Pitching aces Margo Gremmler and Adam Sleper

“John, we all like climax,” David Henry Sterry instructs one of the twenty Pitchapalooza contestants at this year’s Printers Row Lit Fest. “We wanna feel like we should smoke a cigarette when we’re done.” The issue of climax joins comp books, language that reflects the narrative and indicating the arc of the story as recommendations from the panel of judges on how to perfect a story pitch. Sheltered from a thunderous storm by the white festival tent, Arielle Eckstut and guest judge Joe Durepos sit to Sterry’s left as they regard the contestants one-by-one as they present their book pitches behind a podium. “Show us your writing chops,” Sterry directs to another aspiring novelist.

New to Printers Row, Pitchapalooza first began five years ago, but recently returned with a vengeance—there have been about thirty since last October, each balancing pitches ranging between “not very promising” and “truly extraordinary.” Audience members waiting to grab a chance to pitch their book ideas listen intently for their names to be called—not everyone who attends wants to present, and only twenty will. Laughter flutters through the crowd as the next presenter opens, “I hope you all know you’re naked right now.” Read the rest of this entry »

Comfort Station Pop-Up Library

By Elizabeth Kossnar

For any other organization, having a Chicago blizzard wreak havoc on a collection of zines and other periodicals, suffering an occurrence of flesh-eating bacteria and moving from one space to another four times or so may be the end-all, but not for the Chicago Underground Library (underground-library.org). In fact, not only do they use their situations to their advantage, but they find the humor in their misfortune. The dioramas of their previous locations made by local artists celebrate the number of occupancies they’ve had, and their upcoming fundraiser at Beauty Bar will make a mockery of winter with a wintry theme on June 24. While CUL is still looking for a new permanent location after the aforementioned blizzard rendered their last home unlivable, they decided to make their collection mobile with “Structurally Sound,” a Pop-Up Library series that focuses on the specific neighborhood in which the exhibit is located. Although this destiny is not what CUL would have imagined for itself, CUL’s executive director Nell Taylor explains that this project consistently forces them to “think about our collections in new ways.” Read the rest of this entry »

Edwidge Danticat

Reclaiming its full span of traditional streetside real estate this year, tThe Printers Row Lit Fest marks its twenty-seventh outing with more than 200 authors and 150 booksellers.

There’s probably something for every taste. Here’s our likely itinerary:

Saturday, June 4

MSNBC junkies will want to catch frequent guest Jonathan Alter, author of “The Promise: President Obama, Year One” being chatted up by the Trib’s Rick Kogan. 10am, Trib Nation Stage

Want to get real insight into Haiti? Listen to this year’s Harold Washington Literary Award-winner Edwidge Danticat in a ticketed event. 11:30am, Harold Washington Library Center/Cindy Pritzker Auditorium

Listen to two of our nation’s preeminent African American literary figures chat it up, when Ishmael Reed sits in conversation with Haki Madhubuti in a ticketed event. Noon, Harold Washington Library Center/Multipurpose Room Read the rest of this entry »

Although conceived by Victor David Giron in the early 1990s in Urbana, Curbside Splendor was finally realized in 2009 with the purpose of publishing Giron’s novel, “Sophomoric Philosophy.” Since then, Curbside Splendor has been consistently publishing short stories, poetry and photography online, recently released its first compilation of online and previously unpublished material, “Curbside Splendor Issue 1: Spring 2011”, as well as, been preparing for its newest release, “The Chapbook: Poems by Charles Bane, Jr.” due to come out in July. And then there are the events.

Beginning in February of this year, Curbside Splendor created a pop-up bookstore appearing at the Logan Square Farmers Market at least once a month, selling work from Chicago presses and authors next to stalls selling locally grown produce. The Curbside Splendor Bookstand is a satisfying idea of “locally grown with locally published” standing side-by-side. The Curbside Splendor Bookstall is currently on a hiatus along with the Logan Square Market, but it will return again when the summer season begins on June 5, preferring to stay local rather than finding a new place to pop up. “Logan Square is a very personal place,” Giron says.

In addition, each month Curbside Splendor hosts a “Two With Water” reading event at the Beauty Bar, where Giron is part-owner. The next installment takes place on July 10. See curbsidesplendor.com for details. (Elizabeth Kossnar)

Megan Stielstra

Do you think that some of the best stories you’ve ever heard are the ones shared around a dinner table? Well, Second Story (2ndstory.com) does, as Chicago’s personal-narrative storytelling group prepares to hold its next event at Chalkboard Restaurant, 4343 North Lincoln. “This will be part of our series called Stories and Chefs,” says Bobby Biedrzycki, the curator of Second Story. “Chefs will create four-course meals around four stories.”

Five weeks prior to the event, Biedrzycki, Megan Stielstra and Eric May are seated around a dark wooden table in a small classroom at Columbia College, while a largely ignored thunderstorm taps at the windows. No one at this story-development meeting seems nervous. Compared to their well-attended performances at Webster’s Wine Bar and Red Kiva Lounge, “this event will be much more intimate,” says Megan, with an excited lilt, but this feels intimate. Andrew Reilly, the event curator, and Thrisa Hodits, the director, are the only other people in the room, because storyteller Byron Flitsch (the fourth slice of the narrative pie) can’t make it.

