Wael Ghonim/Photo: Sam Christmas

By Ella Christoph

A year ago, days into the protest in Tahrir Square, news stories breathlessly proclaimed the importance of social media in the massive participation of Egyptian youth in a revolution few saw coming. Facebook pages, Tweeting—all of a sudden they were validated, by a monumental, real-world event. But as the protests raged on, Americans knew few of the details of how, exactly, all this social media was mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people living under oppressive regimes.

And neither Egyptians nor the rest of the world knew the name, or the face, behind a Facebook page that was pivotal in catalyzing the protests. Who was the anonymous “Admin” behind the Facebook page “I am Khaled Said”—the page that first suggested, and then coordinated, the momentous January 25th protests? Read the rest of this entry »

By Ella Christoph

Any woman could tell you how much easier it is to pick up guys—well, usually, let them pick you up—than it is to befriend a girl. Obviously, bars aren’t a good spot for searching out new best buds. But—maybe more than women wish to admit, or guys might believe—even places that seem almost overflowing with potential besties can end up feeling like friend deserts.

Childhood friends who lived on your street now live halfway around the country; college roommates stayed and you moved, or vice versa. Work, bars and the gym aren’t breeding grounds for best-friendships the same way recess, camp and drunken walks home from frat parties were earlier in life. But few women talk about the challenges of making friends in the adult world, worried they’ll be seen as losers, or unappreciative of the friends or significant other they already have. Never mind that it’s fine to talk incessantly about the lengths you’re going to in order to hunt down The One. 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)

Photo: Manda Townsend

By Ella Christoph

Rebecca Skloot was 16 years old and sitting in biology class when she first learned about HeLa cells, the so-called “immortal cells” that multiply at an extraordinary rate and have allowed scientists to make thousands of discoveries. At the time, Skloot’s father was suffering from a brain virus, and had enrolled in experimental studies hoping to receive treatment. She didn’t ask her science teacher why the cells were immortal (scientists still aren’t totally sure) or what discoveries had been made, but instead she wondered where the cells came from, who the descendants of that person were, and what it would be like to have a family member’s cells proliferate on after their death.

Born in Springfield, Illinois but raised in Portland, Oregon (she lives in Chicago now), Skloot started off in the sciences, getting on the pre-veterinary track in college, but a transformative creative writing class swerved her in another direction. Concurrently applying to veterinary schools and creative writing programs, she settled on an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh. Rather than giving up science, Skloot became a science writer and wrote for publications including Popular Science and the New York Times Magazine. For Skloot, who loved both science and writing, it was a natural progression. Both science and writing, she says, are about creative thinking and ideas. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

“This is a Book” is the first book by comedian and actor Demetri Martin. An ingenious wordsmith, whose stand-up routines often feature a giant pad of paper that he uses to flip through drawings and words, Martin’s comedy translates nicely to book form. This book recalls the prose collections of Woody Allen—they share a common shtick—absurd stories, terrific one-liners and fairly intellectual comedy that allows the reader to feel just as clever as the writer.  Martin has the ability to create a whole story in just a line, like Hemingway’s famous six-word short-story (For sale: baby shoes, never worn.) only hilarious.  “I have been called many things,” he writes, “Like ‘Hey you’ and ‘Get out of the Way!’ and ‘Look Out!’ And then, some time later, ‘Plaintiff.’” A two-and-a-half-page palindromic story is nothing short of amazing. A diary written completely in acronyms amuses. Martin seems to find particular pleasure in playing the character of the douche-bag—the kind of guy not afraid to insult a pregnant wife, insult an elderly woman, or get into a fist fight. A chapter about a cat calendar for people who hate cats is not cool. Not cool at all. (Kelly Roark)

At DePaul University Bookstore, 1 East Jackson, for a signing on May 12 at 6pm.

