2012: The Swanseans Calendar

Featuring protagonists like 19th American president Rutherford B. Writer Jonathan Eig 's taken on some big personalities in the course of his career: Sure, those guys all happen to be real, but the New York Times best-selling author's insights on bringing characters to life on the page ought to apply just as well to fiction writers. On Thursday, February 13, at 6: After the presentation, attendees can stick around for a free-writing session. The event is free and open to all.

Lynn Povich started work at Newsweek as a secretary fresh out of college in , when a woman's career trajectory in journalism might take her from the mailroom to the fact-check department, but rarely further. Increasingly fed up with the magazine's continual refusal to promote women, in she and some fellow female colleagues sought the help of the ACLU and got young, black attorney Eleanor Holmes Norton to represent them.

Norton's a fascinating figure in her own right: The group sued in , and one measure of the suit's success is the fact that five years later Povich became Newsweek 's first female Senior Editor. She won't be presenting the Newsweek 46's fight against gender discrimination as a fight that's been fully won: The event runs from 5: Gina Frangello is something of a powerhouse in Chicago's literary scene. Or at least curious about how she does it all?

Refreshments will be served. As I was reading it or mentioning it to friends, I kept forgetting what, precisely, debut author Alex Garel-Frantzen's new book was called. The writing is reminiscent of a masters thesis, although apparently it's not; the precocious Garel-Frantzen is a law student at the University of Illinois. His core assertion--that organized crime shaped the development of Chicago's Jewish community from the midth century through the s--is a modest one, made methodically. Fans of, say, Devil in the White City -style dramatization and trans-temporal mind-reading will not find much to engage them here.

But if Garel-Frantzen is more the meticulous academic than a natural-born storyteller, his brief volume still touches on a number of striking stories. Rather than focus on characters affiliated with big shots such as Al Capone who simply happened to be Jewish--and there certainly were a few--Garel-Frantzen spends most of his time examining forms of organized crime that were particularly bound up with Jewish community life, first in the Maxwell Street ghetto on the near South Side, and later in Lawndale. Today we welcome Foley as she stops at Book Club on her blog tour promoting the novella click here to see other tour stops and dates.

Foley is a writer and artist living on an avocado ranch with her family in Southern California. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Epileptic and her writing has appeared in Wired , The New York Times and elsewhere. She received a Master of Fine Arts in prose from Naropa University, and now teaches creative writing, visual art and bookmaking in Santa Barbara County. Women Float touches on female relationships and the drama of becoming an adult. Protagonist Win, a lesbian pastry chef in California, is afraid of swimming, a phobia underscored by the fact that her absent mother was a professional surfer.

Win's journey takes her from her mother's abandonment at age 9, into her adulthood struggle to overcome hydrophobia. Mix in a relationship with her New Age neighbor and a penchant for pathological lying, and you've got an entertaining romance with none of the cheesiness of a supermarket paperback. In it she discusses her choice to address gender and sexuality in her work, which is new territory for her. This personal narrative focuses as much on Foley's choices as a writer as it does on the meaning of being a contemporary female author. For gardeners especially, Chicago winters have to be tough: Normally devoted to beautifying its neighborhood, The Historic Pullman Garden Club keeps itself and the public busy this time of year by putting on an annual Winter Lecture Series.

Local author and public historian Cynthia Ogorek will shine a spotlight on first ladies with Midwestern roots and trace their connections to Chicago. The series will continue on February 28 and March 28 and refreshments will be served at each event. Those who plan to attend should RSVP by calling or emailing historicpullmangardens gmail. Ishmael Beah's Radiance of Tomorrow is a return in a few different ways.

It's the Sierra Leonean's second book; it revisits the war-torn homeland he first wrote about in memoir A Long Way Gone ; and it tells the tale of Sierra Leoneans coming back to their country and trying to rebuild. This time around Beah's working with fictional characters rather than his own incomprehensibly brutal adolescence, and as the title suggests, there's more room for optimism. In interviews, he's suggested that former child soldiers like himself may gain less from forgetting and "rehabilitation" than from simply refocusing the survival skills they've had to learn.

In the intro to Radiance of Tomorrow , Beah mentions being inspired by his homeland's oral tradition--making the public reading a natural form for him. Audiences will get a glimpse not only into Sierra Leone's tragic history, but into the arresting beauty of its native narrative forms--for instance, Beah notes, "In Mende, you wouldn't say 'night came suddenly; you would say 'the sky rolled over and changed its sides. He was born Igor Steinhorn which means "stone horn" in the city formerly known as Leningrad in After he and his parents moved to America his name was changed to Gary so he wouldn't be mistaken for "Frankenstein's assistant.

A Catalogue of Promiscuous Praise. And perhaps the most fun fact of all, Shteyngart will be appearing in conversation with another brilliant writer of the immigrant experience, Aleksandar Hemon , in our fair city next week! To whet you appetite, view the hilarious book trailer for Little Failure featuring James Franco, Rashida Jones and a few more famous hotshots. Photo of Shteyngart courtesy of WSJ. Or you may have encountered him as I did through works that provocatively mix memoir and queer theory, such as Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.

His beard alone probably qualifies as a major artistic contribution to American society. Chicago audiences get to see a few of Samuel R. Delany's many sides with a pair of upcoming public readings at the University of Chicago's Harper Memorial Library, E. They're sponsored by Critical Inquiry, the interdisciplinary journal of theory based at U of C. The first reading , held on Friday, January 17, will focus on Delany's recent fiction. Then, on Friday, January 31, he'll return to share insights from the writing course he's been teaching, entitled The Mirror and the Maze: Photo courtesy of the author's Facebook page.

This Sunday, December 15 from Snoop their sites for some amazing illustrations, and come out this Sunday to put the maestros to the test! Merry Quimbas, one and all! You may not be able to jet over to the Greek island of Mykonos anytime soon, but international mystery writer Jeffrey Siger's latest novel, Mykonos After Midnight , just might be the next best thing. As Mary Schmich said, reading is your discount ticket to anywhere! Siger will be in town on Thursday, Dec. The novel is the fifth installation in the author's series featuring Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis.

The first, Murder in Mykonos , was Greece's 1 best-selling English-language novel. After the murder of a legendary Mykonos nightclub owner, Inspector Caldis must prove there's a far more complex solution to the murder than robbery. Caldis's ensuing struggle with a powerful, clandestine international force mirrors Greece's own struggle, amid its economic crisis, between its past and present. Siger, a former New York lawyer who graduated to writing full time about Mykonos, is also a weekly contributor to Murder is Everywhere , a blog about the venues where ten mystery writers place their novels.

Read his post on Greek Thanksgiving cooking. Make your reservation here. Photo of Jeffrey Siger courtesy of thedreamliveson. Just in time for Thanksgiving, I'd like to point out my new favorite true crime book: Hanlon with Thomas V. It's much more than a true crime book. After my thoughts, please read on for an interview with Dr.

In , Thomas Odle killed his parents and three siblings at the age of 18 in southern Illinois and is now serving life in prison. This book is from the perspective of both Dr. Hanlon, a neurologist, and Tom Odle, the murderer himself. Tom reflects on his childhood in a first person point-of-view, while Dr. Hanlon assesses Tom's life experiences and how they led him to murder.

This book is haunting. Tom Odle's childhood was hell. His mother abused him, chained him to his bed, made him raise his three younger siblings, and constantly told him how much she hated him and how she wished he'd never been born. He wasn't allowed to go anywhere other than school and wasn't allowed to have anybody over, so his social skills lacked heavily.

In kindergarten, Odle went to school with a shirt soaked in blood from the whip marks on his back. It wasn't until he was strong enough to fight back that she stopped the physical abuse, but the emotional and verbal abuse never ceased. Tom never had confidence or self-worth.

His dad stood by and did nothing, as if he too feared Tom's mother. That medicine is highly political stuff is no secret to anyone who happened to glance at a news source during the past autumn's government shutdown. But few people know it as viscerally as Dr. Now 90 years old and still going strong as one of Chicago's foremost public health experts, Dr. Young's commitment to merging healthcare with social justice dates back to treating fellow workers during the Freedom Summer of and even, at one point, working as personal physician to Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. For the last several decades, he's been most active as a tireless advocate for a single-payer national healthcare system. And, as it turns out, putting some of his vast life experience on paper: Memoirs of a Rebel Without a Pause. Halsted , Young will read from the book; one imagines he'll also be open to some spirited discussion of the current state of healthcare legislation.

Donna Tartt's three novels have been published across the span of three decades--one for each. Her first novel, the wildly successful A Secret History was published in , and her second, The Little Friend, rolled around in When discussing why it takes 10 years to write a book, Tartt partially attributed it to her willingness to wait for surprises. We can only hope that Tartt will deliver yet another masterpiece of moody genius come something. Halloween has come and gone and you're still not spooked? Head to the Nisei Lounge for the Graveyards of Chicago book release party and Bachelors Grove cemetery restoration fundraiser.

Local authors and taphophiles Matt Hucke and Ursula Bielski will be signing books and guest bartenders will be slinging festive drinks. The first 50 people to purchase books will receive a gift bag of other Lake Claremont Press titles. Paranormal enthusiast Bielski is best known as the author of the Chicago Haunts book series, as well as the founder of Chicago Hauntings ghost tours. Photographer Hucke has visited and taken pictures of over 1, graveyards and mausolea.

The event takes place on Thursday, November 14, from 6 to 9 pm. The Nisei Lounge is located at N. A portion of the drink and book sales will support the restoration efforts of the historic Bachelors Grove Cemetery. The event is free, but please RSVP here. Move over, James Franco.

He might not be an A-list Hollywood celeb, but Jacob M. Appel holds nine graduate degrees, is a bioethicist, a physician, a lawyer and a social critic, not to mention a licensed NYC tour guide.