Megan, Bobby and Eric are here because their own stories, some old and some new, need to change dramatically for the venue. “We have all done stories multiple times that have been killer in different ways,” says Megan. But it’s not just the venue that they’re considering in this workshop—it’s the passing of time too. “Time paints everything with that thin layer of gold,” says Andrew, and Bobby admits that his story, which includes references to past drug abuse, has “an implied ending. Because I’m there telling it, it implies that everything is going to be okay.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Rachel Sugar

“The world may be flat for Thomas Friedman, but it’s a blur for anyone who wanted to read books from around the world in recent years,” says Granta editor (and sometime-Newcity critic) John Freeman. Only three percent of books published annually in the US are works in translation, leaving English-language readers with access to a tiny fraction of world literature. Last fall, though, the Britain-based publication used its “Best of Young Novelists” franchise to attack what Freeman calls this “literary parochialism” head-on: in November, Granta’s “Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists” issue became the first-ever foreign-language edition of the magazine, published first in Spanish out of Barcelona under the direction of Granta en espanol co-founders and editors Valerie Miles and Aurelio Major, with an English translation of the issue close behind.

This week, Freeman, Miles and a handful of the Spanish literary lights are making their way cross-country for “Building Bridges: Spanish and English Writers in Conversation,” a literary tour cosponsored by the Spain-USA Foundation and the Embassy of Spain. At the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago, the Granta crew—Freeman and Miles, plus contributors Andres Barba, Javier Montes and Alberto Olmos—will be joined by American novelist and “Best European Fiction” series editor Aleksandar Hemon. Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Ware Self-Portrait

“There are two sides of comics that are always competing: the text and the image,” says Ingrid Olson. If last year’s Comic Symposium of Chicago emphasized the image, this year’s successor event hones in on the word when School of the Art Institute hosts its second annual Small Press and Comics Symposium (spandcsc.tumblr.com) March 24.

Organized by Olson and other SAIC alumni, the event features two panel discussions with ten Chicago presses and comic artists aimed at exploring the connections between the small press, independent publishing and comics communities. Moderated by University of Chicago comics scholar Hillary Chute, the comics discussion will include Chris Ware, Onsmith, Corinne Mucha and Aaron Renier, and will tackle such questions as the “changing cultural status of comics.” The Chicago press discussion features panelists from Front Forty Press, Featherproof Books, Green Lantern Press and Poetry magazine, and is moderated by publisher Sally Alatalo. Both panel discussions are free and open to the public. Read the rest of this entry »

JenniferEgan/Photo: Pieter M. van Hattem

“Class Acts” is the theme of this year’s Story Week Festival of Writers in more ways than one. The fifteenth anniversary edition of Columbia College’s seminal literary event explores how the notion of class comes into play in fiction, and it features some big literary stars, including Jennifer Egan and Irvine Welsh. Other highlights include a panel on the future of publishing chaired by, among others, Chicago-based writer Joe Meno and Rahm Emanuel Twitter impersonator Dan Sinker. Also in the lineup: a playwriting class with Goodman Theater’s Regina Taylor, 2nd Story Storytelling at Martyrs’, and readings by Columbia College undergrads and faculty. Story Week concludes with Chicago Classics, a series of readings hosted by the Chicago Tribune’s Rick Kogan, in which twenty “guests from Chicago’s literary community”—including Newcity’s editor and publisher Brian Hieggelke—read works by their favorite Chicago authors. All events are free and open to the public. In its fifteen-year history, Story Week has evolved from a small junket for students to rub elbows with great writers to a smorgasbord of events from intimate readings and conversations to high-energy events at venues all over the city. “This is certainly the most jam-packed schedule we’ve ever attempted,” says artistic director Sam Weller. “There’s something for everyone.” (Benjamin Rossi)

Visit the Story Week website for complete details.

Photo: Ramsey Beyer

Last October, Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago and Baltimore’s Atomic Books set a challenge for 2011: no less than the Revenge of Print, a glorious return to old-fashioned ink and paper in defiance of a world that amuses itself by betting on when print media will finally roll over and die.

With the 2nd Annual Chicago Zine Fest (chicagozinefest.org) March 25-26, payback time has arrived. The two-day celebration of independent publishing features events at Quimby’s, 826CHI and Columbia College, an exhibition of more than 200 zinesters’ works, and workshops on everything from book binding to how to make it as a full-time artist. Highlights include a discussion with popular self-publishers Al Burian and Aaron Cometbus and a DIY Film Festival curated by the Gababout Film Festival’s Eric Ayotte. All events are free and open to the public. Read the rest of this entry »

The Whistler hums with good-natured literary farce this Thursday night, marking the third community event organized by the Required Reading program since its inception in late 2009. The program, which was started by Katy Groves, a social worker at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, seeks to solicit donations of used books and money to buy books for the benefit of literature programs at the JTDC.

Tonight’s event is an open call to anyone who was ever a young-adult reader or juvenile scriber, promising all-comers five minutes of fame for “a hilarious/poignant glimpse into your childhood psyche.” In tones ranging from high mock sincerity to self-deprecating embarrassment, readers share the fruits of their young, often hormone-swollen minds while standing before the Whistler’s tissue-paper fire. Read the rest of this entry »