21
Ann Christopherson & Linda Bubon
Co-owners, Women & Children First
Ann Christopherson and Linda Bubon are co-owners of one of the nation’s largest feminist bookstores, Women & Children First, which boasts the city’s largest selection of literature by women writers, and lesbian and gay literature. Christopherson and Bubon host a book club, children’s reading hour, and numerous author events, readings, and book-release parties. The bookstore will celebrate its thirty-fifth anniversary in 2014.
22
Christine Sneed
Author, Co-Curator, Sunday Salon
It’s been a breakout year for Christine Sneed, with her novel “Little Known Facts” garnering critical acclaim, including a front-pager in the New York Times Book Review and now a “21st Century Award” from the Chicago Public Library Foundation. Sneed, who teaches at Northwestern, also co-curates the widely admired Chicago edition of Sunday Salon reading series with Natalia Nebel and Alexandra Sheckler at the Black Rock Pub.
23
Jill Pollack
Founder and Director, StoryStudio Chicago
In 2003, Jill Pollack founded StoryStudio Chicago “for purely selfish reasons…“ and for “a place to meet and study and hang out with other writers.” StoryStudio now has two studios—one in Chicago and one on the North Shore—that offer regular creative and business writing classes to students of various backgrounds and skill levels. Pollack is also the co-founder of the now-inactive Chicago Literary Alliance and the author of three young-adult books: “Shirley Chisholm,” “Lesbian and Gay Families: Redefining Parenting in America” and “Women on the Hill: A History of Women in Congress.”
24
Gina Frangello
Executive Editor, OV Books
Longtime executive editor of OV Books, Gina Frangello is the author of three books of her own (including “My Sister’s Continent,” “Slut Lullabies,” and the much anticipated “A Life in Men,” forthcoming from Algonquin in early 2014), and teaches creative writing at Columbia College Chicago and Northwestern University. She’s the Sunday editor of The Rumpus, and the fiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown, and co-curates The Nervous Breakdown’s Chicago reading series, which allows her to welcome out-of-state writers to Chicago’s literary scene.
25
Reginald Gibbons
Director, Center for the Writing Arts, Northwestern
Reginald Gibbons is a man of many literary pursuits—professor of English at Northwestern, writer (he’s published two poetry chapbooks, eight poetry collections, a short story collection and a novel, among other projects), translator of several works of poetry, editor and columnist. Appropriately, he’s also a man of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA fellowship, and the Carl Sandburg Prize. His work has also been included in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies. He helped found the Guild Complex, and sits on its board, and has stayed connected to TriQuarterly, which he edited for a long while back in its print days, in its new incarnation as a digital literary journal. Gibbons is also excited to have helped create two major new events in 2013: the widely anticipated Brooksday, which celebrates the life and work of poet Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Guild Literary Complex’s tribute to poet Sterling Plumpp in May.
26
Charles Blackstone
Managing Editor, Bookslut
With founding editor Jessa Crispin decamped to Berlin and, lately, in a general global ex-pat state, managing editor Charles Blackstone keeps the leading literary web site grounded here in Chicago. They’ve just launched Spolia, a sister subscription digital publication featuring “poetry and prose and commentary, as well as art, from a wide variety of international contributors, and I plan to,” he says, “of course, push for the Chicagoans at every turn!” Blackstone’s novel, “Vintage Attraction,” to be published this fall by Pegasus, features the story of an English teacher who falls in love with a famous sommelier. Of course it bears no attraction to his life, or his marriage to Alpana Singh.
27
Danielle Egan-Miller
President, Browne & Miller Literary Associates
Browne & Miller Literary Associates has been Chicago’s premier literary agency (and one of the largest in the Midwest) since it moved here from California in 1978. Danielle Egan-Miller became president in 2003, after several years of working under founder Jane Jordan Browne and editing for the American Bar Association, McGraw-Hill and the American Marketing Association, among other companies and organizations. Egan-Miller is a member of The Author’s Guild and the Midwest Writers Association. She and Browne & Miller’s associate agent Joanna MacKenzie support an impressive roster of established authors (including twelve best-sellers in the last few years), continue to encourage new and local talent and published the agency’s first digital original book in May.
