Past Events

Bus Tour (SOLD OUT), Exhibition, Reception, and Discussion Gwendolyn Brooks was raised and educated on the South Side, taught at several local colleges, and set much of her poetry in the city. With the publication of A Street in Bronzeville in 1945, Brooks won a Guggenheim Fellowship, became one of Mademoiselle’s “Ten…

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The Printers Row Lit Fest is this weekend, all day Saturday and Sunday, June 10 & 11. The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame will be around all weekend, at our table under the Poetry Foundation tent. Stop by. Printers Row Lit Fest is considered the largest free outdoor literary event in the Midwest-drawing more than 125,000 book lovers to…

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Longtime Tribune Literary Critic Fanny Butcher to Be Inducted into CLHOF Fanny Butcher: (September 13, 1888 – May 1987), for four decades a writer and critic for the Chicago Tribune, will be inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame on May 11, 2017 at Newberry Library’s Ruggles Hall. Liesl Olson will give the keynote presentation,…

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Cyrus Colter's Short Stories Come to the Stage Director Tim Rhoze and author Sandra Seaton bring to life the frustrations and triumphs of 1960s Black life on Chicago’s South Side, in a powerful adaptation of Cyrus  Colter’s prize-winning short stories. The trilogy begins with A Chance Meeting, a two-person play about an…

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Ron Rapoport, longtime sportswriter and author, will be the honored guest at a special Cliff Dwellers luncheon on May 4. Ron is in town from Los Angeles to give keynote remarks at Ring Lardner’s induction into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame later that evening at Newberry Library, and also to promote his new book, Ring…

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Ring Lardner (March 6, 1885-Sept. 25, 1933) will be inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame on May 4, 2017 at Newberry Library's Ruggles Hall. Ron Rapoport, veteran sports journalist and editor of a the newly-released The Lost Journalism of Ring Lardner, will give the keynote address, and James Lardner (The Nation) will accept…

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One hundred years ago, Bohemian author and editor of the radical Masses magazine, Floyd Dell, began a passionate affair with a newcomer to Greenwich Village—the yet to be discovered “girl poet,” Edna St. Vincent Millay. In the years that followed, both Dell and Millay became symbols of early twentieth century feminism,…

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The fabulous private club, Cliff Dwellers, whose mission for more than a century has been to support Chicago’s cultural life, welcomes Chicago Literary Hall of Fame supporters for The Stories We Tell Ourselves: A Salon with Scott Turow.

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Enrollment is now open for a seminar with Chicago literary expert Jesse Raber. Over the course of five Tuesdays evenings online via Zoom, Raber will explore with students the important authors and books produced during Chicago’s early history. Tuition for the seminar is $250.  By the end of the Civil War, Chicago was…

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