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…
Review: Open Heart Chicago: An Anthology of Chicago Writing, Edited by Vincent Francone
One of the many gifts of Vincent Francone’s new anthology of Chicago stories, Open Heart Chicago, is learning what it’s…
Review: Complex, Dynamic, and Unruly, Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect, edited by Romi Crawford
Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect Edited by Romi Crawford Green Lantern Press Performance artist Jefferson Pinder offers, as…
Essay: True West
One Sunday afternoon a number of years ago I found a finger puppet lying outside Maclean House, the former dormitory…
Review: Flashes of Wry: Fast Funny Women, edited by Gina Barreca
Note: Gina Barreca, the editor of Fast Funny Women, and Chicagoan Nicole Hollander will read from the collection of 75…
Interview: Bringing Background Characters to the Fore: A Talk with Author David Lazar
Sidekicks, comic foils, and other stock and background characters: cinephile and essayist David Lazar loves watching old movie character actors…
Kill Yr Idols—A Chicago History of Statue Desecration, Part 2
Part 1 of this article can be found here. The original inspiration for this article came from a reference in…
Kill Yr Idols—A Chicago History of Statue Desecration, Part 1
Note: As a pleasant side effect of the BLM protests, several statues of slavers, traitors, and genocidal invaders have been…
Essay/Book Review: Founding American Towns on Paper, Cities of the American West, Part 2
Cities of the American West: A History of Frontier Urban Planning By John W. Reps Princeton University Press, 827 pages,…
Essay/Book Review: The Vast Chicago Street Grid, Cities of the American West, Part 1
Cities of the American West A History of Frontier Urban Planning By John W. Reps Princeton University Press, 827 pages,…
Long Reads Are Lonnnnnnnnnnnnng—Extra-Long Books for the Serious Social Isolationist
Third Coast Review writer Patrick T. Reardon recently published a fine piece in praise of tackling extra-long reads during the…
The 10 Best Books about Chicago—and One Clunker
Many very good and even great books have been written about Chicago, and, based on my half century of writing…
