen Rooney’s new, award-winning collection of poetry, serves as both question and commentary to start off the book. Where are the snows, anyway? […]

Caitlin Archer-Helke /
Architecture, Chicago history, Chicago history, Design, Lit, Nonfiction, Reviews, Sculpture

Essay: Walking Graceland Cemetery with—and Without—Adam Selzer’s New Book

Near the end of my hourlong walk around Graceland Cemetery the other day, I went past a stone obelisk, maybe 30 feet tall, and noticed this on the side: SANDRA […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Fiction, Lit, Poetry

Review: Making Friends With a Poet, The Poet’s House, by Jean Thompson

Carla Sawyer is a tall, smart-alecky 21-year-old who’s working for a landscaping company until she figures out what to do with her life. She’s on a job in one of […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Architecture, Chicago history, Chicago history, Lit, Nonfiction

Review: The Seed-Germ King: Louis Sullivan’s Idea, by Tim Samuelson and Chris Ware

Louis Sullivan’s Idea, a biography of the 19th century Chicago architect, by Chicago’s first cultural historian Timothy Samuelson, is, in the most literal sense of the word, a beautiful book. […]

Adam Kaz /
Lit, Nonfiction

Review: All Those People, All Those Lives, Where Are They Now?, Graceland Cemetery, by Adam Selzer

Chicago is young. Compared with the large cities of Africa, Asia, and Europe—hell, compared with the Native American metropolis that occupied the Cahokia Mounds—Chicago is a mere toddler of 189 […]

Dan Kelly /
Fiction, Lit, Reviews

Review: Wildly Contorted and Reimagined: Don’t Make Me Do Something We’ll Both Regret, by Tim Jones-Yelvington

In his story collection Don’t Make Me Do Something We’ll Both Regret, Chicagoan Tim Jones-Yelvington zestfully recasts gay men and boys in the central roles of a surprisingly wide array […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Events, Lit, Live lit events

Essay: How Many Books Can $30 Buy at the Newberry Book Fair?

When I visited the Newberry Library Book Fair on Friday, I knew I had to come up with a strategy.  It’s a locally famous sale, featuring tens of thousands of […]

Patrick T. Reardon /