Words in frequency order

And if that isn't enough to make you wonder what you've been doing with your life, he's an extremely prolific and award-winning author of plays, short stories and novels. We've all been there, right? In Appel's clever, vigorously written, intently observed, and richly emotional tale, hilarious mishaps are wildly complicated by the intersections between life and Larry's novel about Starshine.

Appel will be in town to host a discussion on the literary marketplace at The Writers WorkSpace , N. Broadway on Sunday, November 17 from Tickets are limited, so get yours now. Coffee and light refreshments will be served. Photo by Megan Bearder for the Chicago Tribune. Signature tells the tale of Alma Whittaker, a 19th century botanist. At the time, botany was one of the rare sciences to which women, society's own beautiful flowers, had access. However, it was also the science of explorers, men who risked life and limb on the high seas to bring back plants from the darkest corners of the earth, especially tropical orchids.

Whittaker, however, specializes in the decidedly unsexy study of moss. Gilbert realized that as a single woman, Alma wouldn't have had the freedom to travel to exotic locales. So she arranged for Alma to stumble on a great scientific discovery right outside her father's door, something that was "manageable and also enormous" and eventually allows Alma to reach the same conclusions about evolution as Charles Darwin before Darwin ever published his theories.

And so, this second novel's publication strikes at least one curious Chicagoan as significant, since UCP had all but sworn off altogether risky indie fiction reprints. A Naked Singularity was brilliant, sure, but a fluke nonetheless. Stahl handed the manuscript to UCP editor Maggie Hivnor, also a fan of the book, who then faced the task of convincing the imposing Board of University Publications that De la Pava's scrappy, sprawling, self-published first novel indeed carried literary merit.

Fortunately, the case had quite a few things in its favor: Allende, whose 19 books have been translated into 35 languages and have sold 57 million copies around the world, was interviewed by Univision 's Angelica Atondo. Perhaps the most personally influential book for Allende is Paula , which Allende described as the most memorable book she has produced, "written with tears and blood.

Coincidentally, Allende's talk took place on Paula's birthday. While Allende generally considers herself a happy person, she maintained that her kind of sadness at losses such as Paula's death is "a softness of the heart that is always under the surface.

Allende acknowledged that while the world is a sometimes a sad place, a sense of humor is one way to make it a brighter. However, she worries that the humor from her native Chile doesn't translate well into English. It's too dark and not politically correct, especially in California, where she has resided since Allende relayed the story of how when dogs training as service animals for the blind do not pass the final test, they are put up for adoption.

Allende requested one of the rejected dogs, and received a letter from a sensitive writer reminding her that the dogs are not rejected; they have simply made a career change. Allende ended her talk by reading from her latest work, Ripper , her first foray into mystery writing. Attending a mystery writers' conference with "the loveliest people, usually these middle aged ladies in Birkenstocks The interview is available in its entirety on Univision's website.

Though the website is in Spanish, the interview is in English. Image courtesy of Isabel Allende's website. Mississippi author Kiese Laymon walked away from the would-be publisher of his audacious debut novel, Long Division , because, according to his editor, its racial politics were too explicit. And then I felt compelled to prove her wrong.

And prove her wrong he did. Evanston-based publisher Agate had published work by National Book Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward , a fellow Mississippi writer and inspiration to Laymon. This year Agate released not only Long Division , but also Laymon's essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America , the title essay of which went viral after it was posted on Gawker last year.

That's a good thing. I like shocking people who care for me. Most people know Elizabeth Gilbert as the author of Eat, Pray, Love , a memoir that recounts her globe-hopping recovery from a devastating divorce. However, before Gilbert became an icon for women seeking greater self-awareness or a self-indulgent navel gazer, depending on who you ask , she was an award-winning fiction writer. Tomorrow, Gilbert will discuss her return to fiction after more than a decade with her new novel, The Signature of All Things. A work of historical fiction set in the 19th century, The Signature of All Things tells the story of botanist Alma Whittaker.

Whittaker's devotion to an as-yet-unstudied phylum of moss, as well as the decidedly unscientific pursuit of love, takes her and the reader around the world from London to Peru, to Amsterdam and Philadelphia and finally Tahiti. Gilbert conducted three years of research to create Alma's world, and skillfully weaves historical events, such as the murder of Captain Cook, into the narrative.

Barbara Kingsolver in her New York Times book review describes the novel as "a bracing homage to the many natures of genius and the inevitable progress of ideas, in a world that reveals its best truths to the uncommonly patient minds. Elizabeth Gilbert will appear on Wednesday, Oct. Religious Scholar Reza Aslan made headlines last summer when Fox News anchor Lauren Green asked him , essentially, why on earth a Muslim would write a book about Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity. According to The Nation , "the story was quickly framed as a battle between the right-wing Islamophobes of Fox News and Aslan, the defender of intellectual life and scholarship"-- and the author of those words has her own opinion of Aslan's credentials.

The book in question is Zealot: Aslan will discuss the 1 New York Times Bestseller Zealot , which frames Jesus as a rebel in the "age of zealotry" in first-century Palestine, a wandering miracle worker whose mission was "so threatening to the established order that he was captured, tortured, and executed as a state criminal. I read it in one sitting. In the introduction, Bradley says, "I found myself compelled to write about love, lust, and the sea.

All forms of escape, all symbols of our primal wishes. I found myself in dialogue with the master of love poetry. The books is split into four sections: Waiting Tides, Love, Desire, and Your. Bradley's poems no doubt evoke feelings of love, longing, and lust. Bradley said in an interview, " You'll read this collection and wish that someone would write poems like this about you.

But before becoming a writer, Skloot earned a degree in biomedical sciences and worked as a veterinary technician. For more than a decade, she worked in private practices, research labs, veterinary schools, animal morgues, and emergency rooms, among other places. Inspired by these experiences and the ethical questions they raised, Skloot is currently working on an as-yet-untitled second book that will explore the science and ethics of the roles animals play in our lives and we in theirs.

Skilled at combining science with a compelling narrative, Skloot intends to show how our relationship with animals is both beneficial and complicated - and not nearly as clear-cut as it first appears. Would someone who refuses to wear leather decline a cancer treatment based on animal research? What makes one animal a suitable service animal while another is deemed inappropriate? Why do we rescue some animals and kill others? Rebecca Skloot will be sharing more about her new project in the program " Rebecca Skloot: For tickets and more information, visit the Chicago Humanities Festival website.

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Rebecca about her upcoming book, tricking people into learning science, wild dogs, and frontal lobes. Jonas Cannon has been releasing zines since the mid-nineties, including the semi-autobiographic perzine Cheer the Eff Up now on issue 5 since the summer of But Cannon's next work, a fiction collection titled The Greatest Most Traveling Circus will be published by Olympia, Washington based Sweet Candy Press , marking a big departure from his zine's do-it-yourself aesthetic: Cannon isn't the only zinester moving from the copy machine to the printing press.

Many long time zine makers are opting for hard bound copies of their works. Philly-based comics artist and zinester Ramsey Beyer released her memoir, Little Fish, on Zest Books earlier this year. Going the "professional" route can seem like a leap from the do-it-yourself mentality, but the process invites a new audience via internet marketplaces like Amazon.

To put it mildly, Greece is a country in chaos. As a result of its severe debt crisis, it struggles with austerity measures, labor strikes, bloated government institutions, and an unemployment rate of But this is not the first time Greece has encountered political pandemonium. Natalie Bakopoulos ' debut novel, The Green Shore , harkens us back to a similarly tumultuous time in Greek history.

In , a group of Greek military colonels executed a coup d'etat under the cover of night. Democracy would not be restored until seven years later. The aftermath of the coup is seen through the eyes of four characters: French literature student Sophie, her doctor mother Eleni, her poet uncle Mihalis, and her younger sister Anna. Each character copes with the sweeping and often brutal political changes while continuing their personal stories, following dreams and passions, and experiencing new vistas physically, emotionally and politically.

A reception will be held from 6pm to 7pm and the reading will follow. The event is co-sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Amnesty International. Born in Southeast Turkey, Matur was raised speaking Kurdish, which was officially banned in the region for many years. Though she writes in Turkish, she says that her writing is strongly influenced by the cadence and rhythm of her mother tongue. Her award-winning poetry has been described as shamanist, dark and mystic, and draws heavily from her experiences of village life. Her poems have been translated into 24 languages.

Trained as an attorney, Matur never practiced law and instead found her way to journalism. She regularly tackles issues such as Kurdish politics, Armenian news and women's issues. Image courtesy of the Poetry Foundation website. If only conversations with bald guys from New Jersey were always this intellectually stimulating. Kathleen Wheaton knows how it feels to be an outsider.

She spent twelve years in Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico working as a journalist and travel writer before returning to the U. Wheaton now resides in Bethesda, Md. Aliens and Other Stories is a loosely linked collection of tales about characters in exile, whether it be physical or emotional. They were inspired by the time Wheaton spent writing a guidebook in Argentina, which was then still emerging from the shadow of its Dirty War, a brutal military dictatorship during which as many as 30, people disappeared.

She was struck by the nonchalance with which people recounted the traumatic experiences of being arrested, going into hiding or having relatives disappear; she wrote short stories based on these interactions. There's clearly an accord between John Freeman until recently editor of Granta and Aleksandar Hemon --the latter gets one of the longest profiles in the former's new collection of interviews with modern authors, How to Read a Novelist. State at 6pm, the two will convene to talk about the book and other literary matters. Of course, any book entitled How to Read a Novelist is bound to touch on the question of why to read a novelist, and Freeman plans to make a forceful case for why "the novel is far from dead"--if the presence of the masterful author of The Lazarus Project wasn't evidence enough.

Lahiri was interviewed by her fellow Pulitzer winner, Tribune columnist Mary Schmich. Cultural duality is a common theme in Lahiri's work, and The Lowland is no exception. The Lowland follows the divergent paths of two brothers who were once inseparable, one an earnest college student who ends up in the U. Lahiri's inspiration for the novel came from a story she heard as a teen from her father about a pair of brothers who were killed due to their Naxalite affiliation.

