Books, poetry, comics and the literary world of Chicago
“Ace Boon Coon,” Danny Gardner’s second book in “The Tales of Elliot Caprice” series, is a detective novel is set in 1950s Chicagoland, containing all the elements of a satisfying noir.
Rachel Swearingen’s debut short story collection “How to Walk on Water” is a slim collection of nine stories that approaches its characters with a matter of fact sensibility. Swearingen, a professor at School of the Art Institute, took some time to talk with Newcity about the characters in her short stories, their struggles, writing in Chicago and other cities, some of her influential writers, survivors, and the visual artist Louise Bourgeois.
This collection is as much an experiment in communal response as it is a poem.
The main character of Charlotte McConaghy’s “Migrations” is Franny, who’s often compared to that mythical Irish creature, the selkie, part human, part seal. Selkies are drawn to sea (she says her heart leads “not to true north but to true sea.”). She’s a wanderer, and warns her husband she needs to roam.
Since the beginning of slavery in the United States, African Americans have been withheld from participating in society as autonomous beings. Despite many barriers, African Americans have succeeded in building a thriving culture in this nation even after starting from “scratch.” Koritha Mitchell calls this a “homemade citizenship.”
Readings and discussions to kickoff the fall season.
What do you get when a 1950’s London cookbook meets a Bridget Jones of today? A London foodie’s version of chick lit called “Miss Cecily’s Recipes For Exceptional Ladies.”
Originally published in 2002, “Bluebeard’s First Wife” is a collection of short stories from Korean author Ha Seong-nan. It got an English-language translation and was released in the United States in June 2020. Translated from the Korean by Janet Hong, in “Bluebeard’s First Wife” the passing of time is evident, so are hints of fairy tales.
After Natasha Trethewey’s widely celebrated poetry collections and her first nonfiction book “Beyond Katrina,” “Memorial Drive” documents that difficult terrain of losing her mother, who was brutally murdered by Trethewey’s abusive stepfather in 1985.
If you have the fortitude, Lauren Beukes’s eerily prescient “Afterland” is not only precisely a book of our time, but also an engaging thriller.
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