At one point in Kathleen Rooney’s bewitching new novel From Dust to Stardust, the iconic Hollywood flapper Doreen O’Dare says to an interviewer, “What I’ve figured out is that the minute you start trying to convince anybody of anything, you’re…
I first encountered Chicago author Kathleen Rooney years ago at The Neo-Futurists’ funky New Year’s Eve bash, where her collective Poems While You Wait was delightfully typing up custom poetry on-demand on vintage typewriters. A sense of discovery and whimsy…
Vividly set amongst the winding cobblestone streets and shadowy canals of 18th century Venice, Chicago writer Julia Fine’s Maddalena and the Dark is a wonderfully moody, gothic fairy tale about teenage girls filled with desires they don’t yet understand. The…
Most readers are familiar with the more prestigious annual book prizes out there, among them the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the PEN America Literary Awards. A new prize—from Chicago no less—may soon join them. Last year, the…
When the world is literally on fire, who can think about writing? The present writer was reminded of Chicago author Rebecca Makkai’s 2018 Electric Literature essay on the topic (“The World’s on Fire. Can We Still Talk About Books?”) as…
When was the last time you told a story to a stranger at a bar? Not an anecdote about your day at work, or that funny internet meme that’s going around—a real story with substance, one that leaves you vulnerable…
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