By Tom Lynch

Early Sunday evening and Logan Square’s hipster hotspot The Whistler is sprinkled with patrons, some sipping the bar’s unique summertime cocktails, others just a PBR, please. The Orange Alert Reading Series takes place here roughly every third Sunday of the month and tonight’s lineup consists of “How to Hold a Woman” author Billy Lombardo, plus Andrew Farkas, Tim Hall and West Virginian Scott McClanahan. Founder and emcee Jason Behrends takes to the stage and thanks the modest crowd for coming. “I know it’s hard to come out to a bar at six on a Sunday,” he admits into the microphone. A handful of uninterested drinkers respectfully head out to the patio as to not disrupt the reading with their conversation. For the next hour, the only sounds you can hear are the author’s expressive voices and the air conditioner kicking on and off. Even the bartenders mix the drinks quietly.

“I’m definitely optimistic about the landscape in general,” Behrends says of the current place of literary events in Chicago, a day later over the phone. Behrends began his Orange Alert venture in 2006 with a Web site, orangealert.net, featuring interviews with writers, musicians and artists, then launched Orange Alert Press in March of 2008. The reading series began last November. “There are a lot of reading series in town,” he says, “but even though there are ten or twelve that I know of, I felt that there still could be one more.” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

The Bookslut Reading Series continually offers compelling lineups of authors, and when you mix that with all the beer for sale at Andersonville’s Hopleaf,  you got a lit lover’s wet dream. Tonight, J.C. Hallman reads from his work—his new short-story collection “The Hospital for Bad Poets” questions identity, philosophy and existence as a whole in both accessible and specific ways. Marc Phillips reads as well; his “The Legend of Sander Grant” mixes magical realism and humor and has earned comparisons to John Irving’s work. National Book Award finalist Jean Thompson reads from her latest collection, “Do Not Deny Me,” and, finally, “The Lazarus Project” author Aleksandar Hemon—whose new assembly of stories, “Love and Obstacles,” seems to improve in the mind with time—reads from his work. (Tom Lynch)

July 15 at Hopleaf Bar, 5148 N. Clark, (773)793-9488, at 7:30pm.

Is it wrong to feel optimistic? You couldn’t be blamed if you didn’t. Yet while the country’s economy crumbles around us and less and less funds are available for the producers of the printed word, those in the literary world are finding new and inventive ways to stay afloat. We will not go down without a fight, and progress, of course, is key. So is awareness—in order to get the word out more efficiently (and, likely, to untether itself from the uncertain future of the paper form), Printers Row Book Fair changed its name from “Book Fair” to “Lit Fest” to have a title that better fully represents the weekend’s events, in time for its twenty-fifth anniversary edition. As is our custom, we time our annual Lit 50 list to the weekend’s events; this year’s list of local behind-the-scenes literati—no straight-up authors or poets this time—covers a large spectrum of Chicago’s world of words. As with past years we sought out those behind the smaller presses as well as the monumental figures. Some new names have emerged and many staples appear again, but all tirelessly labor to bring this ancient art to the community at large. Read the rest of this entry »