Review: Malört—Chicago History in a Bottle
He had been warned. At a recent house concert in Printers Row, Pat Byrne, a soulful Irish troubadour based in Texas, bravely took a swig of the yellow liquid, scrunched […]
Review: Winning through Infrastructure—Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago’s Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent by John William Nelson
The key moment in John William Nelson’s important, original, and eye-opening history of the place that became the city of Chicago—Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago’s Portage, and the Transformation of […]
Dialogs: SCOTUS Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Shares Her New Memoir Lovely One at Chicago Humanities Festival
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson inaugurated the Chicago Humanities Festival’s autumn 2024 season in front of a packed, enthusiastic crowd at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. In […]
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 […]
Chicago Is Lit: July Author Events & Book Releases
Chicago’s literary scene is, in a word, “lit”: from the Midwest’s largest free outdoor literary festival to pop-up typewritten poetry encounters to the nation’s only museum devoted to American writers, […]
Review: Putting on the Glitz—Driehaus Museum’s Jewelry Exhibit and Ellie Thompson’s Designing American Jewelry Book
As we navigate the current Gilded Age, it’s helpful to reflect on the last one. The Driehaus Museum at 40 East Erie is showcasing 200 pieces of dazzling past and […]
Review: 44 Posters, Weeds Tavern, by Dave Hoekstra and Sergio Mayora
Weeds Tavern is a bar biography, but something more, and slightly less. More or less an artist’s monograph, SunTimes writer and critic Dave Hoekstra covers the titular Chicago tavern’s background […]
Dialogs: Reggie Watts Celebrates Glorious Black Nerds at the Old Town School
Reggie Watts is far more than James Corden’s bandleader on the former The Late Late Show. He’s an innovative musician (keyboard, looping machine, beatboxer), dry comedian, wearer of cool geometric […]
Dialogs: Feminist Punk Kathleen Hanna at the Chicago Humanities Festival’s Illinois Tech Day
Kathleen Hanna, founding Riot Grrrl, Bikini Kill frontwoman and the person who told Kurt Cobain that he smelled like teen spirit, is currently on tour to promote her memoir Rebel […]
Dialogs: Chicago Humanities Festival Explores Hip-Hop History and Black Punk Now
Chicago musicians Chance the Rapper, Jennifer Hudson, plus legendary producer Quincy Jones, recently opened the renovated Ramova Theatre. The interior’s quaint cityscape-inside-a-building balconies and windows have been restored to usher […]
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 […]
Review: In Evil Eyes Sea, Two Women Uncover a Mystery at the Heart of Turkish Culture: by Özge Samancı
Evil Eyes Sea is preoccupied with objects: how they become imbued with their owners’ lives and remain after those people are gone. In her autobiographically-inspired graphic novel, Özge Samancı skillfully […]