Thursday, February 15, 2024
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…
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
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
Mike and Robert. (Photo by Laurie Proffitt).into them at local Edgewater favorites Mas Alla…
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
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…
Monday, January 1, 2024
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…
Sunday, September 24, 2023
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.
(Photo by David Joel)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,…
Monday, September 4, 2023
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,…
Sunday, June 4, 2023
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…
Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Writers, contrary to Hollywood stereotypes, do not materialize in a magical poof, or rise to prominence on the wings of talent alone. Becoming a serious, productive writer requires labor, learning, grit, determination. And support. There is perhaps no apprenticeship longer than that which the average writer undergoes. So much reading. So many drafts to critique and be critiqued. So…
Thursday, April 27, 2023
[June 12, 2004—Present]
Owner: Suzy Takacs
Location: 4736 N. Lincoln Avenue
Neighborhood: Lincoln Square
Independent Bookstore Day Specials: Booksellers tote bags for sale; big balloon photo op; drawings for discounts; free popcorn.
by Donald G. Evans
Books and wine. A simple enough concept, but nobody else had done it, was…
Monday, April 10, 2023
by Floyd Sullivan
An aging writer wishes to end his days alone on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland. Work becomes difficult; walking becomes difficult. His son seems to be concerned for his safety, but only out of perceived filial duty. A young woman, a solitary traveler, appears on the island and needs shelter from a storm. In the end it is she…
Chicago Literary Hall of Fame
Email: Don Evans
4043 N. Ravenswood Ave., #222
Chicago, IL 60613
773.414.2603