28
Matti Bunzl
Artistic Director, Chicago Humanities Festival
Matti Bunzl is the artistic director of the Chicago Humanities Festival, and has been an anthropology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1998. Since joining the CHF in 2010, Matti Bunzl has curated an impressive list of literary events that have brought some major names to Chicago. Now in the midst of finalizing plans for the 2013 festival, Bunzl was happy to talk about the theme, “Animal: What Makes Us Human.” Bunzl says, “It is very much a reflection on my background as an anthropologist as well as recent developments in the academy that have brought the sciences and humanities into a sustained conversation.” The 2013 festival will feature events with Sherman Alexie, Temple Grandin and Susan Orlean, among others.
29
Mike Puican
Board President, Guild Literary Complex
Mike Puican may have made a mark in a career in marketing large corporate brands, but it’s likely his legacy will be crafted in the literary world. Since 2009 he’s served as board president of the Guild Literary Complex, where he launched their important Palabra Pura bilingual poetry reading series and serves as a very involved leader. He’s especially excited about their upcoming Brooksday event (see related story) and Poets of Protest, a partnership with Facets Multimedia and the Al Jazeera Network that will bring in writers who were instrumental in the various Arab Spring movements; “some of them are still in exile,” he says. Puican’s active as a poet himself, with recent works published in Poetry, Cortland Review, TriQuarterly and Jet Fuel Review. By day he works for DePaul University, helping connect academics to the corporate world he left behind.
30
Donna Seaman
Senior Editor, Booklist
Though Donna Seaman’s “day job” is certainly significant in the book world, it’s her greater presence that makes the difference. She’s an award-winning critic, an editor and all-around champion of all things literary. She guest edits journals like Fifth Wednesday, TriQuarterly and, soon, Creative Nonfiction, and conducts author interviews for publication and at the Harold Washington Library and other venues (recently, Jeffrey Eugenides, Eve Ensler and Alice Walker) and helps select winners of things like the Harold Washington Literary Award. And she’s an active member of the literary advisory council for the American Writers Museum, which is planned for a Chicago home.
Where all the POC’s at?
[…] annual Newcity Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago list came out today and it features some of my very favorite people. The wonderful Mairead Case, […]
It would appear that the most connected people in Chicago publishing are largely white. Is this in keeping with the New City demographic?
Henry,
Demographics is not a consideration in compiling this list; only journalism. We don’t gather the photographs until after the list is done, so genuinely do not take race into consideration either way. We of course, have little to do with the factors that drive this list, i.e. hiring decisions by colleges, book-buying habits of the general public, etc. If you look at last year’s list, in which the artistic factors are paramount, you’ll see more diversity.
Thanks for reading,
Brian Hieggelke, editor
That is the lamest excuse for not doing your job properly that I have ever seen. This is a city whose racial divide is tearing us apart and causing more deaths than people can understand. Shame on you!
What do you mean by journalism? In terms of who’s being written up or who’s writing articles? If that’s the case, then you missed some people with a fairly high media profile, Samantha Irby being at the top of that list. She’s been on WBEZ, interviewed in all the major newspapers in Chicago, won runner-up for Best Blog in the Reader last year and will likely nab the top spot this year, produces her own reading series, has a new book out AND has thousands of followers of her blog from across the country. I actually asked people to name… Read more »
This list is whiter than the RNC. Gracious. Do we live in Chicago or Des Moines? New York’s lists never look like this.
^ But sir editor, would it not also count as journalism to investigate and locate personalities from underrepresented or underexposed demographics that “book” in and out of their own communities, as opposed to simply following the dominant/sanctioned measures of success, such as hiring decisions, book-buying habits etc? While I understand your argument, it doesn’t necessarily explain the lack of diversity on this list – journalists have a choice whether to just report what’s most obvious or to dig a little deeper to reveal something new…and to help advance change and promote a wider variety of cultures.
