Fiction, Interviews, Lit, Live lit events, Poetry

Interview: Diego Báez Debuts New Poetry Collection, Yaguarete White

Interview conducted by Binx River Perino. Chicago-based writer Diego Báez is an educator at the City Colleges and a fellow at CantoMundo, the Surge Institute, and the Poetry Foundation’s Incubator […]

Guest Author /
Children's books, Fiction, Lit, Poetry

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 […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Essays, Events, Fiction, Lit, Nonfiction, Poetry

Shortlist Announced for 2023 Chicago Review of Books Awards

The 2023 Chicago Review of Books Awards shortlist includes literary works ranging in subject matter from queer motherhood to belonging and migration, Chicago’s Black cowboy culture, and women’s overlooked heroism during World War II.

Elizabeth Niarchos Neukirch /
Architecture, Beyond, Chicago history, Chicago history, Children's books, Comics and Graphic Novels, Fiction, Lit, Nonfiction, Poetry

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 […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Chicago history, Chicago history, Children's books, Essays, Event, Lit, Live lit events, Nonfiction, Poetry

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 […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Events, Fiction, Lit, Live lit events, Nonfiction, Poetry

Preview: Inspiration for Burned-Out Writers at Northwestern’s Summer Writers’ Conference, July 21–22

When the world is literally on fire, who can think about writing? The present writer was reminded of Chicago author Rebecca Makkai’s 2018 Electric Literature essay on the topic (“The […]

Elizabeth Niarchos Neukirch /
Lit, Music, Poetry

Poem: Taylor Knows

June Sawyers wrote this poem—as a way to record her experience—on a walk over to Soldier Field this weekend during the Taylor Swift The Eras Tour. Taylor knowsyour secretsyour vulnerabilitiesyour […]

June Sawyers /
Art & Museums, Lit, Nonfiction, Poetry

Review: The Epic Question Mark of Western Lit, Homer: The Very Idea, by James I. Porter

Nobody knows anything about Homer except what’s in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and, even there, it gets dicey, as James I. Porter details in his challenging and provocative Homer: […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Lit, Poetry

Review: Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby, A Memoir in Prose Poems, by Patrick T. Reardon

Puddin’ is a slim volume, small enough to tuck in a back pocket or a small purse. That size may suggest a good way to read this “memoir in prose poems” […]

Nancy S Bishop /
Chicago history, Chicago history, Lit, Poetry

Review: Laughing at the Race with No Rules, Woman Without Shame, by Sandra Cisneros

In her new book of poetry Woman without Shame, Sandra Cisneros looks aging in the face and laughs. She laughs at the frenetic lusts and couplings of youth—at broken hearts and […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Lit, Poetry

Review: Singing the Song of Us—The Lost Tribes, by Patrick T. Reardon

Reviewed by Michael Leach Patrick Reardon’s epic poem The Lost Tribes is a cri du coeur as thrilling for our time as Alan Ginsberg’s Howl was for his. It celebrates […]

Guest Author /
Fiction, Interviews, Lit, Live lit events, Nonfiction, Poetry

Interview: Feeling Beatific—Jerry Cimino of the Beat Museum/Beatmobile

Jerry and Estelle Cimino are on the road, spreading the Beat Gospel to the world. As founders of the Beat Museum in San Francisco, they’ve made a mission of keeping […]

Dan Kelly /