No matter how busy they were creating the universe, some gods always found time to lay down the law on what their worshippers should eat. Diets and deities have a […]

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 […]

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 […]

Fiction is a “medium that must always allow itself…the possibility of expressing intimate and inconvenient truths,” acclaimed London-born author Zadie Smith once said. She recently stopped by Lincoln Park’s Francis […]

Devoting one’s life to banning books undoubtedly cuts into one’s reading time. Those too busy to read the volumes they work so hard to keep others from perusing should consider […]

In her new book Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook Sonya Huber offers a collection of effective essays mostly about her Midwest identity. A longtime essayist and Fairfield University professor, […]

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 […]

Chicago author Kathleen Rooney writes in many genres—fiction, non-fiction, essays, poetry—even Poems While You Wait. She has written several historical fiction novels in her own distinctive style. Heavily researched, novelized, written in […]

Metal, as a genre, is an amusing blend of arrogance and earnestness. Look past the leather and chains, wind-milling manes, and tight animal print pants with padded baskets…ignore the kayfabe […]

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 […]

Kathleen Osberger’s account of her three harrowing months as a religious volunteer with a community of Catholic nuns in Chile a half century ago brings the reader deep into the […]

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 […]