Power in Chicago has been passed on. No, we’re not talking about that little office in City Hall, but that Oprah, she of the book club that long perched her atop this list, has flown the coop. So now it’s official. The City of Big Shoulders is Poetry’s town. It’s unlikely that Carl Sandburg would have ever imagined such an unlikely outcome when he crafted the city’s calling card, in verse, but it’s not even debatable. Not only can we claim Poetry magazine, the premier publication of its kind anywhere, but its wealthy sibling the Poetry Foundation will open a whole building dedicated to the form later this month. Plus, this is the town that created the Poetry Slam as well as Louder Than a Bomb, the largest teen slam anywhere. Talk about poetic justice. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

The Seminary Co-op Bookstore sits at the bottom of a set of gray stairs, polished to sheen from years of wear, in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary across the street from the main quadrangles of the University of Chicago in Hyde Park. It unfolds in a series of differently shaped passageways, the ceiling crisscrossed with pipes and ducts and the concrete floor sounding with the muffled footsteps of sneaker-clad patrons. Sitting on the wooden shelves, like artifacts in the wall recesses of a catacomb, is the largest collection of academic titles in the United States. “I don’t think there’s a question [that we carry the most academic titles in the country]. We’re the largest single customer for a lot of university presses,” explains Jack Cella, the closest thing to a general manager for the consumer-owned Co-op and its sister store 57th Street Books, in another basement three blocks away from the seminary. Read the rest of this entry »