Review: Learning to Love the Feel of Words in The Braille Encyclopedia
“I grew up in a nest feathered with words, texts, and books,” Naomi Cohn writes in the first essay of her lyrical debut memoir, The Braille Encyclopedia: Brief Essays on […]
Chicago Is Lit: Printers Row Lit Fest and More September Events
Avid book lovers can be a solitary bunch—after all, it’s hard to lug our stacks (and stacks) of books around a party. But that is exactly what’s about to go […]
Review: Watching the Writer’s Mind Work, Write Cut Rewrite: The Cutting Room Floor of Modern Literature, by Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon
Everyone, I suppose, has a sense of the what-if of history. What if Abraham Lincoln hadn’t gone to Ford’s Theater that night and avoided assassination? What if I had taken a […]
Dialogs: The Fire This Time with Roxane Gay at the Chicago Humanities Festival
The Chicago Humanities Festival hosted writer Roxane Gay, in conversation with writer Lindsay Hunter, at the University of Chicago’s Lab School. Like recent CHF speaker and fellow Black female author […]
Return of the Revenge of the Featured Creatures Massacre IV: Chicago Area Horror Writers Share Horror Recommendations
Once again, it’s time for me to slip out of my TCR Lit Editor role and into my Crypt-Keeper robe. In celebration of Samhain, I contacted several Chicago-area horror writers […]
Opinion: A Pre-Obit for the Physical Book
Make no mistake, I love physical books. I love the weighty feel of a book in my hands. I love the aroma of a book when you open it whether a […]
Shortlist Announced for 2023 Chicago Review of Books Awards
The 2023 Chicago Review of Books Awards shortlist includes literary works ranging in subject matter from queer motherhood to belonging and migration, Chicago’s Black cowboy culture, and women’s overlooked heroism during World War II.
Review: A Limited Concept and Beautiful Prose Make for Mixed Reading in Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook, by Sonya Huber
In her new book Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook Sonya Huber offers a collection of effective essays mostly about her Midwest identity. A longtime essayist and Fairfield University professor, […]
Printers Row on Saturday: A Celebration of Community
Near the end of Saturday at this year’s Printers Row Lit Fest, an 80-year-old Italian painter from the North Shore told me she’s going to have a huge party if […]
Review: Who We Lost Meets the Loss and Sorrow of COVID with Grace and Fury
Who We Lost: A Portable COVID Memorial, edited by Martha Greenwald and published by Belt Publishing, started out on Greenwald’s website WhoWeLost.org, an online, crowd-sourced memorial to those who perished […]
2022 in Review: A Lit Retrospective
What was 2022 like in the world of Chicago, Illinois, and Midwest letters? I’ve asked the Lit section writers to share their favorite reviews and stories of the past year. […]
Review: Open Heart Chicago: An Anthology of Chicago Writing, Edited by Vincent Francone
One of the many gifts of Vincent Francone’s new anthology of Chicago stories, Open Heart Chicago, is learning what it’s like to wander around Marquette Park while tripping on acid. […]