Thursday, May 9, 2019
5-7 p.m.
Newberry Library (Free Tickets Required)
60 W. Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610
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.
Thursday, May 9, 2019
1:30-3:30 p.m.
Meet: Bughouse Square (across from Newberry Library)
End: Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street
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.
Sunday, May 5, 2019
2:30-4:30 p.m.
Meet at the Edgar Rice Burroughs House #2, 700 N. Linden Ave.
End: Jane Hamilton Girlhood Home, 226 S. Scoville Ave.
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.
Sunday, May 5, 2019
5:30-8 p.m.
Oak Park, Il
Private Home
TBA
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.
Saturday, May 4, 2019
10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Kenwood United Church of Christ
(across from Brooks Park and Gwendolyn Brooks statue)
4600-08 S. Greenwood Ave.
Chicago, IL 60653
Bus will load and unload here.
Part of the larger Chicago Black Renaissance, the literary movement started in the 1930s and continued to foster important African-America authors through the 1950s. On this bus tour, we’ll visit some of the foundational cultural institutions of the movement (George Cleveland Hall Branch of the Chicago Public Library, South Side Community Art Center, The Chicago Defender) as well as the homes of iconic authors (Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry). Along the way, we’ll explore how these and other authors used their personal experiences and observations of the city to create literature that explored the devastating effects of prejudice during the Jim Crow era and up to the Civil Rights movement. Registration is $40 and limited to 50 people. You can reserve seats for the tour through Eventbrite.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
6-8 p.m.
City Lit Books
2523 N. Kedzie Blvd.
Chicago, IL 60647
The Caxton Club's newly-released Chicago By the Book maps out a history of our city through some of its most important literature. For this panel discussion, which includes moderator Donald G. Evans, author Sandi Wisenberg, Newberry Library's Director of Chicago Studies Liesl Olson, University of Chicago scholar Kenneth Warren, and Nelson Algren biographer Mary Wisniewski, we're going to focus on entry #61: Illinois: A Descriptive and Historical Guide. The Illinois unit of the Federal Writers Project's employed some of Chicago's finest literary minds, most before they were known to the general public. Richard Wright, Algren, Studs Terkel, Margaret Walker, Sam Ross, Arna Bontemps, and others turned out narratives for this government agency that included the guide book we'll use as the center piece of our discussion. We'll explore this government initiative to support artists, as well as other such endeavors, and discuss the impact it had on future careers. Within Chicago By The Book are many examples of FWP's impact: #62 (Wright's Native Son), #71 (Algren's Chicago: City on the Make), #76 (Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March). #84 (Terkel's Division Street). Also, Bellow interviewed James T. Farrell (#51: Studs Lonigan trilogy) for the FWP. Join us at City Lit Books, one of Chicago's finest indepenent bookstores, for a modest reception and then discussion. Free and open to the public, including a modest reception. This event made possible through partnerships with The Caxton Club and City Lit Books.
Saturday, March 23, 2019
10 a.m.-Noon
Carver 47 Cafe
Little Black Pearl
1060 E. 47th Street
Chicago, IL 60653
The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame invites middle school students to attend a poetry workshop led by Jerikah Greene at Little Black Pearl's Carver 47 Cafe. Inspired by the life and work of Gwendolyn Brooks, this workshop provides a unique opportunity for students to express themselves through poetry. It is the first in a series of three youth writing workshops this spring, but the only available to middle schoolers. Registration is required, and will be limited to 15 students. Register early to secure a place in the workshop.
Students will:
• Compose their own poems.
• Read their poems to an audience in Gwendolyn Brooks Park.
• See their work published by the CLHOF.
CLHOF plans to create a limited-run print anthology that will be available through Little Black Pearl; the electronic copy will be made available on our website.
Jerakah Greene studies creative writing, literature, and sexuality studies at Columbia College Chicago. They were the Fall 2018 reviews editor for Hair Trigger 2.0, where they have a review and interview published. They have also been published in The Lab Review. This workshop is made possible through a The Chicago Community Trust grant and the participation of Little Black Pearl.
Sunday, March 10, 2019
5-7:30 p.m.
Hyde Park
Chicago, IL
Private Home
Our Great Chicago Books Club on Sunday, March 10, will feature Rosellen Brown’s The Lake on Fire, the author’s first fictional foray into the Chicago landscape after nearly a quarter century living in the city. We'll have the event at Ronne Hartfield’s beautiful Hyde Park condominium, not far from the setting of Rosellen’s story, which takes place around the Columbian Exposition.