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The movement was particularly active -- and violent -- in Kolkata, where Lahiri often visited relatives and would overhear gossip about the Naxalites. Unabridged Bookstore , one of the organizers, went so far as to say it was "in support of his forthcoming book, Paddle Your Own Canoe " but gave little detail as to what that entailed. After the Friday evening event, it was easy to see why. Unlike most book presentations which follow a predictable template of introduction-reading-applause, the Parks and Rec star offered, in true patriotic form, an American vaudevillian experience that included music, stories, and a little bit of dance.

In her new zine Spider Teeth , Ellie June Navidson calls it simply "the surgery"--an operation she traveled to Thailand to obtain, and which other similarly situated women might call gender confirmation surgery or medical transition. But for Navidson, those terms suggest a straight-line journey that doesn't reflect her own messier experience. In Spider Teeth 's 90 pages, she has plenty of space to complicate the cultural picture of trans womanhood with precise descriptions of the shifting gender boundaries she inhabits. Navidson will read from the zine at Quimby's Bookstore W.

North on Thursday, October 10, at 7pm, joined by other trans women with deep roots in performance art. Anyone who's attended the Northern Lights queer variety show at Parlour more than a couple of times is likely to recognize A. Durand, who only recently hung up the otherworldly mantle of her character Trandroid. Also on the lineup is Kokumo , a South Side native who's not only a writer but a musician, publisher, and community-builder focusing on black transfeminine perspectives.

Navidson's been doing some impressive community-building herself--this will be the second Spider Teeth reading she's put together in a week, with different supporting readers each time. One suspects they're just beginning to build momentum toward bringing a profusion of complex, underexplored perspectives on femininity to a wider audience. The late-season warmth means it might just be possible to squeeze in one last barbecue or two In addition to his harem of six-toed cats and the honor of being born in Oak Park, the other thing Ernest Hemingway is known for, apparently, is his special hamburger that and some books, or so I hear.

Food writer and self-proclaimed Hemingway acolyte Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan went in search of the famous recipe when she found out that digitized documents from Hemingway's time in Cuba had been donated to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library -- not his scholarly or literary musings, no, but things like passport copies, good driver discounts, and household recipes. Some might call these documents insignificant, but Tan was determined to unearth the Hemingway hamburger, and unearth and make she did. The article in the Paris Review is a great read and includes the recipe.

Why not give it a shot, and while you're at it, pair with Sylvia Plath's famous tomato soup cake? If you convened a Barry Gifford fan club, the members might not have much to say to each other. Throughout his long career, the Chicago-born writer has worked in many different--sometimes startlingly different--modes. He's probably best known for the surreal American violence of the seven-book Sailor and Lula saga, the first of which, Wild at Heart , caught the eye of David Lynch and sparked a collaborative friendship that went on to produce the screenplay for Lost Highway.

It's this side of Gifford audiences will see on Wednesday, October 9, at 8: State for a screening of the two episodes of Lynch's miniseries Hotel Room he wrote. Mysterious deaths, dark secrets, and mistaken or are they? Institute Place on Saturday, October 5, from 10am to 1pm. Wild Things Day is a one-day event for children and families. It celebrates Maurice Sendak 's classic tale, Where the Wild Things Are , with art projects, face painting, story time, raffles, and cake. This event is recommended for kids ages three and over. This year, Chicago authors have been releasing books faster than you can count.

Read up on Hunter's creative process and other insights in interviews with Tin House and Vol. Hard at work on a new novel as well as being a first time mother, it seems Hunter doesn't have time to juggle much else. Catch her now before she really doesn't. For a complete schedule of author appearances, visit the Chicago Gourmet website.

Image courtesy of the Illinois Restaurant Association. This Thursday, September 26, at 7: Devoid of bells and whistles, the narrative is a refreshing diversion from novels overwrought with twists, turns, and the occasional vampire. Sound like a good read? Grab a copy of Someone at the event, available for purchase courtesy of The Book Cellar. Sounds dangerous, but Pittard is a dangerously talented writer. Fates tells the story of a missing teenage suburban girl and the group of neighborhood boys who becomes enraptured by her disappearance. Pittard's fiction has won several awards. Read on, and get to know Hannah Pittard.

A feeling in the pit of my stomach. A feeling in my chest. You know that time of night when it's pink? It's not every night, but some nights there's this pinkness in the air and I can feel it my chest -- this bigness, this need to capture it. Which isn't to say I'm trying to capture the night or its beauty. There's just a similarity between that feeling of pinkness and the need to write.

As evidenced by potluck favorite hot dog pie , hot dogs and pie are two great things that go great together. The Book Cellar seems to think so, too. There will be samples of recipes from the books but, alas, probably no hot dog pie. As a Chicagoan of about six years' standing and a Michigander by birth, I've lived most of my life on the slightly shinier edges of the Rust Belt. That's meant watching with interest as some of its old industries have coughed out their final breaths and others tech for Chicago, medicine for Grand Rapids started to gain force.

The institutional memory of The Society of Midland Authors, of course, reaches back much farther--all the way to , when it was formed by a Chicago-centered group of writers including Clarence Darrow, Harriet Monroe, and Vachel Lindsay. On Thursday, September 19, at 6pm, president Robert Loerzel brings together three writers with a lot to say about the region's economic machinery at the Harold Washington Library Center, S. State, in a discussion on the theme "Reviving the Rust Belt: The Future of the Industrial Midwest and Chicago.

His most recent release is Nothin' But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America's Industrial Heartland , which traces not only the Midwest's industry but the way it's shaped the character of its residents. Larry Bennett's The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism uses a similar lens to focus more closely on the town whose very nickname evokes reinvention.

And going broader than either of the two, Edward E. Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis looks for the root causes of the entire country's declining economic power and finds it in a failure to educate workers for the kinds of jobs that are most needed now. With Loerzel as moderator, the three authors will combine their perspectives to try to sketch a picture of the Midwest's economic landscape as it will look in future decades. Undressing the Power of Style co-edited with Shira Tarrant.

But whether she assiduously follows current feminine trends or tries to distance herself from them entirely, a modern American woman has no real way to opt out of the world of fashion--any look is invariably read as a statement. The writers in Jolles' and Tarrant's collection touch on the statements made by subjects ranging from Andrea Dworkin's trademark overalls to Japan's "Lolita" subculture to the plight of the nontraditional bride. Siegel is equally steeped in the gender symbolism of clothing--the writer and public speaker's current project is called Tots in Genderland , a multimedia rethinking of the way children's genders are over determined by their guardians and cultures from infancy on.

As she related in a TEDx talk and an interview with Gapers Block earlier this year, her thinking has been informed by her own kids--twins, a boy and a girl. The third panelist, Arreola, has been blogging for more than a decade on Latina feminism, currently at Viva la Feminista. It's not some post-apocalyptic sci-fi sequel. The Militarization of America's Police Forces is the streets of America's average, present-day cities, where he's noticed police being trained to use ever more-aggressive techniques.

He's noticed it in the war on drugs, in which raids not infrequently turn fatal, and in responses to political protests, in which riot gear is de rigeur no matter how the crowd behaves. On Wednesday, September 18 at 6: If you find yourself inspired to action by the book's arguments, you'll have a few guides on hand. The event will conclude with a panel of local activists from community organizations including the People's Law Office and Women's All Points Bulletin.

Tickets to the Chicago Humanities Festival go on sale to the public today. The theme this year is "Animal: What Makes Us Human", and we're going ape for the literary line-up sorry, couldn't resist. Here's a quick rundown of the superstars shooting our way this October and November. This list is not exhaustive, so check the site for deets, and grab your tix before they sell out! As of , only Considering that women constitute more than half the U.

Sarah Aronson is presenting her new novel, Believe , at an event that doubles as a fundraiser for Curt's Cafe. Though new to the Chicagoland area, YA aficionados might recognize her as the author of the acclaimed novels, Beyond Lucky and Head Case. Her latest book tells the story of Janine Collins, who is thrust into the spotlight for being the sole survivor of a suicide bombing. Ten years after the terrible attack, and much to Janine's discomfort, she has become a symbol of hope.

Friends want her to use her fame for a cause and the media is eager to revisit her story. Even worse, Dave Armstrong, the man who saved her from the rubble, believes she has healing powers. Could he be right? The launch party is on Sunday, Sept. If that's not reason enough to get up early on a weekend, then the raffle should do the trick. Guests have a chance to win a one month gift certificate to Bikram Yoga Evanston, Hot Spices, books, a beaded necklace, and a Believe silver necklace. The Book Stall will also be doing what it does best i. Photo courtesy of Sarah Aronson's website.

Good spies aren't born; they're made. Such is the case for the genetically altered spies in The Orphan Trilogy , a series of international conspiracy thrillers by New Zealand authors James Morcan and Lance Morcan. Chicago is featured prominently as the site of the Pedemont Orphanage, where 23 orphans acquire the skills to become stealthy, cold-blooded killers. James Morcan was happy to shed some light on how the city's famed work ethic influenced the decision to begin the story here, and to discuss whether we'll see any Pedemont Orphanage alums skulking around Chicago corners in the near future.

If you're an avid reader of the GB Book Club, you probably are a fan of storytelling and live lit events in Chicago. Perhaps you also read memoirs and creative nonfiction, or enjoy storytelling podcasts like The Moth and This American Life. But with a love of live literature and personal storytelling, there also comes an aversion to certain topics.

We've all been there. One minute you're laughing along to a hilarious, madcap story from a talented storyteller, the next you're rolling your eyes and uncomfortably shifting in your seat while someone blubbers creepily about stalking their ex-boyfriend or describes a bodily function in stomach-churning detail. Whether we are sick of a topic because it is too common or because it's just personally off-putting, we all have some storytelling pet peeves. So let's talk about a few, and then open the floor for you to share yours in the comments.

