Chicago’s book world can be a quiet place. In part due to the solitary nature of the work, and in part due to the void of publishing parties that keep New York’s assorted gawkers journaling away, it’s easy to think nothing new is happening. Jeffrey Eugenides moves to town, Jeffrey Eugenides moves away, and no one seems to notice. Then, bam!, Aleksandar Hemon publishes “The Lazarus Project,” the comparisons to Nabokov resume and suddenly we’re the center of the universe again, if only for a moment.
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Beginning this Sunday, Columbia College’s annual Story Week Festival hits these city streets once again, with appearances by authors Junot Diaz and ZZ Packer, local band Mucca Pazza and much more. “It’s probably the hippest literary festival in the Midwest,” says Co-Artistic Director Sheryl Johnston. Readings, publishing panels and performances will take place in various venues (including Martyrs and Metro) throughout the city, and all events are free. This year’s headlining author is Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, who will read at the Harold Washington Library on Monday night. The festival’s theme is “Stories without Borders”—Johnston explains as “stories [that] reach across cultures, religious beliefs and all barriers.” Johnston assures, “You don’t see literary events like this anywhere.”

By Jamie Murnane

Virginia Woolf famously said that all one needed to write is a room of one’s own. For some people, this may be true, but for others, all they need is a drink and a seat in a quiet pub, like Wilde Bar. At the new Lakeview bar and restaurant, there are two full-sized Victorian bars and numerous hefty wooden tables throughout, but the focal point is undeniably its massive library.

A raised open area complete with fireplace and an elaborate stained-glass dome, the library features towering authentic wooden bookshelves—not the IKEA-style wood we’ve grown so accustomed to, but real old-fashioned, no-Allen-wrenches-involved wood—packed with old hardcover classics.
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By Brian Hieggelke

The first thing Carol Anshaw tells me when I arrive at her office for a visit is that she’s just found out she’s been awarded the Carl Sandburg Award for fiction. Her barely contained enthusiasm is modest, though. The texture of our conversation quickly signals that it’s not as much the honor, it’s the money—$1,000—a meaningful windfall for a writer who’s stuck to the struggle for so long.

Her novel “Aquamarine,” published last year by Houghton Mifflin, is an extraordinary accomplishment. It explores three versions of the same life, each starting at the same defining moment and diverging down separate paths. Such a heavy structure could easily overwhelm the narrative; it’s a testimony to this novel’s facility that it enhances it. The Tribune’s veteran book critic, Joseph Coates, called it “the most original American novel I’ve read in years.”

It’s a book that’s changed Anshaw’s life, with all the new attention she’s received. (In addition to the Sandburg prize, she won the Midland Authors Award and was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award). But change is part of life for Anshaw, in a way that no political slogan could portend. And changes, and the multivariate consequences of the decisions leading up to change, is really what “Aquamarine” is all about. Read the rest of this entry »