Past Events

The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame hosted its end-of-the-year Fundraiser Party on Saturday, December 3 from 2-4 p.m. at Roscoe Village’s Beat Kitchen, “home to every genre of music, hosting some of the biggest names in live music & comedy.”

The Fundraiser Party was a perfect opportunity to celebrate the season while supporting an organization that organizes events and programming to honor, preserve, and celebrate Chicago's great literary heritage, as well as to help foster new voices.

There were light appetizers, a cash bar, lots of mingling and throughout the afternoon, there were many chances to win prizes. The event culminated with a LIVE AUCTION hosted by Nelson Algren Award winner for fiction and friend of the CLHOF billy lombardo.

Leading up to the event, the CLHOF hosted an ONLINE SILENT AUCTION.

Thanks to all the organizations whose donations made this such a successful afternoon:105F, After Hours Press, Alla Vita, BMO Harris Bank, Broadway Antique Market, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Writers Association, City Lit Theater Company, Eckartz Press, Escape Artistry, First Folio Theatre, Float Sixty, Greater Reach Consulting, Joffrey Ballet, Kohl Children's Museum, La Scarola, May I Have This Dance, Metro Chicago, Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, Music of the Baroque, Northwestern University Press, Paper Craft Panda, Peterson Picture Company, Roots Pizza, StoryStudio Chicago, Third World Press Foundation & Bookstore, Women & Children First Bookstore.

Special thanks, too, to the writers and artists who donated items to the auction: Randy Albers, Anne Marie-Akin, Barry Benson, Giano Cromley, Steve Fiffer, Rick Kogan, Ananda Lima, billy lombardo, Faisal Mohyuddin, Sara Paretsky, Kathleen Rooney, Dmitry Samarov, Shermann Dilla Thomas, Ruben Quesada, and Toya Wolfe.

CLHOF formally inducted Carol Shields, Ethel Payne, and Ray Bradbury. Presenters included Jason Aukerman, Tammy Gibson, Anne Collins, Paul McComas and Susan Swan. Shields’ niece, Natalie Beglen, as well as Payne’s niece, Sylvia Peters, were among the family members on hand to participate in the ceremony. Partners included the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, the Ray Bradbury Center, the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum, and Greater Reach Consulting. The event was free and open to the public.

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DePaul University professors feature prominently in Wherever I'm At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry, and they will gather together to showcase their contributions on Thursday, October 27, starting at five p.m. Refreshments will be served. Tara Betts, Chris Solis Green, Richard Jones, Coya Paz, and Mark Turcotte, along with editor Donald G. Evans, will participate in the event. Salli Berg Seeley. who is using the anthology in her current Exploring Chicago class, will lead the procession.

“Afterwards Chicago, Global Poetry Night,” is a hybrid poetry reading event that will happen at After-Words Bookstore on Friday, October 21, starting at five p.m. Central Time. Live performers at the large reading room stage alternate with remote poets seen on a large screen using Zoom. Eight local Chicago poets, including Wherever I'm At contributors Mike Puican, Beatriz Badikian-Gartler, and Nina Corwin, as well as eight poets from around the world, will each perform a five-minute set.

Organizer Mark Fishbein is a member of PGN-Poetry Global Network, an online resource for workshops, events, and festivals. This past year, PGN partnered with The Nottingham Poetry Festival and Poetry Festival Singapore in similar events. The event is free, but registration is required for the Zoom portion.

Rick Kogan started working as a reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times at the age of 16 and for the past half century has continued to turn out bylines in our city’s most important daily papers. Among his dozen nonfiction books, Rick’s true crime story, Everybody Pays: Two Men, One Murder and the Price of Truth, co-authored with Maurice Possley, stands out as a classic. He has served as an on-line reporter, commentator and host for a variety of television and radio outlets, including his current Sunday WGN-720 AM show, After Hours. Rick is a constant presence in Chicago’s cultural community, serving as impresario and interviewer for major events at the Printers Row Lit Festival, Chicago Humanities Festival, the old Story Week Festival, and many others. On Tuesday, Oct. 18, starting at seven p.m., Kogan was the 13th author honored with the Chicago’s prestigious Fuller Award for lifetime achievement. Newcity President & Founder Brian Hieggelke emceed a ceremony that included a performance by singer and writer Jamie O’Reilly, tributes by Nestor Gomez and Tony Fitzpatrick, and a conversation between Chicago Tribune editor Chris Jones and Rick. Photographer Charles Osgood presented the statue. Food and a cash bar followed the ceremony, with guests encouraged to enjoy the Chopin Theatre’s beautiful and spacious reception area. The event was free and open to the public.