Do yourself a favor, put down the remote and crack open Christopher Bakken 's new book Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table. You won't find ruminations on pedestrian hummus or cheesy saganaki in these pages. Instead, Bakken takes readers on a journey around the archipelago that gets into the nitty-gritty of Greek staples: The result is a mouthwatering romp around the country, which never fails to celebrate the simplicity of ingredients nor the painstaking labor that makes that simplicity possible.

Light refreshments will be served, and one can only hope that they're even half as good as the dishes he describes. Before his visit to Chicago, Book Club caught up with Bakken. We discussed impractical recipes, the Midwestern and Greek value system, the importance of grandmothers and, of course, his book. Zero Fade , the debut novel by Chicago's own Chris L. Terry , is released by Curbside Splendor today. Just coming off a real-world book tour, Terry has begun a blog tour, stopping today at Book Club to share a hilarious account of band life versus author life.

Read on, and check out the details of the Terry's entire virtual tour. Last month, I did a book tour to promote my novel, Zero Fade. I set it up through friends in each city. It was a success. I sold over a hundred books, and since I only hit places where I'd lived or knew people, I constantly had the overwhelming, birthday-party-feeling of being surrounded by friends without the time to really talk to them. A nice problem to have. I felt like a rock star. The event takes place at Sulzer on Monday, September 9 at 6: Described by Booklist as "an undisputed master of the short short story," Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge consists of 51 stories, ranging in length from a paragraph to several pages.

Though Orner skips through different cities and eras, the question of the reliability of memory provides the stories' unifying thread. Orner is a past Guggenheim fellow and two-time Pushcart Prize award-winner whose recently reissued debut collection of short stories, Esther Stories , was a New York Times notable book. As veteran authors of the romance genre, Chicago-based Sherrill Bodine and Patricia Rosemoor have been crafting entangled love affairs for over two decades.

Rosemoor has written 90 that's right, 90 novels, many for the Harlequin Intrigue imprint among others ; and Bodine has written 19 novels, as well as a co-written comic book called Whispers From the Void. In celebration of the release of the authors' first co-written novel, Written in the Stars available in ebook format only , the duo will host a digital launch party at McNamara's restaurant West Irving Park Rd. The free event will also be streamed online, and viewers may download their copy at the same time the goal is to reach 5, downloads in one hour.

To watch online, tune in here at 6pm on September After attending his 20th high school reunion, Kevin Smokler realized he hadn't paid "a lick of attention" to his teachers or the books they taught-- not helpful to someone who'd always planned on writing books. Hence Smokler's latest book, Practical Classics: Samantha Irby's much anticipated collection of essays, Meaty , is out today. If you're not sure whether or not to purchase it, read contributor Alba Machado's and my discussion below! I feel that I know Samantha Irby better than I know most of my friends after reading this book, from her bowel movements and sex life to her experiences and hopes.

I laughed a LOT and felt a bit emotional during some of the more serious essays. What was reading Meaty like for you, as someone who has read her blog? She made me blush in the best way ever. It's a talent she has. It's not just that she talked about peeing on a man's face; it's that she did it in this absolutely candid, intimate check-this-freaky-shit-out kind of way that made her story seem somehow as ordinary as it was outrageous--something casual, something you'd laugh about over coffee.

She has the gift that Toni Morrison says is the true test of a writer's power, to "familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar. And of course, I was really excited to read Meaty. It did not disappoint. But the book also veered into unexpectedly tragic terrain, and for that, I would have liked to have read it at a slower pace, given myself time to process and reflect on one chapter before moving onto the next.

Meaty seems an appropriate name. You need time to chew on it! Ever been embroiled in a book-club debate and wish you could just call up the author to ask what she was thinking? Lombard will go you one better: Diskin to chat about her Chicago-based legal thriller The Green Line with readers. As readers nibble on a spread of appetizers and desserts, they'll delve into a discussion of naive lawyer protagonist Abby's quest to unravel a mystery she stumbles into late one night when she accidentally gets off the train in the Austin neighborhood.

Gapers Block : GB Book Club : Chicago Books - Author

The plot moves along at a clip, so attendees should still have plenty of time to read up. Who needs cheese when you've got great lit? If you regularly attend live lit events in Chicago, you've probably considered contributing your own work at least once. Maybe you've been lurking in the back of the audience for years, longing to join in. Maybe you're an aspiring writer with no performance experience.

Maybe you're a fan of a particular series, but just have no clue how to get involved. If you fall into any of these categories, this guide is for you. No matter your level of experience or expertise, you can break into Chicago's live lit scene. All it takes is a little persistent effort and an intelligent use of your time. Here are some pointers.

There are many, many live literary events in Chicago spanning a variety of topics, settings, and audiences. If you're new to the scene, it's tempting to adopt a scatter-shot approach, applying willy-nilly to any and every show you can think of. Focus on shows that are amenable to your own style and topics of interest. Do you like to write personal creative essays? Do you prefer to tell a story off the cuff, free of notes? Do you prefer nonfiction that covers current events or pop culture?

The Paper Machete is your bag. Do you have a gritty, explicit tale to tell? Choosing an appropriate setting for your work is absolutely essential. Establish a rapport with the show or shows you'd like to submit to. Each show is its own microcosm within the live lit community, and to become a member of that community you must show your face.

Hang around and chat with contributors after the show, or send the show's organizers a nice email or Facebook post. Attend a show multiple times before submitting your work to its hosts. This will improve your chances in two ways. First, it will allow your to learn the show's unique style, and second, it will convince the show's hosts that you are a thoughtful, decent member of the live lit community and not a foaming psychopath -- both of which will vastly improve your odds. Every live lit series has its own unique style, and the only way to master the style is to attend regularly and pay close attention.

Before submitting work to a series, ask yourself the following: How long is the average piece? Do contributions ever contain explicit content? Do contributors use the first person, or is it more journalistic? Do readers use notes or do they speak extemporaneously? Is work laugh-a-minute, or more subdued and serious? How irreverent are the stories?

How conversational are they? Once you have a good sense of a series' style and what distinguishes it from other shows , you are ready to start writing. As you write your piece, never lose track of the desired tone, length, and style. The ideal submission should be a perfect amalgam of the show's overall sensibility and your own unique voice. Live lit shows accept new work in a variety of ways. Make sure you play by a show's particular rules so you don't irritate the hosts and organizers with emails or in-person queries that don't follow the standard procedure.

Usually you can find the appropriate submissions method on the series' website or on their social media pages. Some shows, like Do Not Submit, Story Club, and The Moth run on an open-mic basis, in which case the only way to participate is to show up early, put your name in, and wait for the opportunity to share. In some cases, shows have dedicated open mic nights that are distinct from the main show, but give new writers the opportunity to try out material and eventually snag a spot at the main event.

For example, The Paper Machete, runs an open-mic writing group the first Wednesday of every month that occasionally feeds new writers into the main show. Even if you carefully study the show you are submitting to, attend it often, schmooze with the hosts, and craft a piece you are utterly happy with, you might face disappointment. Before you swear off live lit entirely, remember that work is rejected for all kinds of reasons.

Maybe your story wasn't appropriate for the venue or the event. Maybe the hosts have a big backlog of performers on their schedule. Maybe you're close to the appropriate style or tone, but haven't quite perfected it. A rejection does not mean that your writing is terrible or that the hosts dislike you. Almost no one gets a story into a show the first time they try. Learning to respond to criticism or rejection is a crucial stage of development as a writer or a performer. At first they gave me the kindest, most encouraging rejection ever.

The pieces I sent just weren't right, but they were close, and I was encouraged to submit again. I spent more time editing some other work and attending Essay Fiesta, then I submitted two more pieces a few months later and got into the show. I'm sure most writers have had similar experiences with live lit shows or lit mags. Tenacity and sensitivity to criticism can really pay off in both cases!

There you have it! You now have the tools to begin a foray into live lit. Actually, you probably had all of these tools before you even clicked on this piece. If you're an avid attendee of lit events in Chicago, you already know a great deal about what works and what doesn't in live storytelling.

So use your knowledge, write a piece, and take it out on the town. In the lit scene, Mason Johnson's is one of those faces that seem to be everywhere. The next place you might run into him is at Cole's, N Milwaukee Ave. Johnson started his journey at Columbia College studying fiction writing. As a student he hosted Columbia's Silver Tongue student reading series. This was the start of his love of being on stage and commanding an audience. After graduation, he started P. Fanatics, the now-defunct monthly reading series held at Cole's.

His day job is writing content for CBS Chicago online, but he still finds ways to get on stage, most recently to address audiences as a co-host and judge of the Curbside Splendor sponsored Karaoke Idol. It's August in Chicago, which means everyone is sweating. Unfortunately, there are also those among us ehem who not only perspire in the heat but do so in front of a prospective date, potential lover, or unrequited crush.

Lucky for us, we can find solace in Solo in the 2nd City: Sweatin' in Chicago on Tuesday, August 20 at 8: Meno is a fiction writer and playwright who's won multiple awards including the Nelson Algren Literary Award and a Pushcart Prize.

The event is 21 and over and free. Donations are collected for Chicago Women's Health Center. You might find the love of your life sitting in the crowd. At the very least, you'll fall head over heels for the night's amusing tales of woe. Shearn is promoting her newest novel The Mermaid of Brooklyn. Beachy is a contributing editor at MAKE who's collaboration with Chicago comics artists Anders Nilsen will appear in the magazine's upcoming issue themed 'Visual Culture'.

The event will feature readings from the authors followed by a conversation covering topics such as their process and writing in their perspective cities. Gapers Block got to ask Beachy a few questions in prep for this event. It's not, but the jazz connection is no illusion. In addition to staying busy as an author and screenwriter Miracle at St. Anna , adapted from his own novel , McBride maintains serious saxophone chops and has written material for luminaries including Anita Baker.

