The Loyola prof’s most recent publications have focused on teaching writing (his latest, “Revision,” tackles the art of editing), but that doesn’t mean the “Skating in the Dark” author isn’t cooking up some new fiction of his own.

Where are you based?
In the West Walker area, near Old Irving Park, but I teach fiction writing at Loyola University Chicago.

Your last book was a non-fiction writing guide, “Revision: A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction;” before that, you published a novel, “Skating in the Dark,” and a book of short stories, “Comfort.” What have you been up to since? What are you working on these days?
Since then, I’ve published short stories serially in magazines such as TriQuarterly, DoubleTake, StoryQuarterly, and Five Corners Quarterly, and had some in anthologies such as “The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction.” I also won the Nelson Algren Short Story Award in 1999, and was a runner-up in 2005. I have just finished a novel, “Luna Park,” which I’ve been working on for quite a while, to the short shrifting, alas, of short fiction. Read the rest of this entry »

Writing about 9/11 once felt so much stranger. The image of the Twin Towers falling is so indelibly marked in the American consciousness that initially it may have seemed commenting on it was excessive or incompatible. Yet, with the passing of ten years, an image once unilaterally perceived in the West—“we are all Americans now,” as the French newspaper Le Monde famously printed—has become burdened with the history that sprouted from it.

Given the event’s transforming meaning, Granta’s “Ten Years Later” essentially skirts the issue of what exactly occurred ten years ago. While the New Yorker chose the bizarrely nostalgic route of scrapping together what amounts to an e-book time capsule of its coverage immediately following the attacks, per their M.O. Granta has chosen a considerably riskier approach. Out of its sixteen essays, only one addresses September 11 directly. The rest cover, according to the blurb, the “complexity and sorrow of life since 11 September 2001.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: John Reilly

Novelist (also: journalist, critic, professor, painter) Carol Anshaw has been capturing the complexities of women’s relationships—and relationships in general—since her 1992 debut, “Aquamarine.”

Where are you based?
Andersonville

Your last novel, “Lucky in the Corner,” came out in 2002. What have you been up to since? What are you working on these days?
I have a new novel coming out early next year from Simon & Schuster, “Carry the One.” I worked hard for a long time on this book; it’s more complex than anything I’ve done before. I also have a deeply Chicago story coming out in the next issue of New Ohio Review [NOR]. What I’m working on now is the beginnings of a novel, “The Map of Allowed Wandering.” Read the rest of this entry »

Marc Smith

By Mike Gillis

If slam poetry is still the religion it once was, then the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge is its cathedral. Of course, like the best of lounges, the Green Mill is the opposite of a church. Rather than natural light and sanctity, it conjures sea grottos, manmade dimness, embellished curves.

On a recent Saturday in Wrigleyville, the rock club Metro served as a surrogate to slam poetry founder Marc Smith’s traditional pulpit. It served quite well. If a little less cavernous, the Metro was no less ornate and grotesquely organic than the Green Mill. Should the low-key ambiance have suggested slam has lost its edge, though, the pantheon assembled for the twenty-fifth anniversary of slam poetry immediately extinguished such doubts. Read the rest of this entry »

With “The Time Traveler’s Wife” (2003), Audrey Niffenegger went from hand-bound chapbooks to the best seller list. Since then, Evanston’s favorite writer/painter/graphic novelist has been taking the (multi)media world by storm.

You published your second novel, “Her Fearful Symmetry,” in 2009, and your serialized graphic novel, “The Night Bookmobile,” came out this past fall. What are you working on these days?
A ballet (I am making the story, costume and set designs and a friend is choreographing), a screenplay (based on “Her Fearful Symmetry”) and a new novel (“The Chinchilla Girl in Exile”). I am also in the early stages of a retrospective of my artists books and artwork, planned for 2013 in Washington DC.

You’re on the faculty at Columbia. What’s your approach to teaching writing? If your students walk away from your classes with one thing, what do you want that thing to be? Read the rest of this entry »

Two hours before the show, there is already a line. Martyrs’ isn’t a large venue, and people collect on the sidewalk outside as they wait for their IDs to be checked. Inside, the bar is fairly spacious, and most of the few chairs are already filled despite the early hour. The lighting is so dim a few techies have to use flashlights to set up the stage, which is (fortunately for them) bare except for a microphone, an easel and a sign proclaiming “The Moth StorySLAM.” The last seats are taken by a little after six, and the venue is sold out by 7pm or 7:30pm. Food and drink rush past in the arms of the busy wait staff, and the noise remains at a dull roar until an organizer comes to the microphone. The bar quiets, and she asks for previous attendees of the StorySLAM to serve on the judging panel.

