Dialogs: “The Only Moral Is Run!” – R. L. Stine at the Chicago Humanities Festival
This Guest Post was written by Holly Smith I entered the Music Box Theatre with anticipation. I was there to see the first episode of the Goosebumps TV show and […]
Review: Information Without Substance in Let The Scaffolds Fall by Shaun Rouser
Short stories exist in the literary world somewhere between the novel and the dirty joke. Their readers want the accouterments of a novel delivered in the most expedient, gut-punchy way […]
Review: Peeling Away the Layers of Two Lives, Civilisation Francaise, by Mary Fleming
Chicago-born Mary Fleming’s Civilisation Francaise is a novel of layers. Layers slowly peeled away for the reader to learn the stories of the book’s two central characters, Madame Quinon, an […]
Interview: Ananda Lima Launches Fiction Debut With Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil
Ananda Lima’s fiction debut, Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil, launches at Women and Children First this Friday, June 21. Filled with double meanings, a very meta perspective, rebellions […]
Review: The Body Keeps Score in A Small Apocalypse by Laura Chow Reeve
Laura Chow Reeve’s debut short story collection A Small Apocalypse is, like any good collection these days, thematically rich. It is mostly about young queer characters in the present day, […]
Review: A Dazzling Debut—The Divorcées, by Rowan Beaird
No-fault divorces are currently legal in every US state, making it relatively easy to end an unhappy marriage. It may be hard to imagine how recently “irreconcilable differences” were not […]
Interview: Stormy Weather—Christopher Hawkins Releases New (and Award-Winning) Horror Novel, Downpour
For horror novelist Christopher Hawkins, the dark and drenching clouds described in his latest novel, Downpour, have led to brighter, sunnier skies. Recently winning the Booklife Prize in Fiction, Downpour […]
Review: Mother Goose for English Majors, The Lamb Cycle: What the Great English Poets Would Have Written about Mary and Her Lamb, by David R. Ewbank, with illustrations by Kate Feiffer
If Shakespeare, instead of Mother Goose, had written “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” perhaps he would have penned a sonnet to take the young girl to task for abandoning “Thy […]
Review: Cravings: An Inventory of Human Life, by Garnett Kilberg Cohen
Reviewed by Guest Author Arieon Whittsey Cravings, by Chicago author Garnett Kilberg Cohen, offers an exploration of life and the moments that define it through an unlikely group of characters […]
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 […]
Review: A Feel-Good Novel about Coping Together, Everybody Here Is Kin, by BettyJoyce Nash
BettyJoyce Nash will be at The Book Cellar at 4736 N Lincoln Ave. in Chicago at 7pm on Thursday, October 26, to discuss her new novel Everybody Here is Kin […]
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.