Michigan on Tuesday, August 20, at 7pm. The audience may also get a taste of Bird , a rousing tale of a young escaped slave accidentally forced into maintaining his disguise as a girl after he's taken on as a sidekick by abolitionist John Brown. As the summer days dwindle, the dreadful season of literary magazine "reading periods" is finally ending, too.

Usually spanning the months of May-September, reading periods give editors the opportunity to shutter their doors, shut down their online submissions pages, and catch up on the manuscript backlog. For aspiring authors, summer means a dry spell of no submission opportunities and numerous rejection emails from magazines they don't even remember sending work to. The following awesome Chicago-based lit mags are now open for business and accepting new work:.

The editors also hold relaxed, approachable reading events in their personal residences, and I've always been dazzled by the caliber of their work and the speed at which they churn out new issues. They are currently accepting submissions for their sixth and seventh issues; check out their Tumblr for more info. Chicago Quarterly Review is a slightly more highbrow but still very accessible publication seeking full-length short stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and even photography! They've recently switched to online submissions and are now open, so float them a piece of up to 5, words.

Much of his writing, including short stories and essays, surrounds growing up in a biracial household. But in Zero Fade , which Curbside Splendor will publish this September though you can preorder through Amazon , Terry drops his own concerns for those of his adolescent narrator, a kid who "always wants to get things right. He sat down with Gapers Block Book Club to discuss writing, wiggers, and his adventures in punk rock. As the bus pulls up to the curb outside Tribune Tower, I am nervous for two reasons.

I saw what she did to that city. Would she chew up Chicago with the same contemptuous mockery? I half expect Bernadette herself, enormous sunglasses atop her nose, to come marching in decrying our unpredictable weather and monochromatic wardrobes. Writer Deborah Siegel is nothing short of inspiring.

She's a successful writer and gender scholar, and has contributed her many talents to the growth of several organizations dedicated to launching the careers of women writers. She does not just write, she does. She was kind enough to take the time to discuss her graphic memoir in the making, writing a TEDx talk, and what it's like watching the subject of her intellectual pursuits come alive in her own children:. How did the process of writing your TEDx talk differ from writing an article on the same topic? Can you talk about your process a bit? The first step was to create a 2-minute video audition, so I wrote a word script and combined it with a short slideshow.

That process alone was clarifying. I'd been going in circles about what it was I wanted to say, in book form, about the gendering of childhood in the earliest years of life. Part of the challenge was that I was still in the thick of those years with my twins. In memoir, time gives a writer the distance of perspective. I didn't have that yet, but playing in a different genre gave me a new spin. Since I only had 2 minutes, I was forced to distill and let go of all the competing threads clamoring for attention.

It was freeing to be forced, in effect, to think short. When it came time to write the actual talk, I switched back into a more familiar writerly storytelling mode. With the story nailed down, it quickly became clear which images to use. But then something serendipitous occurred: During the revision process, I tried to make my language as concise as the images I had picked.

Mixing up the visual and the verbal felt playful and expansive at the same time that it pushed me to be precise. I think I'm hooked. You've written, studied, and taught gender for many years. Have your kids reshaped your understanding of gender and the way you approach the subject as a scholar?

I'd thought about these things in the abstract. Then all of a sudden here I was, an anthropologist in the belly of the beast, with the beasts just out of my belly, and I felt helpless to fight the blue and pink wave that had snuck up upon me as the gifts and hand-me-downs started to pour in. Through it all, I developed a truer understanding of how our children become tabula rasa not only for commercial iconography but for our own implicit bias.

In other words, I grew far less righteous. I mean, we ourselves are implicated in reproducing gender in the most subtle of ways. Along the way, the question I thought I was interested in changed. Previously, I'd been curious about how culture influences children's gender identity. But I became much more interested in turning that question around.

Instead of obsessing about how we influence the very young, I wondered how might they influence us. I started to think more about what we adults might learn about gender from the very young. The way kids under age three bend gender fascinates me. This is a time in their lives when they don't yet know where they fall. They live beyond the gender binaries that adults are more socialized to accept. We can learn, from kids, to embrace paradox, and get out of our own limited thinking--and not just around gender, of course. A Drive into the Gap is a book that only Kevin Guilfoile could write.

Provoked by a tip, Guilfoile goes on a quest to discover if a bat gifted to him by his father was the same one Roberto Clemente used for his 3,th major league hit. Many of this thin little book's best moments come from that quest and the baseball anecdotes that accompany it, but Guilfoile's telling of his father's Alzheimer's-inhibited memory and their relationship is engrossing.

What would you say your motivation was for writing this book? You've got an amazing story of discovery with Clemente's bat, all of that quest's twists and turns, and you've got a very personal, very heart-wrenching story of illness with your father. For the reader, it's a compelling shuffle. Was it difficult to wrestle with a truly special baseball story and a familial issue on the page?

Well, the project started as a request. Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners approached me with an idea. They were coming out with a baseball-themed edition of their popular Field Notes notebooks, and he wanted to include a little booklet of baseball stories to go along with them. I had been a creative director at Coudal for 11 years before I became a novelist, so Jim knew I had all these stories about my dad and about my own days in baseball. The original idea was for a much shorter, more lighthearted piece made up of these clubhouse tales. Fred Sasaki never thought he'd do an art project with his father, a California-born Japanese-American who spent a portion of his childhood in a World War II relocation camp.

But when offering his son advice on being a writer, the elder Fred suggested pamphlets. Especially popular during the Great Depression, Tijuana bibles were cheaply made underground comic books portraying bawdy sexual encounters between newspaper comic strip characters like Popeye and Blondie. Solem, and Two With Water's Bobby Evers, took some time to answer my questions about the impetus for the event and what we can expect of collective efforts in the future. Next time you're in New Wave, remember, the selection of art on display represents the pooled energy of our literary community.

The exhibit will be up until February 8: What drew this particular group to showcase visual art? Two With Water and Graze wanted to do a collaborative event, and one thing our two publications had in common was visual art. Once we decided to do an exhibition of the art within the pages of our magazines, it only seemed natural to fill the walls of New Wave Coffee with art from other publications.

We've amassed quite a list of participating publications, which is wonderful. Do you see this as a reflection of connections between Chicago's visual and literary art communities? This is an attempt to showcase the beautiful images we all depend on but don't discuss. As writers and editors we talk so much about the literary pieces in our magazines and the journals of our friends and the art is sort of the unsung hero.

But what is a magazine without art and design? This is a way to celebrate our artists and let them be the stars, to thank them for letting us incorporate their lovely images into our tiny presses. I can't speak for the broader communities, but I will say that Graze has been incredibly fortunate to receive old favorites and brand new artwork from some amazing illustrators and photographers.

We're so thankful to these folks for their work, and this is a way to pay it forward and get those artists some visibility in a high-traffic, high-awesome place. Caroline Picard, of Green Lantern Press and Corpse Space , has been writing her superhero character, Fortuna, since , but Fortuna hasn't always been confined to the page.

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Picard has been known to don Fortuna's superhero ensemble and set up shop on Chicago street corners, looking forlorn, or hang posters around town desperately proclaiming Fortuna's greatness. She describes Fortuna as stricken by ennui. Picard took the time to chat with Book Club about the series, and about how Fortuna fits into the world we inhabit:. How has Fortuna changed or evolved since you created her? When I made the first Fortuna comic in , I was also doing performances where I'd go to public places, dressed up in Fortuna's costume, and sit for extended periods of time, without moving, trying to overwhelm myself with a static depression.

I remember concentrating on stillness in public everybody is always moving through public space --that seemed very interesting to me, just as my attempts to emanate sadness did. It felt like an inverse kind of peacocking, about failure or the anti-hero; obviously my costume added some dramatic flair, but otherwise I was totally unhysterical. Or sometimes, I would messily staple and tape carnival-style posters up in public, while wearing the same costume, announcing my character's greatness.

It seemed funny sort of. You know, like that phrase, "You say it so often it must be true;" if Fortuna really was the greatest super hero in the world, she probably wouldn't have to put up posters that told you so. I became curious about who Fortuna was, and comics created a mode for me to reflect on a self-generated, and sort of hokey alter ego. I was kind of embarrassed about her at first, but I liked that feeling.

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It was backwards--you'd think Superman would be embarrassed by Clark Kent, not vice versa. The last thing I wanted was for my family for instance to realize that I occasionally dressed up like a super hero to do nothing in public. Making comics about her was a way to expand and expose her mythology.

Is Fortuna's somber mood impacted by current events? I hadn't thought about it, actually. Since I've been making comics with her for four or five years, she doesn't feel timely exactly. She feels more like a I don't know, a psychic roommate. And there is so much inertia to her character; she is so passive. That said, there are real autobiographical elements she and I share; we live in the same apartment, for instance, and while I don't have a crocodile on my roof, I have lived with a wandering leak in the ceiling for about seven years. She does come out of a collective, probably American, climate though.

And there is some nowness to that I think. I can't shake this feeling that the world might end at any minute -- that the socioeconomic structure we've inherited and continue to perpetuate is doomed. Of course that's tied to the environment for me, but I find it mirrored in popular culture as well. Shows like Mad Men, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire all seem interested in excavating or exposing the death of male archetypal patriarchies and in every instance there seems to be an inherited tradition and the audience sympathizes with its protagonist for having to negotiate changes.

But those shows seem more about perpetuating those power structures than taking them apart. I feel those stories are actually more about reliving and propagating the past, returning to what is known and comfortable, than they are about it critique or proposing any positive future vision.

I want to tell a different kind of story. One with a female protagonist that isn't necessarily sexy or not sexy. I wanted to use Fortuna as a means of exploring alternate power structures, getting her to move out of a banal but exploitative job-situation. She's so much of a nobody in the world that she has the ability to explore hybridity -- her sidekick is a crocodile -- and destabilizing our anthropocentric orientation by befriending a mountain, for instance. Fortuna follows those trains of thought and the more she leaves a traditional lifestyle behind, the more comfortable she becomes wearing a cape, the happier and stronger she becomes.

