Nantucket

Smothered in January, all of the boats are leaving;
by and large, they have better places to be.
The whalers and fishermen are deserting the harbor,
leaving their rods and harpoons up on the wharf
as they voyage through the cold saltwater smog.

The boathouses are empty, reeking with silence,
under the weight of twenty years of snow—
twenty…

read more

By Kait Harland

Book lovers in the Chicago area will want to mark their calendars for 12:45 p.m. on May 19 for a powerful panel titled “Worlds and Words of Chicago: Immigrant Stories.” Presented by the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame (CLHOF) as a part of the second ever American Writers Festival, this panel will be centered around a discussion of immigrant experiences in Chicago,…

read more

by Carlos Cumpián

Edmund Donald Two-Rivers Broeffle was born on June 29, 1945 to Nancy Johnson Broeffle. They lived with relatives on the 55,000-square-mile Anishinaabemowin-speaking Ojibway treaty lands of the Canadian Seine River Reserve in Sapawe, Ontario. He and his siblings grew up guided by their Grandmother Minnie and uncle Robert Johnson. He was raised with traditional activities such as hunting, wild berry-picking and fishing, always…

read more

by Christine Holbo

For a bright moment, a decade or so around the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Chicago was the capital city of modernity, a place to which observers from around the world looked for a glimpse of the future. This had something to do with Chicago’s position at the hub of America’s continent-spanning railway system and its status as…

read more

by Donald G. Evans

In the course of researching and writing Chicago and the Making of American Modernism: Cather, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald in Conflict, Michelle Moore closely read important Midwestern authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald. She conducted a disciplined, granular investigation into every imaginable source material that informed the literature. She spent countless hours thinking about the stories and their authors, considering, from…

read more

By Donald G. Evans

Even before you enter Colvin House, the beauty stops you. At least that was the way it was for me. Elegant doesn’t quite do it justice, although it is that. Interesting, for sure. Stately. A certain Chicago character reflects off the yellow bricks and symmetrical trimming. Your eyes seem to take it in at once, but then as you scan…

read more

by Donald G. Evans

When I arrived at Rita Dragonette’s North Lake Shore Drive condominium last February, I found her anxious. The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s first in-person cocktail fundraiser started in an hour, and in total about 40 people were expected. I’d known Rita about five years. She’s a warm, wry confident woman. She easily joins conversations, even…

read more

Michael Burke and Robert Charles are quintessential community builders. If you don’t know them, you know people who do. You see them at a wide variety of Chicago cultural events – theater, music, dance, art, sports, and other fun happenings. They’re staples at nonprofit fundraisers. You might run

into them at local Edgewater favorites Mas Alla…

read more

by Donald G. Evans

Chicago provides a fertile landscape for literature, perhaps even more in the 1920s than now. The considerable body of literature set in that era includes Beer Wars, flappers, jazz and blues, and all other celebrated aspects of that post-War, pre-Depression historical time. But the best historical novels seek a higher ground, often exploring the rich tapestry of struggle beneath the gay…

read more