Dialogs: “The Only Moral Is Run!” – R. L. Stine at the Chicago Humanities Festival
This Guest Post was written by Holly Smith I entered the Music Box Theatre with anticipation. I was there to see the first episode of the Goosebumps TV show and […]
12 Years of Crafting Mad Science: Kate McKinnon Discusses Her New Book The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science
By Guest Writer Holly Smith A Cosplayer Welcome As I sat down in the Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture to see a live interview with comedian Kate McKinnon about […]
Chicago Is Lit: July Author Events & Book Releases
Chicago’s literary scene is, in a word, “lit”: from the Midwest’s largest free outdoor literary festival to pop-up typewritten poetry encounters to the nation’s only museum devoted to American writers, […]
Review: Mother Goose for English Majors, The Lamb Cycle: What the Great English Poets Would Have Written about Mary and Her Lamb, by David R. Ewbank, with illustrations by Kate Feiffer
If Shakespeare, instead of Mother Goose, had written “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” perhaps he would have penned a sonnet to take the young girl to task for abandoning “Thy […]
Essay: In Defense of “Unregulated” Little Free Libraries
Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) thinks the little free libraries along many Chicago sidewalks are bad—very bad. They are “unregulated”! And they’re “popular”! And many of them are planted in city soil! (Collective […]
Printers Row on Saturday: A Celebration of Community
Near the end of Saturday at this year’s Printers Row Lit Fest, an 80-year-old Italian painter from the North Shore told me she’s going to have a huge party if […]
Review: Wonder and Joy and Questions, The Happy Prince & Other Tales, by Oscar Wilde
It’s something of a surprise to be reminded that Oscar Wilde—the author of The Picture of Dorian Gray and the subject of a scandalous 1895 trial over consensual homosexual acts—wrote […]
2022 in Review: A Lit Retrospective
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. […]
Review: A Spooky Morality Play—The Merchant’s Curse, by Antony Barone Kolenc
Antony Barone Kolenc’s The Merchant’s Curse is a historical mystery with a strong supernatural element, set in 12th-century England and written for children and young teens. Even more, it’s a […]
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 […]
Kids Can Learn Sign Language, Storytelling and Teamwork with Sweet Animated Video Calvin Can’t Fly
Jennifer Berne wrote the storybook Calvin Can’t Fly: The Story of a Bookworm Birdie in 2010, and her second cousin Sarah Michaelson directed and produced a video version last year. […]
Feature: Local Author Taps into Her Childhood with Two New Children’s Books
It’s not often that Third Coast Review has an opportunity to review children’s books. Fortunately, Chicagoland author J.B. Frank has given us a fantastic reason to do so. Somewhere in […]