Past Events

Poet Ed Roberson received the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s Fuller Award for his lifetime achievements as a writer. He is the 19th Chicago author given the CLHOF’s highest honor, at a ceremony at and in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. Speakers, including CM Burroughs, Peter O’Leary, Saretta Morgan, julie patton, Lena…

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As part of the third American Writers Festival, which took place all day on Saturday, June 7, CLHOF put together an outstanding group of thinkers to reflect on the idea of spirituality in their life and work.  What is the difference between spiritual and religious? And how does that manifest itself in certain works of literature? In…

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As part of the third American Writers Festival, which took place all day on Saturday, June 7, CLHOF teamed up with James Kennedy to highlight young filmmakers's short adaptations of Newbery award-winning books The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is an annual video contest in which young readers create short movies that tell the entire stories…

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Our literary walking tour of Chicago's downtown neighborhood was May 20. Mostly because we scheduled the walk in conjunction with the American Literature Association’s conference, we hosted a group that included scholars from France, Denmark, Poland, Japan, England, Italy, India, Canada, China, and many of our states, including Indiana,…

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The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame's was invited to help curate the May edition of Sunday Reading Series: Poetry, Prose, & Cocktails. Host Kenyatta Rogers was there to lead the program, though Simone Muench had to miss this one. The program was at the Hungry Brain on Sunday, May 17. Noa Micaela Fields, Tsehaye Geralyn…

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The annual Independent Bookstore Day is a great excuse to get out and visit favorite stores, new stores, and old stores you've been meaning to check out. The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame will go around to a bunch of stores, take some pictures, and send updates via social media on what is transpiring throughout the indie bookstore…

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The fourth annual RAYWA recognition ceremony brought together this year’s prize winners. Each of the eight prize-placing authors (four in prose and four in poetry) read their winning entries before receiving their plaques, certificates, and checks. Final judges Timothy David Rey and Megan Stielstra presented the honors. A…

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The Nelson Algren Committee's annual celebration of Chicago Literary Hall of Fame inaugural inductee Nelson Algren was back for its 36th year. The event honored and amplified the life and writing of the Chicago author whose books like The Man With the Golden Arm and The Neon Wilderness capture the true, often dark character of…

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Grady Chambers’s debut novel, Great Disasters, is a deeply introspective novel in which the narrator reflects back on his adolescence as a way to figure out how his life evolved. The story centers around a tight-knit group of private high school friends, living in the Chicago Gold Coast neighborhood. “What happened to make us all what…

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The theme of this year’s cocktail fundraiser was a play on Willa Cather’s great 1915 novel, The Song of the Lark, a title which is taken from Jules Breton’s 1884 painting. In the novel, Thea Kronborg, a voice artist prodigy, has moved to Chicago to further her training as an opera singer; once there, she finds inspiration in the…

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