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Coping With Humor: An Interview with Erika Sanchéz about Crying in the Bathroom
In one of "Crying"’s twelve essays, Sanchéz, recounts her difficulties living up to her Mexican immigrant parents’ expectations.
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A Life to Live: A Review of Graceland Cemetery: Chicago Stories, Symbols, and...
This might be the book to get you hooked on learning more about the history of Graceland cemetery or other historic sites.
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Dreams That Won’t Die: A Review of Lynn Sloan’s Midstream
In "Midstream," we follow Chicago-based protagonist Polly Wainwright through a midlife crisis that involves her unfulfilled dream of becoming a documentary film director, the breakup of a relationship,...
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Lo Adoro: A Review of “Addio, Love Monster” by Christina Marrocco
These are linked tales of loving, dying and growing up.
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A Symphony for the City: A Conversation with Joe Meno about “Book of...
My primary campaign was to play it cool and maybe to figure out why I’m literally filled with joy whenever I read anything Meno writes.
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Road to Stability: Severance’s Ling Ma Discusses Her New Story Collection,...
Ling Ma’s new collection, "Bliss Montage," begins with a pampered wife living in a sprawling McMansion followed by seven equally clever and lushly outrageous stories. Like her 2018 award-winning...
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Life Is But A Dream: A Review of Rita Woods’ “The Last Dreamwalker”
Set in the South, the book jumps back and forth between two protagonists: Gemma, a dreamwalker who walks in the dreams of her dying master, and Layla Hurley, an illustrator who’s prone to mysterious...
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Sores and Scabs: A Review of Adam Levin’s Mount Chicago
This novel includes some of the most convincing depictions of love and loyalty—pure human affection and kindness—in contemporary literature.
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The City’s Story: A Review of Neil Steinberg’s “Every Goddamn Day”
In his new, odd Chicago history, Steinberg creates a kind of animated flipbook, putting together many pictures, one for each day of the year. By filling each story with startling detail, he creates a...
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Two Strikes, You’re Out: A Review of Helen Shiller’s Daring to Struggle,...
Helen Shiller, the former alderwoman for Uptown, is a reformer unafraid to take on the boys in power. No one knows better than Shiller that the game is rigged. But her autobiography, detailing five...
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Found Objects: A Review of Anca L. Szilágyi’s “Dreams Under Glass”
Chicago writer Szilágyi’s "Dreams Under Glass" is a sensitive and unsettling look at young adulthood and the dichotomies between art, money and greed.
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Gossamer Reverberations While You Wait: A Review of Memorandum from the Iowa...
Joseph G. Peterson masterfully weaves the restless meanderings of the mind of a solitary traveler yearning for connection and home and validation for his life choices with the shabbiness and...
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Demystifying the Evil Genius: A Review of “Starter Villain” by John Scalzi
Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novelist John Scalzi’s latest effort, “Starter Villain,” mixes pulp pleasure with social commentary, burning the effigy of wealth mistakenly labeled as genius.
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Not Afraid to Be Disliked: A Conversation with Rachel Shteir About Her New...
Shteir's latest, “Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter" is a dynamic biography of the woman who wrote “The Feminine Mystique,” the 1963 bestseller that gave middle-class women a language for their...
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On Being Who You Are: A Review of Peter Coviello’s “Is There God After Prince?”
Author of five nonfictions, Peter Coviello's new book is an omnibus of brainy, exuberant essays that explore an extraordinary range of subjects with the question “What if I were someone different?” The...
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Light in A Dark Age: A Review of “Kells” by Amy Crider
This new book by Chicago playwright Crider is the kind that drops you into the Middle Ages like a stone into a lake. But “Kells” is not just about the past. It's about the life-giving power of art,...
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Feeding the Mind: A Review of Garnett Kilberg Cohen’s “Cravings”
Bring an essayistic style to the short story form, author Garnett Kilberg Cohen presents twelve delightful stories in the collection "Cravings" as an ever-vital form of discovery on the “rare moments...
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City of Dreams: A Conversation with Ryan Chester about his Remarkable...
Architect Ryan Chester has created an extraordinary continuous drawing of the skyline from the Chicago River, realistic in some ways but a fantasy in others, and now it's being published as a book of...
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Detective Foster Take Two: A Review of “Fall” by Tracy Clark
In her new novel, prolific Chicago mystery writer Tracy Clark takes on an unusual crime—the murder of a city council member. Well-paced, suspenseful, the thriller feels like Chicago—with its aggressive...
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World Will Remain After Us: A Review of “absolute animal” by Rachel DeWoskin
This collection of poems is set to a 2020 apocalyptic backdrop, but the frail thing at the center is our own hubris; the belief that we could be above the natural world despite being products of it is...
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