What was 2022 like in the world of Chicago, Illinois, and Midwest letters? I’ve asked the Lit section writers to share their favorite reviews and stories of the past year. Newly minted TCR writer Adam Kaz submitted a review of…
It’s Halloween, and everyone’s entitled to one good scare. Lucky you. Third Coast Review has once again asked several Chicago area horror writers and artists for their recommendations on the best horror you haven’t heard of. Looking for a frightening…
Some jobs don’t sound like work. A perfect example: Jeffrey Breslow’s decades-long career as a designer, developer, and partner at one of the most successful toy- and game-making companies of the last century—Marvin Glass and Associates (MGA). In his book,…
From his Cincinnati childhood to his Chicago adulthood, music remains a motivating force in Karl Meyer’s life. He looks back on a broad career as a hardcore punk and blues band sideman, and, more recently, as a songwriter. During the…
Chicago is so much more than its buildings…still they’re hard to miss. Ever since Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable built his home on the Chicago River’s banks, structures have risen and fallen across the city. Some made names for themselves,…
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 the artistic and literary tradition of the Beat Generation alive.…
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 July, where a mass shooter opened fire, killing 7 people…
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 latest work for Belt Publishing, the Great Lakes Tarot Deck.…
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 years. Lacking centuries of aristocrats, battles, and cultural upheavals, the…
The Poorcraft Cookbook By Nero Villagallos O’Reilly Iron Circus Comics If there’s one thing old people know it’s that young people are dumb. Selective amnesia makes each generation’s youth-haters forget they were likewise labeled as ignoramuses in their day. Yet…
Author Brian Pinkerton is a lifelong resident of the Chicago area, growing up on, as he puts it, “Bozo’s Circus and Ray Rayner…Creature Features and Cubs baseball.” With 12 novels under his belt, his work has extended to the…
Frank Lloyd Wright’s $10,000 Home: History, Design, and Restoration of the Bach House Robert J. Hartnett Master Wings Publishing Despite any fame suggested by the hideous portmanteau starchitect, few architects have ever been household names. For most people, buildings simply…
Numerically speaking, 2/22/22 (today), has a special resonance for Chicago area writer, editor, and teacher Richard Thomas. His latest book, Spontaneous Human Combustion (Keylight), a collection of short stories, was just released. Born in St. Louis, Thomas made the Chicago…
Mother Chicago: Truant Dreams and Specters Over the Gilded Age By Martin Billheimer Feral House Chicago is a dark place. All cities are. The more humans you pack into a space and the fewer resources they’re given, the darker things…
Guide to Chicago’s Twenty-First-Century Architecture Chicago Architecture Center and John Hill University of Illinois Press As packed with tacky tourist traps as any city, Chicago has one irreproachable draw: its architecture. After torching itself in 1871, the city snapped back…
Unless you’re an easily frightened tourist, Chicago is rarely considered a hotbed of horror. But as Third Coast Review has pointed out before, our town has a distinguished pedigree in horror fiction and art, and a bright future besides. Once…
David Anthony Witter was born in Miller, Indiana—“across the lagoon from Nelson Algren’s summer home,” as he puts it—but has spent most of his life in Chicago. Growing up in 1970s Lincoln Park, before it switched from being an enclave…
Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barrett University of Illinois Press I told a friend I was reviewing a book called Punks in Peoria. Born in nearby Canton, Illinois, and affiliated with…
Dr. Michelle Moore is a professor of English at the College of DuPage whose most recent book is Chicago and the Making of American Modernism: Cather, Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald in Conflict (Bloomsbury Academic) In it she addresses the titular…
Is Wisconsin the furthest state from the Mississippi Delta? Culturally, perhaps. Yet the land of butter burgers and cheese curds played a big role in preserving the blues. While 78 rpm records offer an aural time tunnel to the 1920s…
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