To clarify, being “color-blind” photographically might seem fair/unbiased on one hand, but totally ignores or reinforces systemic disadvantages and biases on the other.
Deborah, I am sorry that our passionate coverage of the literary world has provoked the murder epidemic in Chicago.
Nikki, On a case by case basis, our list is rife for argument, so I can’t defend it other than to say we do our best to craft a list that reflects the state of literary Chicago in a point in time (not necessarily the state WE want, but the state that IS. That is journalism). In the case you mentioned, Samantha Irby was on our short list and is definitely a likely candidate for the list at some time, but did not make it this year. (Nor did her live-lit partner, Keith Ecker, for that matter, who’s skin is… Read more »
XM, Thank you for thoughtfully advancing the argument. Maybe you and Rachel Shteir should move to New York together. Apparently she thinks it’s better there too. (PS Can you provide a link to New York’s version of Lit 50? I was not aware of the list you reference.)
APM, You make a valid argument, and to the extent we can, we do such things. I think Corey Hall, on this year’s list exemplifies what you describe. Frankly, reflecting the diversity of Chicago in our coverage is a core value of our company. I have no idea how long you’ve read Newcity, but giving you the benefit of the doubt, you probably know that we’ve done standalone cover stories on Haki Madhubuti, Bayo Ojikuto, Louis Rodriguez, Achy Obejas and many other writers and artists of color. How many other publications in Chicago have done the same? In America? This… Read more »
APM, Regarding your second comment, you are correct that we’re not yet living in the color-blind society that Dr. King dreamed of; in fact it sounds like King’s dream is the nightmare of some of the commenters on this page for the all the wrong reasons, which I think would break his heart if he’d lived to see this. (It certainly breaks mine that merit seems so secondary or irrelevant to this whole conversation.) Color seems to be a more complex thing than ever before; is someone who is half Latino but has an Anglo name no longer a person… Read more »
Brian, I want to be very thoughtful in my comments about this. First, I want to say that I don’t think merit is second to color. At all. In fact, the people who I think should be on your list are incredibly talented, hard-working and educated. I think what rubbed me the wrong way about this list is knowing, for a fact, how influential and powerful several writers of color are in this city (like C.C. Carter, who’s the dean of high school for the arts in Chicago and travels extensively to read her writing and just ended the 10-year… Read more »
Nikki, Thank you for this. I think thoughtful dialogue about issues such as this is important and a positive outcome of the process of list-making like this. And you are correct that we are far from perfect in what we do; every year new folks come to our attention that we wish we’d known about long before. One other point I would make is that we’ve been doing this list for a long time, and some of the people on the list come and go and come again; over time, we hope to cover everyone of merit at some point.… Read more »
Thanks, Brian. It’s really good to hear that folks are being considered, even if they didn’t make the final cut. I think that profiling people who are providing opportunities for writers, some in very unconventional ways, would make a really good story. As a born-and-bred Chicagoan, I’ve lived on every side of this city and have been involved in writing communities from Rogers Park to the far South and West sides. We’re fortunate to have a dynamic literary community in Chicago that features writers from a myriad of ethnic and class backgrounds. Not all of that work winds up on… Read more »
I’m tired of all these complaints about “representation” and “bias”‘ that amount to little more than reverse racism. Affirmative action may be required in politics and in corporate America, but has no place in reality.
Groan.
[…] Read the full 2013 list here. […]
[…] to have had the opportunity to attend over a dozen of his events around the city. In 2013, he made NewCity’s Lit 50 for his work as Editor-In-Chief of Curbside Splendor. He currently lives in Lake Forest with his […]
interesting list of bookers
[…] Turow is also a partner in the Chicago office of the law firm Dentons. When Newcity put Turow No. 1 on its 2013 “Lit 50” list, the alternative newspaper said that he “is using his lofty profile to wage war on issues more […]