A Look Ahead at Chicago Lit: October

by Allison Manley

Start your month with Nuestros Corazones Literarios (Our Literary Hearts): A Latino and Latina Chicago Writers Showcase. Carlos Cumpián, friend to the Hall of Fame, emcees this event, which features writers Angelica Julia Dávila, Miguel Marazana, and Paul Martínez Pompa. We’re excited to work with 18th Street Casa de Cultura (2057 W 18th St). Their work is “dedicated to honoring and cultivating the legacy of cultural and artistic expression rooted in generational practices of Chicago’s Mexicano - Latino community” and we can’t wait to take part on Thursday, October 2 at 7 p.m. The host is charming, the writers are talented, and the space is delightful. Learn more here, and register here.

Then on Monday, October 20 at 6:30 p.m., join us as we honor Jackie Taylor, this year’s recipient of the Fuller Award. In addition to being a prolific writer of musicals, poems, and other genres, Taylor also founded the Black Ensemble Theatre. Like all Fuller Award recipients, Taylor’s accomplishments are too abundant to list in a short paragraph. We’ll hear from speakers Daryl Brooks, Lydia R. Diamond, Harvey Young, and Haki Madhubuti (who received the Fuller Award in 2015). We’ll be at the Black Ensemble Theater (4450 N Clark St). Learn more here, and register here.

At the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, we like history, writing, and Chicago itself. Ida B. Wells (Chicago Literary Hall of Fame 2015) is an important figure for all three. The Light of Truth, the large, impressive monument dedicated to Wells, is the subject of Rena Segal’s documentary The Light of Truth: Richard Hunt’s Monument to Ida B. Wells. The documentary is about Hunt’s sculpture and career as well as Wells herself. You have two chances to see this documentary, which won the Audience Choice Award for Documentary Film at the Chicago International Film Festival: Saturday, October 4 at 12:30 p.m. & Monday, October 6, 6 p.m. Director Rena Segal will be in attendance both nights. Purchase tickets and learn more at the Gene Siskel Film Center website here.

Join the Edgewater Historical Society and Museum for a discussion of Saul Bellow’s book The Adventures of Augie March. Bellow (Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, 2010) named his title character after the street of his childhood home on Augusta Boulevard. Chat about this classic work of Chicago literature on Saturday, October 11, 10 a.m. at the Edgewater Branch of Chicago Public Library (6000 N Broadway). Learn more about the book discussion group here.

StoryStudio continues its monthly genre series with a month of horror-themed events. The kickoff Horror Edition Panel takes place October 7 at 7 p.m. at Women and Children First (5233 N Clark St), and it’s free! Horror writers Cynthia Pelayo, Gus Moreno, Nick Medina, and Tatiana Schlote-Bonne will discuss their work in a panel moderated by Puloma Ghosh. (Ghosh’s short story collection Mouth is a fantastic collection, and it also gave me the best title of any book review I’ve ever written: “Crawling Into Puloma Ghosh’s Mouth”.) Learn more about the panel here. Their RSVPs are sold out, but stop by anyway to get a glimpse of the horror writing community.

My jaw dropped when I saw that there are Edward Gorey events in Chicago this year. Gorey grew up in the Chicago suburbs and spent his life producing poetry and art that defy categorization. I grew up skimming the crosshatched drawings and curious little rhymes in Amphigorey and Amphigorey II, and Gorey’s inscrutable short The Doubtful Guest inspired my undergraduate thesis. Artists Book House will host a Gorey event both in October, then an open house later this year in December. They’ve also launched a Gorey-themed journal, Goreyesque, which you can read here. On Saturday, October 25 at 5 p.m. in Highland Park, celebrate Gorey’s centennial and help the organization fund its building renovations by attending A Goreyesque Gala. Learn more here, and purchase tickets here.

When I look up recipes online, I just want the basics. But when I look at cookbooks, I’m a maximalist: I want context and history, I want commentary and personality, and I want photos of food so gorgeous that I want to rip them out and frame them. Erica Kubrick checked all these boxes in her religion-and-cheese concoction Cheese Sex Death, and she’s at it again in Cheese Magic, another cheese-focused cookbook that puts a witchy spin on cheese. On Saturday October 18 at 3 p.m. at Sideshow Gallery (2219 N Western Ave), join Kubik and her witchy, cheesy friends for the Cheese Magic Book Launch Party and Market. Learn more here and RSVP here.

Horror and religion is on the menu this month. The American Writers Museum is hosting a panel as part of their American Prophets series, and this month’s event is Horror Writing and Religion. How apt that they invited three horror icons to this event: Tananarive Due, Matt Ruff, and Northwestern professor Juan Martinez. While the event is hosted by the American Writers Museum, the event itself takes place at the University of Chicago Divinity School at 1025 E 58th St. The event takes place Friday, October 10 at 6:30pm. Learn more here and purchase tickets here. 

The University of Chicago is offering nearly a dozen events as part of its Art and Humanities day on Saturday, October 18. Despite recent changes to the school’s humanities programs, it’s good to see that they are still able to offer this great program, which gives the public a chance to engage with UChicago’s broader educational mission. Some of the guests include big names in literature such as Amitav Ghosh, Roxane Gay, Steven Pinker, and Gary Shteyngart. The events take place in different spots on campus, so learn more about the roster of events here to get the times and details. 

And that same evening, stop by the Arts in the Dark Parade. The parade is Saturday, October 18. The festivities start at 6 p.m. at State and Lake, then move along State Street to Van Buren. It’s a family friendly event celebrating Halloween as the “artist’s holiday,” and the parade is now in its 11th year. Expect big crowds - there have been 100,000 attendees in the past, and this year is sure to have similar numbers! Learn more about the parade here.

On Thursday, October 9 at 7 p.m., acclaimed poet and essayist Ross Gay stops by Dominican University’s Parmer Hall (7900 Division St, River Forest, 60305) for the Annual Caesar and Patricia Tabet Poetry Reading. Gay’s recent writing is inspiring, and while the event is poetry-focused, I think of Gay as a hybrid writer who writes in multiple genres and whose work falls under multiple genres. His short essay “How I overcame my fear of touching and learned to love the hug again” is worth a read. I usually close my professional emails with “Warmly, Allison,” and based on some of his writings, which focus on joy, gratitude, and delight, I wonder if Gay does the same. Learn more here and purchase tickets here.

Since writing this monthly feature, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the sheer number of literary festivals that take place in this city, in different neighborhoods, with different themes. A new festival lands on the lit scene this month: the Pretty Good Fest, described as “a comics & small press festival in Chicago for cartoonists, small press publishers, book artists, and zine-makers.” The list of vendors is a doozy! Among the attendees is SAIC faculty member and comics artist Conor Stechschulte, whose series Generous Bosom was very recently recommended by Art Spiegelman in a Zoom talk just a few days ago. The fest takes place Saturday, October 4th, 2025 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Chicago Athletic Association (12 S Michigan Ave). Bring cash if you can. Learn more about the pretty good fest Pretty Good Fest here.

If you can’t attend any of these events, then at the very least you can read Carl Sandburg’s poem “Theme in Yellow” on the Poetry Foundation website. It’s a short poem from the point of view of a pumpkins, and it is delightful. 

Are there events we should feature for November? Feel free to let us know at newswire@chicagoliteraryhof.org. Thanks for reading – we’ll see you at these events in October. 

Allison Manley writes short stories and book reviews, and works at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been published in The Chicago Reader, Third Coast Review, the Southern Review of Books, Oyez Review, Not Deer Magazine, and The Gateway Review. She is an Associate Board member of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.