From a few folding chairs and four students at its very first class to today’s 1,600-square-foot space in Ravenswood—plus online everywhere—and more than 1,400 students, StoryStudio Chicago aims to be a positive, encouraging, and craft-centered storytelling community in the city. That’s the motivation behind founder Jill Pollack creating the local literary nonprofit, which is celebrating […]
Category: Lit Feature
Posted inLit Feature
Scary stuff is academic
The monsters under your bed are subject to peer review. Since 2018, the University of Wales Press has published the Horror Studies series, a collection of academic writings on the horror genre. Distributed by the University of Chicago Press, the series presents such scholarly titles as Theorising the Contemporary Zombie: Contextual Pasts, Presents, and Futures; […]
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Festival “Lit & Luz” ofrece una visión para la revisión
Centrado en el lenguaje, la literatura y el arte, el festival Lit & Luz, reúne a escritores, artistas visuales y músicos de México y Estados Unidos en un claro esfuerzo por fomentar el intercambio cultural. Los resultados artísticos de estas experiencias interculturales—desde la poesía hasta la fotografía y demás—se presentan luego a través de una […]
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Living on luck
Westley Heine never dreamed of singing for change on the streets of Chicago but life sometimes offers only stark choices. Getting by as a musician, artist, or writer is uphill barefoot through snowdrifts on a good day. Add a recession, a relationship going sour, some substance abuse, and a generous helping of self-doubt and few […]
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Printers Row Lit Fest embraces Chicago’s writers
Printers Row Lit Fest has been bringing all things literary to the streets of the Printers Row neighborhood for 37 years. The festivities return for the second weekend of September with a packed schedule of events. The festival is many things to many people: a homage to the publishing industry, a shopping spree for book […]
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Fast times at North Shore Magnet High
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. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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‘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. […]
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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 […]
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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. […]