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.”
We Can’t Delay Our Joy: An Interview with Roger Reeves About His New Book, “Dark Days: Fugitive Essays” Reeves has a shelf full of honors, but his new book, “Dark Days,” is not poetry, but essays. In rich and heady prose, Reeves mixes memoir, theory and literary criticism. His subjects range from an opera singer breaking a silence curfew by singing in the streets to the “hush harbors,” where enslaved people would steal away to pray.
Lit 50 2023: Who Really Books In Chicago Our role in the world seems increasingly ephemeral, which is why so many of us take refuge in the endurability of words on paper, whether in novels, poems, essays or biographies. And Chicago's role in the world of literature has never been stronger.
