When I think of summer reading I think of book challenges from my local library. I’d sign up as a kid and track my reading habits for the chance of winning something fun like tickets to Six Flags or—more likely—a special bookmark or T-shirt. I never got the Six Flags tickets, but I always had […]
Category: Books Issue
Finding poetry in flyover country
“A writer of nonfiction discovers their own authority by telling. The good essays tell. They pronounce. They manifesto. They ask and wonder and feint and layer.” So proclaims author Sonya Huber, in a few-years-old article for LitHub, about unlearning long-accepted rules of writing. Huber puts these proclamations into action in her forthcoming essay collection, Love […]
A new home for experimental literature
“We are identifying ‘micro-movements’ and allowing others to explain them to us,” says Jourdain Barton, a cofounder of Chicago’s TEMPER Press. Born to foster experimental writing, TEMPER emerged from such a micro-movement: a bond shared by Barton and her grad school classmates Geoffrey Billetter and Nat Holtzmann. To them, micro-movements are smaller, unidentified capsules of […]
The couple at the center of Wellness are in love with an illusion
On a bone-chilling night in 1993, Elizabeth Augustine stands in a cramped Ukrainian Village venue sipping cheap beer, counting down the seconds until her date with a boy she has a razor-thin connection with can finally end. As the aforementioned man, with middle-parted hair and John Lennon glasses drones on—because she may like music, but […]
I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times follows its road home
With vivid imagery and a staggering wit, Taylor Byas paints portraits of her childhood on the south side and the city in warm hues. I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times leads her quest for self-discovery with grief, longing, and the late-night monologuing of a seasoned writer. With poems modeled after the likes of Patricia […]
‘Because we are black, we are making black music’
Out of their place. Out of their depth. Out of their minds. Composer and researcher George Lewis has lost track of the times he’s heard those tropes lobbed, implicitly or explicitly, at Black composers of classical music. These artists, he argues, too often slip through the cracks in academic and cultural discourse: They’re shunted to […]
‘Parole presupposes that change—a correction—is possible’
Eastern State Penitentiary, in Philadelphia, opened its doors in 1829. Often considered the world’s first true penitentiary, its hallmark six-spoked, wheel-shaped design radiates outward from a central tower, where guards could keep watch over some 500 prisoners. The prison’s creators believed that, through penitence and solitude (now widely considered a form of torture), people would […]
Anne K. Yoder on the artist-centered approach of Meekling Press
Editor’s note: Coco Picard spoke with Chicago writer and publisher Anne K. Yoder about corunning Meekling Press and the importance of independent publishing. Edited text from the comic is transcribed here to ease readability. Anne K. Yoder worked as a part-time unionized pharmacist for years. The experience inspired The Enhancers (Meekling Press, 2022)—a hyperreal novel […]
For all the 90s church kids
I didn’t expect a book with chapter titles like “Nothing’s Funnier Than Naked” and “Welcome to Ass Planet” to make me tear up on public transit, but Lillian Stone’s Everybody’s Favorite: Tales From the World’s Worst Perfectionist accomplished this feat. Amid the bodily humor, cringey anecdotes, and irreverent one-liners, the Chicago-based comedy author and reporter […]
The Chicago Independent Bookstore Map
Chicago has been frequently touted as a writer’s town; a place where writers can work on their craft and thrive. Of course writers are nothing without an audience to read them, and the bevy of bookstores in Chicagoland is one indication that we’re also a reader’s town—not just a place where people make books, but […]
Chicago theater on the page
A very incomplete guide on what to read (or listen to) now from Chicago’s theater scene.
The Beauty of Your Face isn’t afraid to get ugly
In Sahar Mustafah’s debut novel, The Beauty of Your Face, a terrorist attack opens a window on the story of a Palestinian American family in Chicago.
The Dial’s next chapter
How one couple channeled their love for books and each other into running a business
25 local books to stock your shelves
Add these new reads by and about Chicagoans to your list.
Cookies keep you healthy, soup makes you sane
Two books about cooking and community from Belt Publishing