By Donald G. Evans Al DeGenova writes poetry in a shed he built himself (“every nail and screw”), out back of his second home in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, where he has long been associated with the Clearing Folk School. Al fell in love with Door County even earlier than that first…

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By Donald G. Evans   The Summer 2020 Chicago Fit/Lit Challenge July 13–Aug. 17, 2020 Middle Schoolers and High Schoolers (maybe adults, too—if you are interested, contact me) Through Zoom and Discord. Site visits are self-guided. (Make it a family outing).  $75; Register…

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By Randall Albers Recent events have rendered our nation’s history of racism highly visible—once again. Of course, for those families losing loved ones in Chicago and elsewhere, and for those who daily walk the streets fearing violence, the pain of racism is and always has been a…

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By Donald G. Evans Joe Meno quietly, relentless produces literature of dazzling variety and ferocity. Big, important novels. Serial comic strips. Anthologies. Pop culture explorations. Experimental stories. Plays. Even a musical. He often—I’m not kidding, often—gets compared…

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By Donald G. Evans When you hear the phrase, “How the sausage is made,” it’s usually in the vicinity of another phrase: “You don’t want to know.” The insinuation is that it’s messy, unsanitary, and the organs that get ground together would appall us. With…

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By Donald G. Evans Literary prizes mean something only when they come from a place of absolute integrity. The Pulitzer Prize started to mean something 70 years ago today when Gwendolyn Brooks became the first Black author to capture the prize. This was 1950 and the collection was Annie Allen. It…

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By Donald G. Evans It’s HARD to make a living selling books. The behemoth companies like Amazon do what they do based on volume, millions and millions and millions of little profits that add up to a lot. It’s a nameless, faceless, bottom-line approach that results, for us, in cheaper…

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by Anne Calcagno Herman “Hache” (H.G.) Carrillo lived and worked throughout the eighties and nineties in Chicago.  His multiply-awarded, thematically ambitious and linguistically inventive novel Loosing My Espanish, published in 2004 (Pantheon Books), is pinioned in a Chicago…

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by Donald G. Evans The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s 2019 class is now official, and Gene Wolfe, Frank London Brown, Carlos Cortez, and Jeannette Howard Foster have been selected to join the ranks of our city’s finest writers. This will be the 10th CLHOF class. The induction ceremony…

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