“This Is A Book”
By Demetri Martin
Grand Central Publishing, 288 pages, $24.99

As the editor of Poetry magazine, Christian Wiman resides atop a prominent perch, perhaps one precarious for a poet. With its recently found riches, this once relatively obscure publication now occupies a place of increasing prominence and Wiman, as its leader, has become known these last few years as much for his life as for his writing. To summarize: he stopped writing, then fell in love and got married, found out he had a rare and incurable blood cancer—with indeterminate consequences regarding his life expectancy—and turned to a deeper, public commitment to Christianity. That’s a load of information for a writer’s work to bear, but fortunately, Wiman returned to his craft and his new collection of poems, “Every Riven Thing,” manages to carry all of his baggage weightlessly. His is a world of acute insight into the human questions—of mortality, of God, of nature—rendered without proselytizing, without prognosis. He just observes, and still questions. He’s as at home on the trains of the city as he is on the range of his native West Texas. He believes in God, yet leads us into the existential void, into the terror of the terminal soul. His illness sharpens his vision; his words are radiated. And yet, he’s funny, using humor to disarm the darkness that lies within reach  of his questions. His public readings are a rarity, and his work works best aloud, so consider yourself fairly warned about the consequences of your absence. (Brian Hieggelke)

Christian Wiman reads from “Every Riven Thing” January 13 at 7pm at the Stop Smiling Storefront, 1371 North Milwaukee. Free.

Karen Abbott/Photo: Gilbert King

RECOMMENDED

Karen Abbott has a knack for ferreting out the raunchier stories of America’s twentieth century,  first with her bestselling chronicle of the Everleigh Sisters and Chicago’s notorious Levee in “Sin in the Second City” and now with a biography of the enigmatic Gypsy Rose Lee, an intellectual burlesque artist who was, in her time, the most popular woman in America. Though Lee’s was a life lived in public—her memoir became the basis for the seminal Broadway musical, “Gypsy”—she was a master of the reveal, not only on stage but in life, where her infamous stage mother taught her early on to hold truth in very low regard. Abbott digs behind the legend, scoring interviews with Lee’s sister, the nonagenarian June Havoc, shortly before her death along with Lee’s son to augment the ample public record. She then weaves a compelling narrative that chronicles the rise of Lee set against the waning days of vaudeville and the thriving burlesque circuit, interwoven with tales from her peak of popularity to her days as a writer, actress and all-around public persona. For those who think the culture of celebrity is a particularly contemporary invention, Abbott proves otherwise in this captivating book. (Brian Hieggelke)

Karen Abbott will discuss “American Rose” at Indian Prairie Library in a midday talk and at Barrington Library on January 9,  at Anderson’s Bookshop and at Lovell’s of Lake Forest on January 11,  at Maxim’s on January 12,  at the University Club of Chicago and at the Newberry Library on January 13 and at the Frankfort Public Library and the Book Cellar on January 14.

Not many priests get death threats. But, then again, not many priests are so often at the center of public controversy as Chicago’s Father Michael Pfleger. He’s defaced billboards, protested against Jerry Springer and Howard Stern, paid prostitutes for their time so that he could minister to them, and fought openly with Chicago Cardinal Francis George. Pfleger made national headlines during the 2008 election, when he openly derided Hillary Clinton from his pulpit, accusing her of feeling “entitled” to the Democratic nomination because she was white. He’s often accused of blurring the line between social activism and being openly political, and he’s the subject of a new book, “Radical Disciple: Father Pfleger, St. Sabina Church, and the Fight For Social Justice” by Chicago author Robert McClory.

McClory seems uniquely qualified to author the book; beyond being a former reporter for the Chicago Reader who profiled Pfleger back in 1989, McClory himself was a former priest at Pfleger’s St. Sabina’s. He was leaving the parish right around the same time that Pfleger was coming on in the late sixties, as the demographics for the neighborhood switched from predominantly white to predominantly black, and church membership shrunk almost nine-tenths. He remembers firsthand the effect Pfleger had on the congregation. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

The people of Bulgaria, descendants of a civilization that stretches back to the seventh century, spend their lives struggling with the same concerns as the people of Chicago: economic survival, loneliness, self-respect, sex and the need for warmth both emotional and physical.

In her debut collection, “Cold Snap: Bulgaria Stories,” author Cynthia Morrison Phoel presents us with the residents of a broke-down housing block in the fictitious, post-communist town of Old Mountain. Mothers who are both careworn and caring, fathers defeated, drunken or loving, and sons and daughters torn between devotion and independence populate these six linked stories. The characters’ interior lives as well as the complex relationships and casual encounters that shape the endurance contest that is their daily fare are delicately drawn with humor, insight and empathy, in beautifully crafted prose. (Micki Leventhal)

Phoel reads from “Cold Snap” as part of Come Home Chicago, September 12 at The Underground Wonder Bar, 10 East Walton, (312)266-7761, at 6pm. Free. (21 & up) and September 13 at The Book Stall, 811 Elm, Winnetka (847)446-8880, at 7pm. Free.