On the Road: Letter from New York—Culture Hopping in the City of Islands
“I’m in a New York state of mind”–Billy Joel New York is a city of islands or near-islands. In all, there are more than three dozen of them, inhabited and […]
June Sawyers has published more than 25 books. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, New City, San Francisco Chronicle, and Stagebill. She teaches at the Newberry Library and is the founder of the arts group, the Phantom Collective.
Last Call on Southport: Running the Literary Gauntlet of Independent Bookstore Day
We were fast running out of time. At one point, we didn’t think even we would make it. It was our first time joining the annual Independent Bookstore Day’s Chicagoland […]
Talk of the Town: An Eclipse Poem
Everyone looked up On Michigan AvenueOn balconies and rooftopsBy the AdlerWe all looked up. We all felt giddyGrateful even for this momentPeople waved their solar glasses at each otherAs if we […]
Review: Midnight’s Broken Toll …. Girl from the North Country
Girl from the North Country, a musical adaptation of Bob Dylan’s songs by the Irish playwright Conor McPherson, has already appeared in London’s West End, Off-Broadway at the Public Theater, […]
Review: The Lost Subways of North America: A Cartographic Guide to the Past, Present, and What Might Have Been, by Jake Berman
From Atlanta to Washington, DC, Boston to Vancouver, Los Angeles to Miami, Montreal to Toronto, cartographer and writer Jake Berman explores the failures and successes of North American transport through […]
Feature: The Fine Arts Building—A Monument to Dreamers—Celebrates 125 Years
The first things you notice when you get off the elevator or walk up the stairs are the sounds: the tinkle of a piano perhaps or the voice of a […]
Review: Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood—Do All the Good You Can, by Gary Scott Smith
How can someone be so famous and yet so misunderstood? It’s easy if your name is Hillary Clinton. Gary Scott Smith, author of Do All the Good You Can, contends […]
Poem: Taylor Knows
June Sawyers wrote this poem—as a way to record her experience—on a walk over to Soldier Field this weekend during the Taylor Swift The Eras Tour. Taylor knowsyour secretsyour vulnerabilitiesyour […]
Review: Highwaymen, Hookers, and Thieves: The Threepenny Opera at Theo Ubique
The songs in Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera remain standards: “Pirate Jenny,” “Tango Ballad,” and especially “Mack the Knife,” which is arguably the world’s most famous murder […]
Essay: Divine Decadence—A Look Back at Porchlight’s I Am a Camera and Cabaret
Cabaret has always been about pushing boundaries. But it also has a rich and complicated past. This month Porchlight Music Theatre at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts offered not only […]
Review: The Last Stand, Beacons in the Darkness: Hope and Transformation Among America’s Community Newspapers, by Dave Hoekstra
Dave Hoekstra has loved newspapers since his boyhood in west suburban Naperville. He understands the important role newspapers play in the life of a community, and how a newspaper—the best […]
Review: Gay Old Times, Last Call Chicago, by Rick Karlin and St. Sukie de la Croix
Last Call Chicago is not a narrative book. Rather it is an extensive listing with brief descriptions of 1,001 LGBTQ and LGBTQ-friendly bars and such. But it is also a […]