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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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by Donald G. Evans

Happy holidays. January 1 is a somewhat arbitrary marking point—we don’t really stop there and begin again here. We just keep going. But everything does slow down around this time of the year. “Hello, I am currently away until…” “administrative offices are closed.” “I am largely offline, spending time with my family.” When all the banks and schools and post offices…

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by Donald G. Evans

Scott Turow speaks in fully formed, piercing sentences, so much so that if his off-the-cuff remarks were transcribed, they would read like polished prose.

I’ve seen him deliver truly delightful and smart lectures, pitch perfect down to deliberate pauses, with nary a notecard in sight. He is a writer and attorney—a sentence that, while true,…

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On Saturday and Sunday, September 9 and 10, Printers Row becomes all about literature. The free outdoor gathering, now in its 38th year, features author and book events in multiple locations starting at 10 a.m. each morning and going until 6 p.m. Practically the entire neighborhood is blocked to traffic to accommodate the 38th Annual Printers Row Lit Fest. Used and new book vendors, publishers,…

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by Jesse Raber

Chicago’s literary history, according to most accounts, begins around 1893. The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s earliest writers, such as Jane Addams, Henry Blake Fuller, and Carl Sandburg, started publishing around that time, with Fuller’s 1893 novel The Cliff-Dwellers sometimes cited as the first significant work of Chicago literature. Along with writers like…

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