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 $150. 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.
Saturday, February 23, 2019
10-11:30 a.m.
The Newberry Library
Ruggles Hall
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610
The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, The Phantom Collective, Snickersnee Press, and the Newberry Library’s program in Chicago Studies, in collaboration with the Shakespeare Project of Chicago, present a morning devoted to playwright Kenneth Goodman (1883-1918) and his legacy.
Florice Whyte Kovan will introduce Goodman and his importance to the Chicago literary scene of the early twentieth century. The Shakespeare Project of Chicago, directed by Peter Garino, and featuring actors Deborah Clifton, John Kishline, Daniel Millhouse, Grace Smith, and Randy Steinmeyer, will stage a theatrical reading of his play Back of the Yards. Finally, there will be a talkback discussion with the audience about the play and Goodman’s contributions to Chicago literature with dramaturg June Skinner Sawyers and the director and cast.
The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Goodman, the son of wealthy lumber barons, was, in those early years of the 20th century, one of the leaders of the Chicago Renaissance. His plays, which he wrote alone and with collaborators such as Ben Hecht, ranged from realism to farce, and frequently opened in Chicago’s “little theaters.”
Goodman’s passion for the theater led him to establish the Chicago Theatre Society in 1911 and an “art university” combing a theatre and training program for drama students at the Art Institute in the summer of 1915. Goodman also headed the Prints Department at the Art Institute of Chicago, and his idea was to build upon (with greater resources) the “little theater” scene’s aesthetics, including a determination to include new and often controversial voices.
But Goodman died young, just 35 years old when he passed at his family home on North Astor Street during the influenza epidemic of 1918. Four years later, Goodman’s parents proposed to the Art Institute’s Board of Trustees the creation of a memorial theatre in their son’s memory. The Goodman Memorial Theatre, designed by architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, opened on Oct. 20, 1925. That night, the theatre’s professional company, the Reparatory Company, presented three Goodman plays at the dedication performance: Back of the Yards, The Green Scarf, and The Game of Chess.
Back of the Yards was published in 1914, and opens at a kitchen table in the title neighborhood: a mother, a priest, and a cop. The conversation skirts around a recent shooting and avoids the real subject, the suspicion that the mother’s adolescent son was involved. Goodman uses a dialogue-heavy scene to capture the essence of the characters; in the process, he provides insight into the neighborhood at large. Each character has his or her own responsibilities, each his or her own fears, each his or her own sense of loyalty. Together, though, the characters in Back of the Yards comprise a portrait of a neighborhood, and how it acts and reacts in support of a higher purpose.
Please reserve your seat for the event. Doors open at 9:30 a.m.; donuts and coffee will be available.
Friday, November 16, 2018
6-9 p.m.
Cliff Dwellers
200 S. Michigan Ave.
Penthouse (22nd Floor)
Chicago, IL 60604
The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame will induct Henry Blake Fuller, Marita Bonner, and Robert Sengstacke Abbott as its newest class on Nov. 16. In large part because of Fuller's importance to the club, which got its name from his novel The Cliff-Dwellers, this event will be held at Cliff Dwellers. Though this is a private club, the event is open to the public. Reservations are required. Cost of dinner is $30; to reseve a seat for the program only costs $10. There is a cash bar beginning at 4:30 p.m.; dinner is served at 6:15 p.m.; the ceremony starts promptly at 7:15 p.m. Reservations can also be made by phone at 312-922-8080.
Speakers for the evening include Ethan Michaeli, author of the critically acclaimed book The Defender; Myiti Sengstacke-Rice, great grand-niece of Abbott; Richard Guzman, author of Black Writing from Chicago; and Bill Getzoff, prominent Cliff Dwellers member.
After seven classes of six writers, CLHOF has reduced its class size to three, partly in order to ensure the highest standards for selection and in part to allow more detailed commentary on each writer at the ceremony. All 45 CLHOF inductees, including this new class, were selected after a rigorous process that relied on the expertise and passion of the finest minds in our literary community. Nominators and selectors include a range of scholars, authors, artists, and others known for their close and relentless interest in Chicago literature.
Chicago Literary Hall of Fame
Email: Don Evans
4043 N. Ravenswood Ave., #222
Chicago, IL 60613
773.414.2603