You can always count on Columbia College’s Story Week to provide some against-the-grain programming—its annual “Literary Rock ‘n’ Roll” evening, traditionally held at Metro, is usually the highlight of the festival. (Though one could imagine Joyce Carol Oates, this year, would be tough to beat.) Tonight features three authors—”Love & Obstacles” and “The Lazarus Project” scribe Aleksandar Hemon, pretty much the face of Chicago lit these days; Bonnie Jo Campbell, who penned the excellent 2009 short story collection “American Salvage”; and local crime author Marcus Sakey, whose most recent novel, “The Amateurs,” is a sharp, gritty read that you could take down in one sitting. On top of the live words, The Bread and Puppet Theater perform, and Joe Shanahan and Don De Grazia spin. Did I mention it’s free? Yeah, it’s free. (Tom Lynch)
March 18 at Metro, 3730 N. Clark, (773)549-0203, 6pm. Free.
A Literary Parthenon: A Review of “BLAB! Volume 1” For the uninitiated, "BLAB Volume 1" makes "BLAB"’s mission quite clear. "BLAB" is a comics anthology concerned with comics itself: presenting, preserving, and commenting on the history of the medium.
From Dust to Stardust: The Dizzying and Dazzling Literary Life of Kathleen Rooney “From Dust to Stardust” is both an impressive work of imagination, based on the life and adventures of Jazz Age film star Colleen Moore, whose fictional incarnation Doreen O'Dare is the novel's protagonist, and a carefully researched story about early Hollywood and the Fairy Castle housed in Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.
An International Crossroads: Bill Savage Discusses "Chicago: A Literary History" The Chicago literary tradition is really central to how European American studies programs look at the United States. So scholars in Europe, Asia and the UK and around the world read the Chicago literary tradition in a way that a lot of Americans don’t.