In addition to Chopin Theatre, partners for the evening included Kurtis Productions, American Writers Museum, Newberry Library, WGN Radio, Eckhartz Press, Lamb’s Farm, Chicago Writers Association, Cliff Dwellers, All Things Literary, the Book Cellar, Open Books, Centuries & Sleuths, Seminary Co-op Bookstores, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Bar Association, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Guild Literary Complex. A trio of Rick’s favorite Chicago dining spots have generously offered to provide food: the Billy Goat Tavern. Gibson’s Bar & Steakhouse, and Eli’s Cheesecake. Individual contributors include Paul Teodo and Tom Myers, Randy Albers, and Eve Moran.

Printers Row Lit Fest returns, and the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame will have a tent for the second straight year. The Chicago Poetry Center, After Hours Press, Rhino, Chicago Quarterly Review, Guild Literary Complex, and Stories Matter Foundation will all be under our tent, along with an author table that includes Melanie Weiss, Amerlia Forczak, Paul Teodo, and Carlos Cumpian. More information when it becomes available.

Panel Discussion at Printers Row Lit Fest. Moderator Carlo Rotella, a prominent scholar who wrote the foreword to Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry, led a discussion about our city and its artists. The event included readings, as well as a question and answer session with the audience. Panelists were Daniel Bortzutzky, Ugochi Nwaogwugwu, and Elise Paschen.

The Mercy Street Reading Series, now in its second year, is already one of the best regular poetry events in Chicago. For this early August edition, Ruben Quesada assembled an all-star cast to represent Wherever I'm At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry. Campbell McGrath, Achy Obejas, Patricia Smith, Al DeGenova and Luis J. Rodriguez each read their anthology poem plus a few others. The virtual reading allowed Campbell and Patricia to participate from New Jersey, Luis from California, and Achy from Hawaii. Al, who lives in Elmwood Park, Zoomed in from his second home in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

Story Matters Foundation and the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame teamed up with CASL for a free youth writing workshop. Sahar Mustafah led participants through simple craft lessons as they used stories to explore facets of their personal experiences. Several Chicago poems from Wherever I'm At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry were incorporated in the lessons. Sahar started them off by telling a 90-second story in concentric circles. They also wrote and told about food and places they cherished. Sahar guided student writing through preliminary brainstorming lists before expanding into rough poems or short stories. Most participants ended up with complete paragraphs at the conclusion of the half-day workshop. 

The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, in partnership with Stories Matter Foundation and The First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, will offer a one-day workshop with acclaimed Southside author, poet and educator Tara Betts. The workshop, open to young people between the ages of 12 and 18, expects to draw attendees from the greater Woodlawn community. Stories Matter Foundation will lead students in discussing and creating original creative work, using, in part, readings from some of our great Chicago writers. The First Presbyterian Church of Chicago is one of, if not the, oldest churches in the city, and for well over a century and a half has been a leader and innovation in issues regarding education, social justice, and multi-culturalism. "Woodlawn is rich with wonderful stories from its deep heritage of Black immigrants from the Great Migration, along with many more recent immigrants from around the world," says Rev. David Black of First Church. "This partnership with Stories Matter Foundation and the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame is an important initiative to harness the voices and stories of young people and to share it with the world." SMF Youth Programs Manager Sahar Mustafah said that SMF's goal is to provide access to young Chicagoans so that they can become storytellers who "question, explore, celebrate, and change their worlds using the power of story." Betts is the author of the poetry collections Refuse to Disappear, Break the Habit and Arc & Hue. She was also commissioned to write the Illinois Bicentennial poem by Illinois Humanities. In addition to her work as a teaching artist and mentor for young poets, she has taught at Rutgers University, University of Illinois-Chicago, DePaul University, Northwestern University, and at Stateville Prison via Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project. she is the inaugural Poet for the People Practioner Fellow at University of Chicago. Tara is the Poetry Editor at The Langston Hughes Review and founder of the non-profit organization The Whirlwind Learning Center on Chicago's South Side. Spaces for this special free workshop are limated and allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. To register, participants or their parents must complete a registration form. For further information, please contact Rev. David Black (717.608.1710), Randall Albers or Sahar Mustasfah.