Poem for Today: Freedom
It happened in Ferris Bueller’s hometown In the Mayberry of the Midwest I first heard about it while listening to WXRT When Terri Hemmert played “All You Need Is Love” […]
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.
Review: Talkin’ about Early Bob Dylan, The Dylan Tapes
Bob Dylan is having a bit of a late-career cultural moment. His most recent album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, was released in June 2019, and the featured single, “Murder Most […]
Poem: The Voice
June Sawyers wrote this poem—as a way to record her experience— after listening to a musician named Andrew perform in Printers Row. It came out of nowhereAt first we barely […]
Essay: Back of the Book, or How I Explain My Profession
It’s the same reaction most every time I tell someone I am an indexer. Blank stare. “You know, the thing at the end of a book,” I offer helpfully.Then, a […]
Essay: Taking a Walkabout on Printer’s Row, a Neighborhood Within a Neighborhood
There is a street in the South Loop—Dearborn from Polk to Harrison is only one block long—that is one of the most charming blocks in the city. I say the […]
Come to Chicago’s Cabaret: Past and Present
When most people hear the word “cabaret” they likely think of Berlin and the Weimar republic and, of course, the theatrical musical and film Cabaret. But Chicago also has a […]
Essay: True West
One Sunday afternoon a number of years ago I found a finger puppet lying outside Maclean House, the former dormitory (now apartments) named in honor of the late Norman Maclean, […]
Review: Lefse, Lutefisk, and Other Norwegian Things, For the Love of Cod, by Eric Dregni
For the Love of Cod: A Father and Son’s Search for Norwegian Happiness Eric Dregni University of Minnesota Press Eric Dregni is only partly Norwegian but that hasn’t stopped him […]
Review: Theatre in the Dark Creates Audio Theater Version of Melville’s Great White Whale
It begins with the familiar refrain, arguably the three most famous words in American literature. “Call me Ishmael.” But the voice of this Ishmael is different. The voice is unmistakably female […]
Thus Spake Utah
Towards the end of the plague year we learned that someone somehow transported a ten-foot high silvery metal object to a remote canyon in the Utah desert drilling […]
Review: Invasion from Mars, A War of the Worlds Radio Play by Theatre in the Dark—Memories of 1938
The Chicago company Theatre in the Dark is offering a new adaptation of H. G. Wells’ classic 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds, as a live 90-minute virtual audio […]
Poem: The Queen of Brooklyn—R.B.G. (1933–2020)
She was the queen of Brooklyn although she wore no gold crown except in the public’s imagination and on t-shirts. Instead her apparel of choice was a white frilly lace […]