Past Events

The Bughouse Square Debates are free and open to the public, and happening in conjunction with Newberry Library's annual book fair. The afternoon is an homage to Bughouse Square's history of lively debate and a celebration of free speech. No registration required. The Newberry always offers the CLHOF a free table to pass out our literature and engage with people in the park that day. We'll gladly work the table again this year.

The author of Chicago: City on the Make and The Man with the Golden Arm spent much of his life near the Polish Triangle, and both he and his characters bopped about the Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhoods for many decades. On this walking tour, we’ll visit the places that figured prominently in Algren’s life and work, and investigate settings related to his fiction and fictional characters. Guide Salli Berg Seeley will also touch upon other literary associations in the area, including the Russian Baths featured in Saul Bellow’s Humboldt's Gift, connections to the Haymarket Event, a brief history of Charles G. Wicker, information about Chopin Theater and Young Chicago authors, and more.

Maximum Registration: 10
Cost: $20 per person
 

For more information, call (773.414.2603) or email Don Evans. To register, go to the Eventbrite page.

Groups (8 or more walking tour: 40 or more bus tour) can arrange a date and time for any of the available tours.

Downtown Chicago, with important cultural institutions like the Chicago Cultural Center, Palmer House, and the Fine Arts Building, features a wide array of historic literary sites. In this part of the city, where skyscrapers and other iconic buildings dot the landscape, authors have made deep footprints. Chicago’s finest authors, along with prominent national writers on tour, have frequented the cultural venues and private clubs, and also used the neighborhood as a setting for a large array of stories. Our Chicago Literary Hall of Fame tour guide, Nonna Working, will meet you at the Cultural Center to begin a two-hour walking tour that includes narration about some of downtown Chicago’s literary highlights. Find out how the likes of Margaret Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and others used downtown Chicago in their lives and literature. Find out which famous writers stayed at the Palmer House; learn about streetcar tycoon Charles Tyson Yerkes’s relationship to Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire; find out how the Impressionist painting collection at AI influenced Hemingway’s career; and much more. The tour will begin at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington) and end at the Fine Arts Building (410 S. Michigan Avenue). Registration is $20. Limited to ten guests.

Tour registration: dgevans@chicagoliteraryhof.org, 773.414.2603.

Groups (8 or more walking tour: 40 or more bus tour) can arrange a date and time for any of the available tours.

The author of Chicago: City on the Make and The Man with the Golden Arm spent much of his life near the Polish Triangle, and both he and his characters bopped about the Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhoods for many decades. On this walking tour, we’ll visit the places that figured prominently in Algren’s life and work, and investigate settings related to his fiction and fictional characters. Guide Salli Berg Seeley will also touch upon other literary associations in the area, including the Russian Baths featured in Saul Bellow’s Humboldt's Gift, connections to the Haymarket Event, a brief history of Charles G. Wicker, information about Chopin Theater and Young Chicago authors, and more.

Maximum Registration: 10
Cost: $20 per person

For more information, call (773.414.2603) Don Evans.

Groups (8 or more walking tour: 40 or more bus tour) can arrange a date and time for any of the available tours.

Downtown Chicago, with important cultural institutions like the Chicago Cultural Center, Art Institute, and the Fine Arts Building, features a wide array of historic literary sites. In this part of the city, where skyscrapers and other iconic buildings dot the landscape, authors have made deep footprints. Chicago’s finest authors, along with prominent national writers on tour, have frequented the cultural venues and private clubs, and also used the neighborhood as a setting for a large array of stories. Our Chicago Literary Hall of Fame tour guide, Nonna Working, will meet you at the Cultural Center to begin a two-hour walking tour that includes narration about some of downtown Chicago’s literary highlights. Find out how the likes of Margaret Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and others used downtown Chicago in their lives and literature. Fnd out which famous writers stayed at the Palmer House; learn about streetcar tycoon Charles Tyson Yerkes’s relationship to Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire; find out how the Impressionist painting collection at AI influenced Hemingway’s career; and much more. The tour will begin at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington) and end at the Fine Arts Building (410 S. Michigan Ave.) Registration is $20. Limited to ten guests. 

For more information, call  (773.414.2603) or email Don Evans. To register, go to the Eventbrite page.

Groups (8 or more walking tour: 40 or more bus tour) can arrange a date and time for any of the available tours.

On Thursday, May 9, author Sara Paretsky will receive the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame's Fuller Award for lifetime achievement at the Newberry Library. A host of speakers, including Lori Rader Day, Ann Christophersen, Dominick Abel, Donna Seaman, Neil Harris, Heather Ash, and Margaret Kinsman, will give short tributes highlighting Sara's myriad accomplishments. 

