Interview: S. Fey, Author of Decompose
Interview by Binx Perino. In preparation for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs 2024 Annual Conference, I organized a poetry reading to benefit Kansas City based mutual aid groups […]
Review: The Terror of Love and Grief—Elsewhere: An Elegy, by Faisal Mohyuddin
In his poem “The Hourglass. The Pebble. The Throne of God,” Faisal Mohyuddin ponders “the lightless language of elegy.” His father is dead, and he is grieving. And he wonders if he […]
Dialogs: Chicago Humanities Festival Explores Hip-Hop History and Black Punk Now
Chicago musicians Chance the Rapper, Jennifer Hudson, plus legendary producer Quincy Jones, recently opened the renovated Ramova Theatre. The interior’s quaint cityscape-inside-a-building balconies and windows have been restored to usher […]
Review: Watching the Writer’s Mind Work, Write Cut Rewrite: The Cutting Room Floor of Modern Literature, by Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon
Everyone, I suppose, has a sense of the what-if of history. What if Abraham Lincoln hadn’t gone to Ford’s Theater that night and avoided assassination? What if I had taken a […]
Review: A Dazzling Debut—The Divorcées, by Rowan Beaird
No-fault divorces are currently legal in every US state, making it relatively easy to end an unhappy marriage. It may be hard to imagine how recently “irreconcilable differences” were not […]
Review: In Evil Eyes Sea, Two Women Uncover a Mystery at the Heart of Turkish Culture: by Özge Samancı
Evil Eyes Sea is preoccupied with objects: how they become imbued with their owners’ lives and remain after those people are gone. In her autobiographically-inspired graphic novel, Özge Samancı skillfully […]
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 […]
Review: Midwest Gumption Is Jane Bertch’s Pivotal Component in The French Ingredient
No mise en place necessary for Jane Bertch. The born and raised Chicagoan turned Parisian details how she went from her meat and potatoes Midwest upbringing, working toward a career […]
Dialogs: Superstar Architect Jeanne Gang Explains the Art of Architectural Grafting at the Chicago Humanities Festival
Spring has sprung, and the ever-eclectic Chicago Humanities Festival is flowering all over the city. Belvidere, Illinois-born architect Jeanne Gang spoke to an SRO crowd about her new book The […]
Review: 100 Things to Do in Illinois Before You Die, by Melanie Holmes
Everyone knows they’ll die, but few people believe it. For the sole species aware of its mortality, personal nonexistence is inconceivable. Many have come near death. A number of folks […]
Review: A Warning to Heed and Hope to Build with Mark Larson’s Working in the 21st Century
One of the first questions a stranger usually asks to identify who you are is, what do you do? But our job is more than how we make money, it […]
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 […]