In Bree Housley lost her childhood best friend, Shelly, to complications from preeclampsia, a potentially life-threatening disorder that occurs during pregnancy. Four years later, Housley and her sister started a blog, Fifty2 Resolutions , to chronicle their attempt to live life more like Shelly, a woman, Housley writes, with a "crazy, spontaneous crush on life. The resolutions, which include things like "woo a stranger" and "be a tourist at home", became the inspiration for Housley's memoir We Hope You Like This Song: While the blog was a sort of first-step toward healing, the book gave Housley a forum to dig deeper, to explore the meaning behind the resolutions and how they captured Shelly's spirit.

Watch the book trailer , buy the book. Opening with an old note written by Shelly explaining the songs compiled on a mix CD for Housley, the book is unavoidably sad. But Housley is careful to point out that its irreverence and emotional honesty make it a far cry from Beaches. WHYLTS is written in a conversational, often hilarious tone with loads of '80s and '90s pop culture references: So if we're going to do this, we gotta quit do-si-do-ing around the idea.

We've gotta grab it by the arms and swing it around like we're Johnny fucking Castle. Why should New York get all the single-girl-in-the-big-city stories? The local writers have sought to capture the essence of Windy City romance in the new four-part novel series Shy Town Girls. My co-authors and I wanted to capture the real essence of what it's like to be young, single, and dating in the city in the digital age. And with a thriving fashion, food and nightlife scene, Chicago's Gold Coast provided the perfect backdrop for the trials and tribulations of fictional characters Bobbie, Ivy, Meryl, and Ella, four working friends along with their sage landlady, Barbara who share more than just a brownstone apartment.

Leimkuehler, founder of the website Conquer the Edge , says she's always wanted to write a novel series, and when the opportunity to collaborate with Wilson, Yih and Clinesmith arose, she embraced it. Though they developed the overarching storyline and an outline for each book together, each author adopted a character and book. The authors funded the books through PubSlush , and the first is now available on Amazon. Enjoy cocktails, hors d'oevres, a raffle, and giveaways among funky fashions at the December 8 book launch party at Akira, W.

The event is free. Jotham Burello is the man behind the machine that is the humbly sized, award-winning independent press, Elephant Rock Books. This live-lit performance group has been connecting with audiences with honest, inspiring, reach-into-your-gut-because-they-are-so-damn-good, personal narratives for over ten years. Burello lets us in on the indie publishing game, how Chicago ranks as a player, what you might consider if deciding to go indie or go big, and what it was like to put together a book with 23 different writers.

What suggestions might you have for new indie publishers, or someone thinking about starting their own press? But if you're stubborn like me, pick reliable and smart partners, and the partners are the writers. I mean, you're going into business with this person. You want to have good work, but who are the people you're going to work with?

They have to want to promote their work. You cannot sit back and just expect your publishing company, or publicist to run it for you. You have to have a public face. So back to you're original question; picking the right partners is vital, but so is having a little luck. And take stock in utilizing your community. I think that's really important. In Chicago there are a lot of resources. Recently we went to the Brooklyn Book Festival.

Unlike some other conferences we've done in the past, the Brooklyn Book Fest--which was enormous--had something we don't always see at academic book fairs, and that is readers. At academic book everyone has a manuscript they want to sell you, but at the Brooklyn Book Fest you had people who just liked to read. I asked everyone who approached our table, "Are you a writer or a reader? You know, as a publisher, no one wants to see me at a reading--I don't sign anyone's books. That's all the writers' stuff.

It happened on an airplane just last week. I sold a copy of our new anthology to the guy sitting next to me. He logged onto Amazon and bought it right there. Then of course there's financial success. You have to have your eyes wide open as you go into it. The rewards sometimes are a little elusive when it's not measured right away in dollars and cents. Friday's event includes a reading and reception with award-winning author Luis Humberto Crosthwaite among others.

MAKE's managing editor and one of its founders Sarah Dodson, took a few moments to discuss what it's like behind the scenes of a literary magazine -- plus, she offers an insider's perspective on what magazines are looking for when they wade through submissions.

Seibold's referring to the recent collaboration between Agate and the Chicago Tribune to release a series of ebooks created from the newspaper's vast archive of news and feature stories, columns and photography. The Chicago Tribune Ebook Collection currently consists of 20 titles, among them The Best of Mary Schmich , a selection of the the Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist's favorite pieces; Charlie Trotter , the story of the world-famous chef's restaurant in Chicago; and The Rise of Rahm , which chronicles the ascent of the first non-Daley Chicago mayor in more than 20 years.

Damask Press , based in Chicago and Brooklyn, produces handmade poetry chapbooks and broadsheets, along with original art work. The press keeps design simple, with a special focus on attending to writers' vision for their work, and manages to produce thoughtful artifacts with a small staff and equally small budget. Last week, Damask's newest project, a chapbook by poet Ariana Nadia Nash , was released and just concluded a successful kickstarter campaign.

Nash's Our Blood Is Singing , Damask's fifth project, enjoyed typical attention from the press editors who work to make each chapbooks aesthetically appropriate for the work it showcases. Chicago based editor and co-founder, Toby Altman, took the time to discuss the small press process with us, from fielding solicitations from authors to book design:.

The work is sort of this post confessional feminist poetry, and it's really engaged with the questions of motherhood, thinking hard about what that kind of relationship means especially from the mother's point of view. She has a book coming out this fall, but this is work she'd been developing for a while.

Ariana approached us with a manuscript and we wanted to support the work she was doing. We worked with Ariana closely for two or three months, giving edits and cutting to tighten it up. We try to produce books that are also pieces of art, designed around the author's aesthetic and intellectual concern. There's a strong link between the artifact and the poems it contains. Ariana wanted a press that would pay that kind of special attention to her writing. Production was very simple for Our Blood is Singing. We only needed about a week to print the books.

The design process, though, was quite involved. We pride ourselves on working really closely with the poets. Ariana had a lot of ideas and we wanted to make sure they were reflected in the final product. In total, it took us about a month to do the lay out and bring it the press. Can you talk about the thought that went into designing some of your other chapbooks? Jacob Russell 's chapbook, Chronic, Chronos, Kairos , consists of set of six unbound cards in a letterpress envelope. It was printed using plates, so each etching is a little bit different, and every card has a drawing and a poem on the back.

The whole chapbook is this kind of long meditation on the ways in which time as we think of it comes unglued, or is originally unglued, so we thought it was important not to bind the poems in any one particular order in which you were forced to read them. We try to have an art component to the book and always make sure to bring in an artist from outside the press whose work complements the poetry.

Our goal is always to break even--it' never been about making money. We try to get our costs as low as possible and sell all the books we need to cover those costs before we release the book officially. Many presses will only give ten copies to their writers, but we give contributors a very high percentage of the run to have and sell. We provide the poets with this really nice thing that they can use to promote their work. The poets are the best advocates for their own work, so it's better that they get it out there.

We are not any kind of business. We're trying to figure out how to become a non-profit so we can accept grant money, so for the time being it's just us. We're creative about ways to raise money and keeping costs of books down. How has your connection to Chicago factored into your desire to become a small publisher?

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I've lived most of my life in Chicago, so most of what I know of the poetry world is based on what's happened to me here. My whole interest in doing this, and supporting the work of other poets comes from being a part of this city. Laura Pearson took on the role as TimeOut Chicago's Books Editor about a month ago, and was kind enough to take a few minutes to tell us about the job and what she's learned since starting.

As former editor of CAR Chicago Artist Resource , Pearson is familiar with working with artists, and as a freelancer herself, she gets the importance of an event listing or a book review in the life of a writer. What was it like coming into this role for you? Do you already have plans for the future of the Books section? He was actually the only book editor they ever had since starting in Chicago.

Jonathon did an amazing job with his coverage in general, and especially keeping on top of exciting Chicago literary news, authors, emerging publishers, reading series and all that. He's set up that legacy and I want to continue it. We want to shine the spotlight on Chicago. I don't just want to focus on fiction, but am planning to work non fiction, poetry, comics and short stories into the mix, too.

In the past it's been mostly fiction, partially because the bulk of my review copy is fiction. Soon I'll start to solicit other things. What have you learned about the process of getting a book reviewed since you started? I've learned so much about pitching, just noticing my own response to books I get in the mail. Anyone can learn the basic format stuff: You stick your press release in the book and you have to have the release date printed prominently at the top, with the specific date, not just the month.

Provide information about the author and blurbs never hurt. A huge thing is making sure you get it to the editor with plenty of time, and that means months before the book is scheduled for release. A lot of things I'm getting right now are for February It definitely helps an editor plan ahead. Also, follow up with an email but keep it relatively informal and to the point. How does it feel opening up envelopes with all these new titles on a daily basis? It's super fun opening the mail. Actually, it's the hardest and most fun part of the job.

The sheer volume of work coming in makes it hard, but it's so much fun to see the different things being written right now. Have you learned about many new Chicago presses since you started? There are some new Chicago presses. They make really tightly curated, pretty books. They're holding a book release and reading at the Corbett vs. And it's cool because the two books they're releasing are in conversation with each other but they're by two different authors. I love that I've been discovering so many more of these literary ventures.

But then, there's a weird dichotomy of working at a weekly--you find out about all these events but have less time to go to them. Do you see the literary scene as being at all changed since the City introduced the new Cultural Plan? It seems like its only going to expand and improve once the site redesign is complete. Concerning the Cultural Plan itself, we have to wait and see. A lot of it sounds good on the page but we just have to carry on and see what happens.

I want the literary culture here to be recognized, but things will continue on without the plan. It wasn't this big game changer. I was bummed when ChicagoPublishes and the Publishers Gallery was discontinued because it's important to make our writing visible to tourists. I have hope that the city will recognize the literary scene again. What's the weirdest literary job you've ever had? I was a media escort at Midwest Media. Basically, you pick authors up and drive them around town to bookstores to do signings and to literary events.

