Journalist, playwright, screenwriter, theater critic, arts editor, and novelist Adam Langer was born in Chicago, grew up in West Rogers Park, went to school in Evanston, and spent the early part of his career here writing and editing for various Chicago publications, including the Reader, Inside Chicago, Book Magazine, and the alternative music magazine Subnation. […]
Category: Lit Feature
Posted inArts & Culture
They Call Us and we answer back
Twenty-three-year-old Morgan Kail-Ackerman was catcalled three separate times near Fullerton in Lincoln Park. “Fuck you lady,” “Bitch,” and a familiar, cringeworthy wolf whistle accompanied her walk near DePaul University. As she held the door open for a man at Lou Malnati’s, she was objectified. “He thought that because I opened the door for him, he […]
Posted inArts & Culture
It came from the south side
When do you cross the line from casual collector to full-on vintage reseller? For Michael W. Phillips Jr., a south side-based film programmer and copy editor, the moment happened in 2019 when he started posting books for sale on Instagram under the name It Came From Beyond Pulp. A more robust eBay store followed, and […]
Posted inLit Feature
Let’s get lit
Here are some book-related, word-inspired, and otherwise literary Chicago events to help kick off 2022. Each event is open to the public, but registration or tickets might be required (and you’ll want to support the writers by buying their books!). Wed 1/19, 6:30 PM: City Lit Books co-presents its regular Poetry Salon in an online […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The best Chicago books of 2021
Every year, I wonder if Chicago’s literary renaissance will ever start to ebb. No city can keep this up forever, right? But just like last year and the year before, dozens of new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books by Chicagoans garnered national acclaim in 2021. In no particular order, here are my favorite Chicago books […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A mystery on the home front
How do we contribute to making history every day? When we learn history, there’s often a huge emphasis on the leaders who make things happen, whether they are presidents, businessmen, or heads of social and political movements. But what about the people who make these movements happen: the ones who campaign for the presidents or […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The scene report from space
Elaborate hologram displays. A satellite planet. A mysterious deity. On the surface, Lane Milburn’s rollicking sci-fi graphic novel Lure doesn’t have much to do with Chicago. But Milburn drew inspiration from his old neighborhood, his punk band, his friends, and his near-decade living in the city. Lure takes place on an alternate earth, orbited by […]
Posted inArts & Culture
‘I need to know trans joy exists in order to imagine myself living in the future.’
Trans joy and pain gently mingle in poet H. Melt’s new chapbook There Are Trans People Here, out this month from Chicago’s Haymarket Books. The poems in this collection give the reader a sense that all the pain and suffering the world inflicts on trans people is something that can be overcome, transformed, and understood. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Let us be beautiful on our own terms
TAKE ME TO THE TRANS SPA where I can get my nails done with my mom, without toxic chemicals let me change in the locker room soak in the jacuzzi tub cool down in the pool with a strawberry daiquiri let me sweat in the sauna & in the back room where glory holes are […]
Posted inArts & Culture
You’re not allowed to just be old and embrace it
Writers Heather Corinna and Kimberly Dark got together to discuss recent writing, menopause, body image, and more this summer while west coast resident Kimberly was in Chicago visiting her son and his family. The pandemic made it difficult for them to host a public event, so they decided to share their conversation with Reader readers. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The crossroads that made Chicago
Conceptually, the words “Chicago, Wisconsin” are sure to baffle almost anyone reading them today. The idea that Illinois’s metropolis (and the nation’s third-largest city) could somehow be a part of the Dairy State seems laughable. Too bound to the long and sordid annals of Illinois politics, despite at times feeling a million miles away from […]
Posted inBook Review
From World’s Fair to living rooms
To cover Chicago theater is to carry a ghost map in one’s head of all the lost spaces. Some buildings are gone (or nearly gone) altogether, like the original Goodman Theatre at the Art Institute, or the Jane Addams Hull House Center on Broadway at Belmont, which at various points housed Steppenwolf, Bailiwick Repertory, Famous […]
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Race, fate, and sisterhood on the south side
“My earliest memory of myself is of my sister. My earliest understanding of my world comes from three women—my mother, grandmother, and aunt.” In her new memoir Three Girls From Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Story of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood, Dawn Turner turns her journalistic eye toward her own story, one she weaves as inextricable […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lit this month
September brings us a bevy of book-related, word-inspired, and otherwise literary events. Here’s a few to pencil into your calendar. The Paper Machete has returned to its performance home in Uptown at the Green Mill, to the delight of fans. The organizers describe it as a “weekly live magazine,” and while comedians are regularly featured, […]
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PopCultivator wants to lead comic book creators in the right direction
The new crowdfunded business specializes in matching comic book creators with publishers.