Paretsky’s novels, particularly her V.I. Warshawski series, revolutionized the mystery genre, and paved the way for a good many female writers and characters. Beginning in 1982, when Warshawski made her debut in Indemnity Only, Paretsky has given readers a string of bestselling stories featuring a private investigator working a traditionally male job with all the street smarts, toughness, and compassion of the greatest historical characters. Paretsky also instilled in V.I. fatal flaws that make her believable, empathy that gives us insight into her drive, and a sense of social justice that provides a window into our society’s most pressing concerns.  

Though born in Ames, Iowa, Sara has made her home in Chicago for a half century, and like V.I. and her cohorts is now a Chicagoan through and through. On Thursday, May 9, the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame will give Sara its Fuller Award for lifetime achievement at the Newberry Library. Sara has published 19 novels in the V.I. Warshawski series, including her second, Deadlock, which was the basis of a 1991 film adaptation starring Kathleen Turner in the title role. In addition, Sara’s credits include several volumes of short stories, a memoir, and several stand-alone novels. She has edited four detective story anthologies. Her work is a constant presence on the bestseller list.

Sara also created Sisters in Crime, a worldwide organization to support women crime writers, which earned her Ms. Magazine’s 1987 Woman of the Year award. She has won a large variety of other literary awards and several honorary doctorate degrees.

The event is free and open to the public, including a pre-ceremony reception. Registration is required. The Newberry Library holds The Sara Paretsky Papers, 1966-93.

Chicago Literary Hall of Fame only inducts historical writers into the Hall of Fame, and so the Fuller was created as a way to acknowledge our greatest living Chicago writers. Gene Wolfe (2012), Harry Mark Petrakis (2014), Haki Madhubuti (2015), Rosellen Brown (2016), Angela Jackson (2018), and Stuart Dybek (2018) received past Fuller Awards.

Register soon to ensure your place for this ceremony.

In its heyday, when debates raged in Bughouse Square and ideas bounced about the Dil Picke Club, Chicago's Gold Coast featured a wide array of vibrant, joyous, and culturally significant literary spots. Even today, the Gold Coast is home to a variety of world class literary institutions, including the Poetry Foundation and Newberry Library. As we visit these places we'll discuss their history and significance, while meandering through stretches that include other interesting literary sites, such as the former location of the Playboy mansion. This tour precedes the Fuller Award ceremony, which is free and open to the public beginning at five p.m. Tour guests will learn a bit about the Newberry's Sara Paretsky holdings and be invited to join the ceremony and reception once we finish.

Maximum registration: 10

$20 per person

The tour will be repeated on Wednesdy, August 15 from 2 to 4 p.m. .

For future information, email or call (773.414.2603) Don Evans. Go to the Eventbrite page to register.

Groups (8 or more walking tour: 40 or more bus tour) can arrange a date and time for any of the available tours.

Oak Park, a sleepy conservative village when Ernest Hemingway was a child, has evolved in the last century to become a bedrock of liberal thought. This tour explores Oak Park's significance in literature for more than a century, and hits upon historical writers like Hemingway, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Vincent Starrett, as well as current stars such as Elizabeth Berg, Alex Kotlowitz, and Chris Ware. Jane Hamilton, who appears later that evening at our Great Chicago Books Club, will join the tour to tell us the story of her early years in Oak Park.

Maximum registration: 10

$20 per person.

For more information, call (773.414.2603) or email Don Evans. To register, go to the Eventbrite page.

Groups (8 or more walking tour: 40 or more bus tour) can arrange a date and time for any of the available tours.

Our Great Chicago Books Club on Sunday, May 5, will feature Jane Hamilton’s Disobedience, the author’s fourth novel, and one featuring a discovered affair in a Chicago household. The story explores a mother's affair from the perspecive of her 17-year-old son, and includes an array of fascinating storylines that take us inside a book club, Civil War reenactments, a Chicagp private prep school, and much more.

The evening begins with a cocktails at five p.m., followed by a sit-down dinner from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Dessert will be served during the book discussion, which begins at 6:30 p.m.  

Registration is limited to ten for the whole program, and an additional five for discussion/dessert only. The cost for the full program is $200. Cost for the discussion/dessert only is $50. 

All money raised at this and other Great Chicago Books Club events helps fund our (mostly free) programming throughout the year, including our annual induction ceremony and lifetime achievement ceremonies for Sara Paretsky and Sterling Plumpp.

Please contact Don Evans to make reservations, get the proper event address, and to arrange pickup/delivery of your book. We want to make sure you get it in time to read.