I met Etgar Keret, during story week. His plane was coming in late, and during in rush hour. Plus, it was in the middle of StoryWeek. Everyone was really good sports about it all, but it was little stressful. He was awesome, really nice and friendly. In fact, when started the job I was warned that that there'd be authors I admired who would be difficult. I prepared myself but it never happened. No one was ever outwardly rude. People appreciate having someone show them the literary scene. Hyde Park resident Blue Balliett has a new book coming out this fall under Scholastic, and although she isn't yet free to discuss the specifics of her new creation, she was most willing to tell us about her writing life.

And it's one to learn from as she's found great success as a New York Times Best Seller for her first Novel Chasing Vermeer , and great success with the others , too:. I do a couple of years of extensive reading, poking around before each books. Are there things you keep in mind as you're writing that you think might benefit other writers, too?

The one thing I try to keep in mind all the time when I'm writing is to make sure every detail has a reason to be in the story. You want to show people what's important through what characters are doing; what's going on will show who that person is. It's the idea of showing instead of telling, and that's why all of your details must matter. That's always one of the hardest one of the hardest things to remember because you get excited about throwing a twinkly detail in. The potluck style dinner begins at the Logan Square Farmers Market at 10am where participants meet Graze staff and can grab a free cup of Bang Bang 's coffee.

Graze asks that all of the food that appears at the potluck be predominantly sourced from the farmer's market, holding true to its tag line, farm. Bang Bang is offering up its own contribution to the potluck for dessert, plus there's music from Poor Elvis starting at 5pm in the shop. In time for the event, for which there are still tickets available!! Though this is the fifth event Graze has hosted in our short lifespan, it's actually the first one we came up with after dreaming up the idea of Graze. It just seemed so lovely to attend a dinner, surrounded by like-minded people, listening to music and enjoying the outdoors.

There is so much red tape to slash through to host an outdoor event unless it's held on private property. After getting a taste of Bang Bang Pie Shop's rhubarb pie this spring, I started following them on Instagram, where they posted a photo of this pristine backyard filled with bright red picnic tables. When Dave and Michael and Megan actually agreed to host our event there and make a custom dessert for our guests, we went just a little bit nuts with excitement.

And then to have our search for a heartfelt bluegrass band result in Poor Elvis, we knew that this vision we'd had from the get-go was going to come to fruition. How does this capture the meaning of Graze's mission? Hosting an event with such a focus on localism, down to one specific neighborhood Logan Square , is also really energizing--to see this much activity surrounding such an important topic with global implications feels really great. Graze's unofficial tagline is farm, feast, feelings. This particular event seems to sum up those ideas quite nicely.

It seems to me that the idea of a potluck is especially appropriate to Graze. Different food preferences, histories, etc. Is there something to that, or was this the most viable option planning wise? It's actually quite difficult to plan, since we're relying on guests to bring the central element--the food! The risk is definitely worth it. We're looking forward to getting to know a little bit about each guest through the dishes they bring. We try to bring a variety of experiences, histories, and viewpoints to the content of Graze, and in a way, we're trying to do that at a big red picnic table at this event.

What is it about food that inspires writing in your opinion? Every single person on this planet needs to consume food in order to survive--its larger purpose is universal. But it also has implications for the personal, for the very specific. Because of that, food affects everything from politics, to child-rearing, to economics, to literature, to love, even.

Why did the waiter's union strike in Chicago in the s go largely unnoticed, and does that have implications for an understanding of labor unions in Chicago and the United States today? Do you remember what you ate on the night you decided to leave your husband? If the subject of food inspires either emotion or reason, and we believe it inspires both, it is worth writing about, and thinking about, in community. Graze is very much a niche publication. What makes a special interest publication like this work?

On the creative side, it's worked incredibly well to be able to present a very specific prompt to our submitters. It's really edifying to see how many writers really get our about-food-but-not-about-food focus, and we've delighted in reading the hundreds of pieces we've gotten over the last four months alone. On the business side, being a special interest publication means that we have a very targeted demographic that we can attract through our events--which support the funding of Graze--and our product. What went into solidifying your concept and making it a functional platform for writers?

A lot of late-night brainstorming meetings, and a lot of coffee. We're still working hard to solidify what we talk about when we talk about food. We hope we can continue to offer a space for writers who care about these topics as much as we do--art, culture, love, sex, family, economics, etc. In many ways, food is simply Graze's organizing principle to talk about the bigger issues.

We want to give writers and visual artists a chance to tease out all of that in our pages. And at our events, for that matter. We see the Graze events as a really integral part of the conversation. People read the magazine, sure, but community is also built by getting together and physically occupying the same space, which is hard to do inside the pages of a magazine.

We hope that there's a platform for writers as well as non-writers, who want to take part in this larger food and cultural conversation and movement. Do you have any advice for a writer looking to specialize in a particular topic, food or otherwise? That's really hard to answer, especially since I would say that Graze isn't necessarily a publication designed to showcase food writers, in the traditional sense.

I think the best submissions we've read bring some knowledge of food basics, sure, but there's that emotional and symbolic component of the food--the way the food is used as a literary element instead of a subject--that really excites us and feels particularly Graze-y. It makes the scientific and classically trained knowledge of food less important than an understanding of food through one's experiences and history. But as far as food writing advice goes, in July, we hosted a two-hour-long discussion panel among eight spectacular Chicago-based food writers, and this topic came up.

The best way to express something to a reader is to learn as much as you can about it, and that means you might need to eat fermented fish paste or slaughter a deer. All in the name of the craft of writing, of course! The concentrated block of browsable aisles from previous years was scrapped for a random arrangement spread across the furthest wall of the Stephens Convention Center, possibly in an effort to make room for all the merch and celebrities.

With this in mind, I ventured out to Con on its last day in town to chat with the artists who'd paid for a table along the long, lonely stretch of Artists Alley. I expected some desperation, desertion and maybe even some discounts. The following encounters shed light on the insights of the unsigned, the overlooked and the independent makers of Chicago's Wizard World Comic Con.

Make Moves Entering the convention I made b-line for the few remaining rows actually selling comics and quickly spotted the amazing work of Chicago's Sarah Becan and her table mate Eliza Frye. Chatting with them, I learned they'd managed to relocate to a better booth on the fourth and final day.

They both agreed the last minute change up was the worth the higher profile spot, even though it meant the organizers now required Frye to stick impromptu pasties on her screen printed nudes. Had the two stayed at their originally assigned spot--the last booth in farthest corner of the Alley--no one would've noticed or complained. Anne Elizabeth Moore, local writer, critic, and comics maker took some time to discuss her new book Hip Hop Apsara: Moore is well known for her book Cambodian Grrrrl: Self Publishing in Phnom Penh , a journalistic account of Moore's experience teaching self-publishing techniques to the first generation of university women in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

She's also the creator of the Adventure School for Ladies , which she bills as an experimental graduate program in which students explore gender politics, cultural production, and related social divisions with the "top ladylike scholars in the field of adventure studies. Hip Hop Apsara features a different type of documentation alongside the text Moore is so adept in writing; photography. The collection offers a portrait of life in Phnom Pehn after dark, primarily focusing on the dance scene, which she says captures the developing middle class in action.

The essays that accompany those images grapple with notions of public and private space, mourning and remembering the past, and economic uncertainty. Moore spoke with me about her new book as it was inspired by Cambodian Grrrl , her little known life as a photographer, and a bit about her experience with publishing houses large and small. Moore also addressed her fascination with economics and sociological study as the foundation of many of her projects, plus her propensity to make a Project out of anything that moves. This book she says is an exercise in stepping away from that, of letting the subject matter speak.

The format of your new book is unusual as it joins imagery of Phnom Penh and essays. I say unusual because it strikes me that neither element is necessarily more important than the other. How did you approach structuring the book given the duality of the mediums? Did being a comics artist influence this choice? A lot of people don't know that I trained as a photographer -- a darkroom printer, actually -- although by the time I got my BFA I had been writing and publishing for years. And I actually had started adding text to images and printing these massive photographic prints in a series, until someone said, what an expensive way to make a book!

And I was like oh, yeah, there's this other thing that I do better than this that is less time consuming and annoying than photography. Then my camera got stolen and I basically didn't get another one until I started spending time in Cambodia after I think photographically anyway, and I write in response to images, I just usually don't make the images, or I don't make the images public. And that -- well, for one, I'm not really a comics artist, I'm a comics critic but I use the medium of comics to communicate this criticism -- but I'm good with comics because I think image and text can be equally important.

Without being overly reliant on each other. Putting the book together was pretty fun for that reason, too. Going in I had this very hard sense of, you know: It must convey fact! There will be footnotes! Like a journalist, right? But as I started to construct a logic purely from the visuals, I got to tell a different kind of story. And that's really where the essay came in. It was a way of responding to the last five years I've been spending time and thinking about this amazing place without having to report or convey details.

It feels really important, and I think in a way it gives a much better sense of what's so amazing about this place -- but also about people -- than anything more journalistic I've done. Robert Hellenga, author of six novels including his debut national bestseller The Sixteen Pleasures , will be celebrating his birthday on Aug. Consider this interview a small birthday celebration of this very accomplished Midwesterner. The novel takes place in Florence circa , when the Arno River flooded the city and destroyed an immense amount of art, books, homes, and relics.

The protagonist, Margot Harrington, a book conservator at the Newberry Library, flies to Florence to lend a hand. There she stumbles upon a hidden copy of The Aretino , a book of erotic poems and drawings essentially the first Kama Sutra , unscathed in the flood, much to the chagrin of the Church. Her trip takes a sudden turn toward adventure.

StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit that gives average citizens a chance to share their anything-but-average stories. One-on-one interviews allow people to ask silly, interesting, challenging questions of an important person in their lives, and then sit back and enjoy the process of learning from the answers. Now's your chance to be a part of the storytelling. RSVP and attend one of the recording sessions when they drop anchor in town from August September 16 with two locations.

