Nonfiction Review: “Something Wrong with Her: A Real-Time Memoir” by Cris Mazza
RECOMMENDED “Something Wrong with Her” is an arresting chronicle of the personal consequences of an artist’s sexual dysfunction, caused by a medical condition called a weak pelvic floor. The condition...
View ArticleFiction Review: “The Old Neighborhood” by Bill Hillmann
Bill Hillmann is a man who’s led many lives—a feared street brawler, an elite bull-runner in Spain, a gang affiliate, a Union construction laborer, a Chicago Gold Gloves champion, and the founder of...
View ArticleA Writer of Place: Chicago Icon Stuart Dybek Returns With Not One, But Two...
By Brendan Buck Stuart Dybek is a Chicago writer, through and through. He grew up on Chicago’s South side in the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods in the fifties and sixties, and holds graduate...
View ArticleLit 50 2014: Who Really Books in Chicago
When we began work on the 2012 version of Lit 50, there were some 200 published writers on our long list. This year, there were 437. As always, trimming the list to a mere fifty writers required a...
View ArticleFiction Review: “A Better World” by Marcus Sakey
After all the time Marcus Sakey spent creating a stratified, believable world of gifted and normal races, all he intended to do was knock the blocks over. Pour the bucket of water on the sand castle....
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Outside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary...
RECOMMENDED As the medium of comics continues to grow in both artistic legitimacy and creative diversity, the question arises of how we will handle an inclusive definition of such an eclectic...
View ArticleThings Fall Apart: Kathleen Rooney on Sexism, Politics and “O, Democracy!”
By Brendan Tynan Buck Kathleen Rooney’s fifth book cost her job as a senate aid for Dick Durbin. An essay in “For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs” mentioned a flirtation with her boss, the...
View ArticleCrime Studies: The Story Behind Lori Rader-Day’s Campus-Set Debut, “The Black...
By Brandie Rae Madrid First-time novelist and Chicago transplant Lori Rader-Day’s “The Black Hour” is set in a prestigious university in a fictional Chicago suburb. After an inexplicable attack by a...
View ArticleToasting the Man Chicago Almost Forgot, Nelson Algren
On March 29, the Nelson Algren Committee will host the twenty-fifth annual Nelson Algren Birthday Party to honor the man who eternalized Chicago’s “drunks, pimps, prostitutes, freaks, drug addicts,...
View ArticleRewriting the Adolescent Narrative: Megan Milks on “Kill Marguerite”
By Anne Yoder I first encountered Megan Milks’ work when we were both fledgling critics for PopMatters. Her writing stood out as intelligent, daring and quite promiscuous in its range of ideas. She...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Something Wrong with Her: A Real-Time Memoir” by Cris Mazza
RECOMMENDED “Something Wrong with Her” is an arresting chronicle of the personal consequences of an artist’s sexual dysfunction, caused by a medical condition called a weak pelvic floor. The condition...
View ArticleFiction Review: “The Old Neighborhood” by Bill Hillmann
Bill Hillmann is a man who’s led many lives—a feared street brawler, an elite bull-runner in Spain, a gang affiliate, a Union construction laborer, a Chicago Gold Gloves champion, and the founder of...
View ArticleA Writer of Place: Chicago Icon Stuart Dybek Returns With Not One, But Two...
By Brendan Buck Stuart Dybek is a Chicago writer, through and through. He grew up on Chicago’s South side in the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods in the fifties and sixties, and holds graduate...
View ArticleThey Are All Outsiders: Marvin Tate Talks About “The Amazing Mister Orange”
Any project Marvin Tate undertakes is just a sliver of the performer’s multimedia career—he’s been one of the funky minds behind the band D-Settlement, performance poet and all-around mixer-upper. That...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Something Wrong with Her: A Real-Time Memoir” by Cris Mazza
RECOMMENDED “Something Wrong with Her” is an arresting chronicle of the personal consequences of an artist’s sexual dysfunction, caused by a medical condition called a weak pelvic floor. The condition...
View ArticleFiction Review: “The Old Neighborhood” by Bill Hillmann
Bill Hillmann is a man who’s led many lives—a feared street brawler, an elite bull-runner in Spain, a gang affiliate, a Union construction laborer, a Chicago Gold Gloves champion, and the founder of...
View ArticleA Writer of Place: Chicago Icon Stuart Dybek Returns With Not One, But Two...
By Brendan Buck Stuart Dybek is a Chicago writer, through and through. He grew up on Chicago’s South side in the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods in the fifties and sixties, and holds graduate...
View ArticleLit 50 2014: Who Really Books in Chicago
When we began work on the 2012 version of Lit 50, there were some 200 published writers on our long list. This year, there were 437. As always, trimming the list to a mere fifty writers required a...
View ArticleFiction Review: “A Better World” by Marcus Sakey
After all the time Marcus Sakey spent creating a stratified, believable world of gifted and normal races, all he intended to do was knock the blocks over. Pour the bucket of water on the sand castle....
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Outside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary...
RECOMMENDED As the medium of comics continues to grow in both artistic legitimacy and creative diversity, the question arises of how we will handle an inclusive definition of such an eclectic...
View Article