The Moth began its storytelling competition in New York in 1997, and came to Chicago in 2009. The rules are simple. The ten competitors, selected from volunteers that night, each have five minutes to tell their stories, which must relate to the monthly theme—fame, in this case. Three teams of judges score each story.

A little past eight, Brian Babylon takes the stage to enthusiastic applause. Host, extra storyteller, standup comic and literal cheerleader, Babylon encourages the audience to “go crazy” for every contestant, and brings the first storyteller onstage to a gospel rendition of “Bear Down, Chicago Bears.” Read the rest of this entry »

As the bard of the South Side, Bayo Ojikutu’s been writing Chicago since his debut novel, “47th Street Black.”

Where are you based?
The family and I live on the Hyde Park/Woodlawn border. Just south of the Midway; just north of 63rd Street. My son and I are sitting on the Midway right now—looking south. I suppose that we live right in the shadow of the U of C’s newest, sparkling glass, state-of-the-art high-rise dormitory.

You finished “Free Burning” in 2006, and then spent some time focusing on shorter fiction, including the Pushcart-noted “Yayi and Those Who Walk on Water: A Fable.” What are you up to these days? What are you working on?
I’m currently working on one short work and my third novel. Read the rest of this entry »

Since Stop Smiling transitioned from a periodical to a book publisher, the Second City has had a gaping hole in its journalistic output where long-form creative nonfiction is concerned. The Handshake, a new publication helmed by editor-in-chief Daniel Duffy, seeks to change this.

Taking admitted inspiration from Stop Smiling (the first issue of The Handshake features an interview with its founding editor, J.C. Gabel), Duffy continues its legacy of long-form interviews. Yet he aims to deviate from that publication through inclusion of five structured, recurring sections.

“I think offering these five very distinct things, with only one of each in each issue, gives us enough focus to really keep putting out a good product every time,” Duffy says.

Each issue will include one long-form interview and one “conversation, where two authors, artists, comedians, meet to talk to each other about their lives and work,” Duffy says.

In addition, the magazine includes a single experimental essay (“in tribute to David Foster Wallace,” reads the website). New Journalism influenced Duffy in constructing this section, causing him to realize the allure of subjectivity in reporting. Read the rest of this entry »

Jonathan Eig, Wall Street Journalist, Chicago magazine columnist, and best-selling author, most recently took on the legacy of the city’s most notorious gangster with “Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America’s Most Wanted Gangster.”

Where are you based?
Lakeview.

“Get Capone” came out last year. What are you up to these days? What are you working on?
I’m making revisions (possibly endless) on a novel called “American Grill” that’s set in Chicago—specifically at the corner of Rogers and Sheridan, in the building once occupied by Biddy Mulligans.

You’ve been on the faculty at Columbia and lectured at Northwestern. What’s your approach to teaching writing? If your students walk away from your classes with one thing, what do you want that thing to be?
That I’m really, really mean. Also to get the fat out of their sentences.

Take me through your daily writing routine—do you work on a set schedule, X words/pages/hours a day, or do you binge-write when inspiration strikes? From home, the library, a coffee shop, a “space”?
I can write fiction anywhere, although it’s not yet clear to me that I can write it well. For non-fiction, I have to be in my office, which is in my home, in a converted laundry room, surrounded by mountains of books and papers. Read the rest of this entry »

Puddin'heads at the Galway Arms

By Mike Gillis

Matthew Edwards stood in the Galway Arms Irish Pub in Lincoln Park, raised a black glass of stout, and proposed a toast to a boisterous crowd of more than forty on this June 16:

“To James Joyce himself, who, depending on your religious affiliation, is either up in heaven or down in the dirt, laughing his ass off at us for revering his work year after year.”

This is Bloomsday, the annual celebration of the single twenty-four-hour period during which “Ulysses” occurs. It’s a work that attracts such overwhelming interest that it inspired four eclectic gatherings around Chicago this year, and many times that worldwide.

At Puddin’head Press’ seventh annual reading at the Galway Arms, as a planned cast of novelists, musicians, publishers and actors took their turns performing edited sections of the book, the reasons for attendance were scattered. While some were dragged along by bibliophile friends, others, like Lindsey Wallem, have been searching for such a celebration in Chicago for years.

The clear connection among the varied attendees at the Galway, however, was a genuine sense of excitement. Latecomers searched desperately for chairs before taking seats on the floor or leaning against walls. Members of the audience quoted lines along with the performers. Laughter rang out through the second-floor room after choice sections. Read the rest of this entry »