Participation is free but RSVP and a credit card for holding the reservation are required. Register online or by calling Glenn Greenwald is a political and legal columnist, blogger, and former Constitutional and civil rights litigator. He has written several books including his newest book, With Liberty and Justice for Some , won an Online Journalism Award in for Best Commentary for his coverage of the arrest of Bradley Manning, and regularly contributes to Salon.

I talked to him after his speech at the Socialism Conference, " Challenging the US Surveillance State ," and we discussed his book, government monitoring in everyday life, living part-time in a foreign country, and his thoughts on Chicago's mayor. Your speech was about what you call "The Surveillance State" - could you sum that up and give a few examples?

Yeah, it's just basically the conglomeration of government agencies and corporations which are in the business of gathering and collecting information about citizens, and what they say and what they do. And it can be anything from programs to eavesdrop on people's telephone conversations to storing their email communications to information about with whom they're communicating or [where] they're spending their money, where they go, those kinds of things. Here in the Second City, there is a flourishing storytelling community formed of writers, comedians, actors, and just people with a personal tale to tell.

The New York Times covered this new art form recently , and just like New York but better , Chicago's storytelling scene is booming with shows and readings most every night of the week throughout the city. Shannon Cason is a veterans of this small scene, both as a storyteller and show producer. The ease and confidence with which he told his stories is magnetic. When I sat down with Cason, we talked about storytelling as bravery. Many storytellers get the best response when they tell personal, heart-wrenching, or embarrassing stories--the stuff that makes a listener simultaneously cringe and relate--and for the most part, these tales are shared with complete strangers.

Cason credits Chicago's story scene to the city's "low tolerance for B. The support of the Chicago storytelling community, he said, and the lack of competition compared to that felt among his comedian cohorts, doesn't hurt either. Cason got his start in storytelling when he attended Story Club , a long standing live literature show at Uncommon Ground produced by Dana Norris. He, along with fellow storytelling veteran, Scott Whitehair, founded and co-produce the show Do Not Submit. DNS is a storytelling open mic, but unlike many, it is an opportunity for storytellers to experiment with a piece or a rough draft and engage a small audience.

It's also an opportunity for first-time storytellers who may not be ready for a massive audience, to get up and test the waters. Cason and Whitehair connected one night in a bar and just like that Do Not Submit was born. Both have a lot of stand-up comedy experience throughout Chicago and lamented the abundance of amateur open mic nights for comedy, while storytelling open mics were only for readers and writers who had fully fleshed out pieces for performance.

Do Not Submit is hosted upstairs at Trace at N. The next shows are set for Monday, July 23 and Monday, August Check out where you can find Cason's upcoming events here. Joe Meno is back with another helping of fiction with his newest book, Office Girl. Meno, a Chicago-based author and teacher who has penned works like Hairstyles of the Damned and The Great Perhaps , will be holding a book release this Thursday, June The event is sponsored by Anobium magazine and the Handshake magazine.

Meno set aside time to answer some questions ranging from being a teacher to the manner of his promotion of Office Girl. What was different for you, be it in your process, writing, or editing with this new book compared to any previous work? Over the last decade or so, I've begun to think about what you can do in a novel that you can't do in other narrative forms. The most obvious answer is scale--novels can be more complex, more ambitious, with more characters, covering a greater length of narrative time, hundreds of years, in some cases.

We've seen how the majority of contemporary literary novels exploit this idea, and how, over the course of the last 20 years, novels have become more about information--how the world works--than about characters. I wanted to write a book about the small, nearly imperceptible moments of drama in a character's life, which is something most films, television shows or stage plays usually don't try to relate, a book focused on two characters and their relationships over the course of a few weeks. The novel also employs drawings and photographs to help capture the intimate tone of the book, as drawings and photographs are usually concerned with those small, singular moments.

In the end, the book resembles something like mid-Sixties Jean Luc Godard movie, which was the exact aesthetic we were trying to create. This is the second installment of A Slice of CAKE, a two-part series spotlighting a local artist participating in the festival. For more insider perspectives attend the festival and enter the world of comics through panels, discussions and exhibiting artists including local, national and Canadian self publishers, professionals and educators.

In this interview, we welcome Jeffrey Brown , minicomics expert and Chicago mainstay. His works include autobiographical novels like Clumsy and Little Things , published by Top Shelf Productions. Brown teaches once a semester at his alma matter, the School of the Art Institute. He lives in Chicago with his wife and son a likely inspiration for his newest work, Darth Vader and Son. As part of CAKE's programming on June 17, Brown will be leading a workshop in which he'll draw a mini comic in one hour. His new work Darth Vader and Son will be available at his expo table. I had a chance to talk with Brown about his impressions on the growth of the Chicago comics community, his thoughts on being part of festivals, and any advice he can impart on young artists.

What do these workshops do to help build a relationship with your fans? I had a lot of fun doing the workshop at Zine fest, it's a challenge. What's really great is being able to talk to the audience on a very casual level, show them part of my process firsthand, and let them become part of that process. It feels less like a "talk" and more like hanging out.

It will be a weekend full of chances to enjoy the world of comics through panels, discussions and, of course, the expo component. The range of guests includes self publishers, professionals and educators. This column, A Slice of CAKE, will come in two parts, both spotlighting a different artist who will be exhibiting at the expo. First up is comics artist Marian Runk , a Texas-raised Midwest transplant who has taken up residency in Chicago for over a decade now. Runk is settling in, bird watching, working in the public health field, and emerging as a name in the comics community.

She will also debut her new comic, The Magic Hedge 2, at the tabling portion of the expo. I had a chance to chat with her about her process, her new issue, and her passion for her work. Your work draws on personal experience, focusing on simplification and reduction, which help to connect with the reader. How did you come to use this process? I think both memoir and comics are great vehicles for introducing readers to characters and topics they don't always think they want to meet.

My first year of grad school, I made a life-sized comics panel that expressed anger at my mom's unwillingness to talk to me about my queer "lifestyle. One of my straight male classmates said "I sat in the chair and thought about all the things my family disapproves of in my life. Humor is that other huge thing that can disarm your reader and allow this to happen. Laughing with someone allows you to share their experience for a moment.

Gary Krist's latest book City of Scoundrels: His book covers the 12 days in Chicago in when a blimp crash in the Loop, the murder of a little girl, transit strikes, and a flurry of race riots sent the city into frenzy. In the early 's things were changing across America as a whole. Why did you choose Chicago as a focus for this change? I'm really interested in big cities and how they change over time, how they evolve, because it's always a very tumultuous, almost Darwinian process with groups being in competition with each other.

I wanted to look at it as almost a test case of the whole American idea of can we build a Democratic society based on this collection of people of all colors, races, creeds, nationalities. And so the question was, could this group of people from all over the world come together and put aside racial hatreds, put aside ethnic hatreds, and cultural differences, and build the city into an economic powerhouse.

We know now that the answer is yes, but there were times as in when it looked like the experiment was not going to work. Your previous book The White Cascade focused on the early 's as well. Is there a particular fascination with this time period? I think of this era, the Progressive Era, the first two decades of the twentieth century as really being the adolescence of modernity. Technologically I think it was an adolescence, and also socially. I think cities were growing and they were growing faster than they could really adapt. That's what really interests me about this era. It really seems that change is happening so quickly and our ability to control the change has not gotten there yet so you get all kinds of excitement.

Why did you decide to make Chicago's mayor William Hale Thompson, or Big Bill as he was known, the focus of your book? First of all, he is God's gift to any narrative history; he is just so colorful, so corrupt, with the big cowboy hat, and he was the leader of the city. I think he represented the force by which the city's various groups were going to have to accommodate each other. He was a master at getting groups that should not be on the same side on the same side. A city has to change, and his changes of course were superficial, more often than not.

Big Bill had his good and bad parts in shaping Chicago. But, what part do you think Big Bill played during those 12 days? I think the mayor's performance was bad during the crisis, but he really aced the recovery from the crisis. Because of the resolution of both the transit strike and the race riot investigation by Governor Lowden and by the Democratic States Attorney-they both just made a hash of the recovery, and Big Bill was able to use the resulting outrage to build a powerbase.

So this created another upset among commuters and people who have to get to work. Big Bill was able to take advantage of that with his "save the five cent fare. How do you think Big Bill's reaction or lack there of, affected how people in Chicago reacted to these 12 days? He was a charmer and he was very interested in distraction, so he was able to distract people and say, look the Chicago Plan ordinances. He arranged for that ceremony to sign one of the important Chicago Plan ordinances on the day the riot ended. So, he knew that what he had to do was get peoples' minds on something else. He was a master of doing that.

Your book has some pretty extensive historical sources. How difficult was it to find the testimonies and witness accounts of these 12 days? I spent a lot of time at the Chicago History Museum research center, the Newberry Library, and reading the newspaper microfilm. I'm always looking for specifics because I'm a narrative historian; I have to bring scenes to life. I'm always looking for somebody describing the scene, actually quoting what was actually said, what the room looked like, so I'm constantly looking for that kind of detail.

It is, but, having written novels and short stories, fiction, I was really sensitive to, I have to bring this alive and the thing you need to bring it alive is concrete detail. And since you can't really make it up, I have to find that in a historical record. When you started doing research for this book, what findings inspired you the most?

And how did this shape the way you wrote the book? I was most inspired by the whole idea of the plan of Chicago. This idea that you can take a city that had grown up very chaotically and marshal the support in the city to do this thing, to remake the city from top to bottom to make it better. In the end do you think Bill Big helped shape Chicago to make it what it is today? And if he did, what part did he have in it? I think he was both good news and bad news for Chicago, perhaps more bad news than good news. He allowed crime to flourish in the city, which gave Chicago this reputation as a gangster town that it still really has in certain places.